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The Dark Mod

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Revision as of 15:53, 15 February 2021 by Suicide machine (talk | contribs)
The Dark Mod
The Dark Mod cover
Developers
Broken Glass Studios
Engines
id Tech 4
Release dates
Windows October 16, 2009
macOS (OS X) June 19, 2011[1]
Linux October 8, 2013
The Dark Mod on IGDB
The Dark Mod on Wikipedia
Icon overlay.png
Thief
Thief: The Dark Project 1998
Thief II: The Metal Age 2000
Thief: Deadly Shadows 2004
The Dark Mod (unofficial spin-off) 2009
Thief 2014

Key points

Free.
Originally a Doom 3 total conversion, now a standalone game.
The Dark Mod is a toolset for use with 'Fan Missions' designed by the community.

General information

Official site
The Dark Mod Forums
The Dark Mod Wiki/Game Manual
Official source code repository

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Official website
DRM-free
 Use tdm_update.exe to update the mod whenever a new version is available.
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Darkmod.cfg[Note 1]
macOS (OS X)
Linux <path-to-game>\Darkmod.cfg
It's unknown whether this game follows the XDG Base Directory Specification on Linux. Please fill in this information.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\fms\[Note 1]
macOS (OS X)
Linux
Saves are in a savegames folder inside each mission's folder.

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
 
Multi-monitor
 
 See Multi-monitor.
Ultra-widescreen
 
 See Multi-monitor.
4K Ultra HD
 
Field of view (FOV)
Available under Video / Advanced.
Windowed
Can also be toggled by pressing Alt+↵ Enter.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Added in version 2.09.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
TDM 2.06 has "Uncapped FPS" under Experimental Features. This is actually a cap of 166 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
Post-process shaders approximate the HDR look (JC Denton's "HDR-Lite" shaders as of v1.03)

Multi-monitor

Edit config file[2]
  1. Go to the installation folder.
  2. Edit Darkmod.cfg with a text editor.
  3. Find a line seta r_customWidth and replace its value with a width of a resolution you want to use.
  4. Find a line seta r_customHeight and replace its value with a height of resolution you want to use.
  5. Find a line seta r_fullscreen and make sure it's set to "1", to make a game work in fullscreen mode.
  6. Find a line seta r_mode and make sure it's set to "-1".
  7. Find a line seta r_fovRatio and change the value according to this table (e.g. for 2.90:1 aspect ratio it's seta r_fovRatio 2.9, for 3.2:1 - seta r_fovRatio 3.2, etc.)
  8. Save a config file and run a game.

Notes

Menu is always stretched.

Disable head bob

Disable head bob
1. Create autoexec.cfg file in your darkmod.
2. Add the following commands:

seta pm_runbob "0"
seta pm_runpitch "0"
seta pm_runroll "0"
seta pm_walkbob "0"
seta pm_bobpitch "0"
seta pm_bobroll "0"
seta pm_bobup "0"
seta pm_crouchbob "0"

3. Save the file.

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
No mouse acceleration. Mouse smoothing can be adjusted, but is off by default.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Added in version 2.09.
Full controller support
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

  • Movement bindings

  • Action bindings

  • Inventory bindings

  • Weapons bindings

  • General bindings

  • Tools bindings

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Ambient, sound effects, player voice, and narrator volume.
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Always disabled.
EAX support
EAX was replaced by EFX in TDM 2.06. Missions must be updated with EFX reverb settings.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Polish
Russian
Spanish
Romanian
Slovak
Czech
Portuguese
Hungarian
Turkish
Danish

Issues fixed

A comprehensive list of issues, and their fixes, is listed on the Dark Mod Wiki here.

Game refuses to run on 64-bit Ubuntu

If it complains about missing libcurl version 4, try installing libcurl3 package forcing i386 architecture by issuing the following command:
sudo apt-get install libcurl3:i386

Note: As of TDM 2.6, there is a 64-bit build but tdm_updater is still 32-bit.

No sound in Linux

Ubuntu Linux uses PulseAudio as default backend. To configure Dark Mod for PulseAudio, use the following command:
env PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 ./thedarkmod.x86 +set s_driver best +set s_alsa_pcm default
This will re-route game's ALSA output to Pulse and increase its latency a little bit in order to prevent sound skipping.

If you insist on using ALSA however, follow the steps below:

  • get the list of available sound devices using aplay -L (that's capital L)
  • start the game using pasuspender and the parameter +set s_alsa_pcm DEVICE where DEVICE is one of the entries from the list you obtained in the previous step, e.g.:

pasuspender ./thedarkmod.x86 +set s_alsa_pcm sysdefault:CARD=PCH +set NumberOfSpeakers 2

Issues unresolved

Other information

API

Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
TDM 2.06 has 64-bit support from Dhewm3
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio OpenAL

Performance tweaks

Performance tweaks can be found at the Dark Mod Wiki and the Dark Mod FAQ.
The game is built on the Doom 3 engine, so the TweakGuide should still be applicable.
Do not tweak the r_lightScale variable as it's used to calculate player's visibility (light gem). It's actually possible to disable all lights in the game by assigning it a value of 0.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 2000 XP, Vista, 7
Processor (CPU) 1.5 GHz 2.5 GHz CoreDuo or better
System memory (RAM) 3 GB 8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 4 GB 20 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia Geforce 6 6xxx or ATI Radeon 97xx
(see note below)
64 MB of VRAM
DirectX 9.0b (OpenGL 2.0) compatible 		Nvidia Geforce GTX 6xx or AMD Radeon HD 7xxx
1024 MB of VRAM
DirectX DX11 (OpenGL 4.3) compatible
See the official Known System Configurations page for a list of compatible GPUs and CPUs.
Soft Shadows require a GPU which supports the OpenGL 4.3 ARB_STENCIL_TEXTURE extension.
Linux
Minimum
Operating system (OS)
Processor (CPU) 1.5 GHz
System memory (RAM) 3 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 4 GB
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM
See the official Known System Configurations page for a list of compatible GPUs and CPUs.
Soft Shadows require a GPU which supports the OpenGL 4.3 ARB_STENCIL_TEXTURE extension.


Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References