The team behind The Dark Mod, a THIEF game that is powered by the Doom 3 Engine, has released a brand new version of it. According to the devs, Version 2.12 brings major performance and optimization improvements.
For those unaware, The Dark Mod is a free dark and moody stealth game, that is heavily inspired by the Thief series by Looking Glass Studios. It’s a great game, so be sure to at least give it a go.
Version 2.12 brings a big improvement to the game by overhauling its culling system. In short, it improves how the game handles things you can’t see, like hidden objects, lights, and shadows. As such, your PC won’t waste resources on things you’re not looking at, making the game run better. You’ll notice that missions which used to slow down your computer now run much more smoothly. So, big thumbs up to the team for this awesome optimization change. If you’re curious, you can find more details about the new culling system here.
This latest version also packs a number of QoL improvements. For instance, the game now has more seamless and accessible controls. Mantling is now smoother, faster, and less prone to cause the player to clip through geometry. Leaning is also more subtle and less prone to cause motion sickness. Plus, you can now configure TDM to automatically loot any frobbed AI.
You can go ahead and download this latest version of The Dark Mod from its official website.
Have fun!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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Finally some news about a GREAT game!😍
And I confirm that it feels way more optimized now!
Indeed! Amazing changes! You tried it, runs more smoothly?
Sorry, didn’t see your reply there.
I already did 15 missions in the past few days, and it runs absolutely perfectly. (my GPU is a RTX3070, so not so recent but it’s great)
I confirm that loading times are definitely faster, especially after the initial first loading when you boot the game.
It makes the game way more enjoyable.
Quicksave/quickload are almost instant for me.
Also, I didn’t play it for years, and I didn’t know that the graphics had improved so well. I used to dislike Doom 3 engine, but it sure looks good there.
I hate to admit it, but I wonder if TDM couldn’t even replace Thief 2 in my heart!
Oh, I use also ModPack 4.0. In fact, I can’t play without it now. he he
Fantastic game but TDM is looking past it’s best. They need a revamp with RT/PT options.
Runs on id Tech 4, the engine used for DOOM 3, Prey 2006, and Quake 4. It’s 20 years old and uses Open GL. If they made an RT enabled version, it would be an entirely new game/mod on a different engine.
The other issue is the game has 15 years worth of fan missions and editor tools being built by the community, it creates a lot of headache to start over.
Well, a port of DOOM 3 BFG Edition with a DX12 / Vulkan renderer already exists:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c0d28e29872d02f40abdd9fbad9ed8c5d7e43a898174bacf7f0f2ce0b20e20a.png
Porting that renderer over and adding RTRT should at least be technically feasible.
But note that RTRT is also possible via OpenGL compute shaders, as the outstanding Teardown game has demonstrated.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7de930b7f7a0622436ec764db907a64d49f4b6c3fb8259b972e0429c41ad997f.jpg
Hey, amazing bit of info!
God I love Teardown.
I only wish that the gameplay wasn’t based on that countdown thing, and made you think with “puzzles” instead.(a few levels are like that, but that’s not enough) I feel like the possibilities are almost endless.
And yeah, it sure would be great to have a Thief game with that lighting engine!
Nah, impossible to do in this mod because it would “break” the manually set up lighting and shadowing in every map ever made.
Also (sorry for the bluntness) Thief fans are not graphics wh*res, we don’t need it. TDM graphics are a nice enough measure better than the originals, but we love the classics and immersion and that’s it.
I would consider myself to be a thief fan. Having such a game that revolves around sneaking within the shadows ignore RT/PT doesn’t make sense. A far more dynamic world would only increase the immersion. Sure stick to the classic if you wish, but then you wouldn’t be using TDM…
Yes, RT/PT makes sense especially here, but you can’t implement it in TDM without breaking every existing map, so that discussion quickly ends at that road stop.
And it doesn’t make sense either forking or making a new TDM2nowwithRT because it would fragment the mapping community or maps would have to be made twice, once for each version. The backlash and frustration would be huge and it’s in the end unnecessary.
I agree with you about RT being unnecessary, but one thing though.
I mean, come on, have you seen what the modding community can do? Nothing even surprises me anymore.
Yes, implementing RT would require modifying one by one EVERY mission in TDM, and it would represent a tremendous work.
Well, I’m 100% sure that they’re going to do it eventually.
Especially the Thief community is very dedicated.
So many times during the past 2 decades, I have heard people saying “this is impossible!” And eventually it became possible. lol
But frankly…
I think that it would actually be better to just leave TDM the way it is, it’s already perfect in my book.
And then make a new game from scratch, in a modern engine, using RT.
As you said, it feels unnecessary, and when such massive changes are considered, in the end, it’s better on the long-term to just create something from scratch.
If you search for “Is Nvidia Remix technology possible to be applied on the Dark Mod?” on its official forum, you’ll see some interesting posts.
Some say that it’s doable, but clearly, most agree that it would be too much work…
Nice to see news of TDM getting out there.
Great mod! Love TDM!
Commitment to quality comparable to a successful content marketing strategy – delivering value consistently.
Great to see the Thief community still going strong. I finished The Black Parade (which is a mod for Thief Gold, not The Dark Mod) last month and it’s fantastic, highly recommend a playthrough for any Thief fans.
https://www.moddb.com/mods/thief-the-black-parade
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