The Dark Mod

The Dark Mod

Developers
	Broken Glass Studios
Engines
	id Tech 4
Release dates
Windows	October 16, 2009
macOS (OS X)	June 19, 2011
Linux	October 8, 2013
Taxonomy
Monetization	Freeware
Modes	Singleplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Immersive sim, Stealth
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Steampunk, Fantasy, Medieval, Victorian
Series	Thief

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

The Dark Mod is a stealth-based immersive sim developed and published by Broken Glass Studios. Originally developed as a Doom 3 total conversion mod meant to allow map-makers to create and players play maps replicating the gameplay of Thief: The Dark Project and Thief II: The Metal Age, the game is now standalone and freeware thanks to the open-sourcing of id Tech 4.

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		Use tdm_update.exe to update the mod whenever a new version is available.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Darkmod.cfg
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\
macOS (OS X)
Linux

Saves are in a savegames folder inside each mission's folder.

Video

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

Go to the installation folder. Edit Darkmod.cfg with a text editor. Find a line seta r_customWidth and replace its value with a width of a resolution you want to use. Find a line seta r_customHeight and replace its value with a height of resolution you want to use. Find a line seta r_fullscreen and make sure it's set to "1", to make a game work in fullscreen mode. Find a line seta r_mode and make sure it's set to "-1". 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.) 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. IMPORTANT: The above changes will not take effect because the player definition in TDM will set them back to the default values. You can address this by unzipping the tdm_defs01.pk4 and editing the "tdm_player_thief.def" file in the def folder then zipping the contents of the folder and renaming the zip as tdm_defs01.pk4 and replacing the existing file. For Windows users, you will need to change folder options to show file extensions or else renaming the file will cause the file to be named tdm_defs01.pk4.zip with and invisible zip extension. Acquiring the latest 2.11 Dev Build using tdm_installer includes a fixed "tdm_player_thief.def" that will not override the cvar values above.

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
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

• 

  Movement bindings

• 

  Action bindings

• 

  Inventory bindings

• 

  Weapons bindings

• 

  General bindings

• 

  Tools bindings

Audio

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.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

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

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

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
OpenGL	2.0, 4.3

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows			64-bit support added in version 2.06.
macOS (OS X)
Linux			64-bit support added in version 2.06.

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

macOS (OS X)

Linux

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	2000	XP, Vista, 7
Processor (CPU)	1.5 GHz	Intel Core Duo 2.5 GHz
System memory (RAM)	3 GB	8 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	4 GB	20 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 6 series ATI Radeon 97xx series 64 MB of VRAM OpenGL 2.0 compatible	Nvidia GeForce GTX 6xx series AMD Radeon HD 7xxx 1 GB of VRAM 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.