Back in 2018, we informed you about the release of The Dark Mod V2.06. And today, we are happy to report that its development team has launched a brand new version that brings numerous enhancements and improvements.
According to the team, The Dark Mod V2.08 now fully supports OpenGL 3.3 and GLSL. As the team explained:
“The Dark Mod 2.06 and 2.07 had hybrid shader standards that ranged from 2.x to 4.x. graphic drivers. However, Linux does not like it when such mixed shader standards are used in the same scene so we encountered many folks who could not get TDM 2.07 to render without reverting to the legacy ARB 2.0 mode. Now all of TDM’s GLSL is OpenGL 3.3 core based so there is no mixing of different versions.”
The team has also transitioned ARB surface shaders to GLSL. The new GLSL for surfaces is at least as flexible as the legacy ARB surface shaders were.
The TDM team was also able to reduce the number of draw calls. Thus, this has provided a nice performance bump and has set the stage for future work to get closer to Vulkan levels of CPU usage.
Furthermore, Cabalistic and Stgatilov worked to cleanup the remaining issues with the current multi-core mode of TDM. The Vertex Buffer has been updated to be even more like the one used by Doom 3 BFG. Not only that, but the team fixed a number of bugs that occurred when the framerate was unlocked.
You can download The Dark Mod V2.08 from here.
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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A whole article about a mod without mentioning which game the mod is for!
The Dark Mod is a game iirc
My wording could have been better. The article could have at least referenced which game this game that calls itself a mod is clearly based on!
Good point. It’s a confusing title…
THE DARK MOD was once total conversion of Doom 3, and now is a STANDALONE GAME with the release of TDM 2.0!
John typing it with one hands while the other doing “something else”. You must understand his situation..
its for doom 3 and it old as heck
The Dark Mod’s pretty well-known.
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/122055d8bcc02f772c8c9c33d5880e82e2948dc740c7b96b6c78d2d3047e800a.jpg
As one of the biggest fans of the Thief franchise, I have to say I never liked The Dark Mod.
I remember trying v2.07, and the A.I. was so abysmal that it was just ridiculous to watch.
Even base Thief 2 with no mods has better A.I. than this. In fact, even Thief 3 Deadly Shadows plays better imho.
Too bad, because graphics are really looking good with this new update, and potentially, it could be so much better.
On a side note, Thief 2 is also continuously being improved by modders (check the exciting news on TTLG), to a point that maybe someday soon it’ll look even better than The Dark Mod anyway, so I never felt the need for something better.
never played it, but it cant have worse ai than thievery mod for ut
I admit, thievery mod was unplayable. Gee, you must be as old as me! I remember playing the very first version of the thievery mod in 2000 or 2001, I think. lol
What was it about the AI that you found Abysmal? There are several settings in the game menu to adjust the AI to personal tastes. Some who said they hated it changed their tune when it was pointed out that the sharp eyesight and hearing of the AI can be dialed down to be closer to what you would expect in Thief 1 / 2.
Okay, I’ll try the new version and try to tweak the difficulty settings.
Well, mostly, my problem was with guards running endlessly and never giving up, and I felt like they could see through walls.
Even after I ran away and put lots of distance with them, they could still find me, even when I was completely silent. That was really not realistic and made me think of old FPS of the 90s.
There were a bunch of other details, like, for example, if I throw an object, they tend to run to me instead of where the object made a noise. (And obviously, even if they don’t see me throwing the object) Isn’t it weird? Maybe it has been fixed?
These details really ruined the experience.
Hearing and sight can both be dialed down. Still, don’t expect a 1:1 recreation of Thief. TDM was never meant to be exactly that. I haven’t personally seen AI run opposite the direction of a thrown item before. In fact I just doubled checked right now with version 2.07 and when I threw a bottle, the AI walked over to the area where it landed…saying ‘hmmm’ after a few minutes and then, ’tis gone now’ and resumed guarding their station. Perhaps it was something wrong in a particular map you played, but sound propagation seems to be functioning as intended.
I just tried v2.08 last night and yeah, I didn’t encounter such problems anymore.
On the other hand, I got two crashes while playing random maps, and also one of the maps (which I downloaded in-game, “”Accountant 1 : Thieves and Heirs”) caused the game to crash during the loading screen. I tried two times.
I didn’t do a “clean” install, I just updated the game and levels I already downloaded, but I wonder if there’s a problem… ?
It never hurts to do a clean install in those cases, but if they were to persist after a clean install, do let us know and we can get some log files from you to track down the issue. There have been a LOT of changes under the hood, so I will not be surprised if we encounter more crashes and instability in the wild.
Yeah, I’m definitely going to try a clean install, because tonight, I played several hours, and it was just too unbearable. (Braeden church map. Actually a very nice map.)
Among the very irritating things which happened : I was unable to shoot arrows after 2-3 shots (is it fatigue?). I mean, I kept clicking, but the character just refused to use his bow anymore.(I still had 10 arrows)
Then, I was also unable to drag or carry 90% of bodies, as if they were stuck in the ground. They weren’t moving at all.
Also, isn’t it possible to do “headshots”? In a few cases, I tried to kill a few guards with an arrow(in fact, 2-3 arrows) to the head, and it had ZERO effect on them.
Also, it’s a little detail, but the “hitbox” of candles and other sources of light should more little or accurate. I don’t know how to explain, but sometimes I shoot right at a torch, and it has no effect, and then, if I shoot 1 meter above it, it works.
And FINALLY, my favorite : a guard came out of nowhere, and just killed me, as if he knew exactly where I was, although I was in complete darkness, silent and undetected. NOPE. WHY. (Like I said, I was unable to hide any bodies, but still, it doesn’t explain why the guard would know exactly where I would be. This kind of thing never happens to me in Thief 2.)
I really hope this is only because there’s something very wrong with my install folder, because otherwise, no offense, but this is unplayable.
After these hours of gameplay, now I remember why I gave up last time. There are waaaaay too many problems.
But okay, I’m going to try one LAST time tomorrow, but with a 100% clean install, and I’ll get back to you.
Edit : I just found another problem which makes a map unplayable.
In the map “Full Moon Fever”(which is great), there’s a constant very loud humming sound as soon as you enter the big mansion. I don’t know if it’s related to the machines in the basement, but I bet it’s not supposed to be like that, because it’s really really loud.
I tried to edit “seta s_playDefaultSound “0” in darkmod.cfg and it didn’t change a thing.
Edit #2 : now my weapons are not visible anymore. I didn’t change anything in the settings. I only reloaded a quicksave in “Accountant 2” map. Nothing works to restore them.