Great news for all those Thief fans out there as the team behind the astounding ‘Thief Mod’ for Doom 3 has just rolled out a new, massive update for it. The Dark Mod version 1.7 is now available and can be either downloaded from the tdm_update.exe file, or by visiting its ModDB Page. This new update comes with lots of features, such as: international language localization support for missions, translated HUD, GUI and Menus, vine Arrows, and new combat animations and sounds.

Moreover, The Dark Mod version 1.7 sports different Melee damage depending on weapon class, un-lockable Mines, new textures and compression of existing textures to DDS, new models including Jack-o-lanterns, water tower, cloth doll, custom keys (with skins), new AI “waif” models, a Steam fix for problems with game saves and installing missions and some Stealth Score fixes.

According to the development team, this release does not include a new Doom 3 executable nor any improvements from the GPL release of the Doom 3 source code. Therefore, you must install TDM in the same manner as with previous versions and mods. The Dark Mod team will begin the process of integrating the Doom 3 source code shortly but it will take time to fully merge the code bases. The Dark Mod can not be a standalone release until all the Doom 3 art assets and animations have been fully replaced.

Good news is that the AI has been overhauled. As the team stated:

It’s hard to describe all the ways our AI have become more sophisticated in 1.07, mostly thanks to grayman. AI will now properly notice and comment when suspicious doors are left open. They’ll notice rope arrows left dangling in lit areas, and will come over and look up or down the rope to see if anyone is on it. AI will notice if arrows are left sticking out of things (and will no longer call them “weapons”, or comment casually after getting shot with them). AI will do a better job of warning each other about suspicious events now too… If an AI sees the player but fails to catch him, he’ll warn all his friends that there is a thief in the area. If he sees a dead body, he’ll start warning people about a murderer. This causes the friends to start patrolling with their weapons out, ready for trouble. All the new interactions make the AI seem even more believable and challenging

Last but not least, one of the main nit-picks that reviewers have confronted TDM with over the years has been the “clunky combat animation”. New combat animations have been authored by animator Noisycricket and results will be much more natural and life-like for players. Along with the new animations, the different melee weapons that AI use will deal different amounts of damage to the player. The following video will give you a glimpse of this new system