The Dark Mod has won the 2011 Editor’s Choice award from ModDB for “Best community integration in a modification”!

“Without communities mods would be nothing more then a static object on the web, communities are responsible for keeping mods relevant, motivating the developers and expanding on the mod in their own way. To win the Community Award the mod needs to support the fanbase around the modification giving the masses a chance to participate within the overall design of the mod. The Dark Mod is the most deserving this year.

“Building a community is quite a difficult and drawn out process, it first takes a good product to bring in people, then a reason for those people to stick around. The Dark Mod has an amazing collection of user created levels and theme packs built for competitions held by the developers. A shining example of how communities are important for all mods!”

Visit Award Page

A Dark Mod Campaign is in the works!

Announcing The Crucible of Omens, a full-length campaign for The Dark Mod. Playing as the thief and adventurer John Welland Hadley, you will embark on a quest to find a powerful artifact inherited from a shadowy past. The Crucible of Omens spans multiple large missions and is being worked on by many well-known TDM mappers.

See the full announcement and media release here.

Thanks to your votes, we’ve made it to the top 100 list at ModDB. There’s now a second round of voting to pick the winner.

Once again, votes from unregistered users only count in case of a tie, so please register for a free account and support The Dark Mod!

TDM’s ModDB page

Voting for “Mod of the Year” is now under way at ModDB. Votes from unregistered users only count in case of a tie, so please register for a free account and support The Dark Mod!

TDM’s ModDB page

The Dark Mod 1.07 released!

To get the update, just run your tdm_update.exe file. The download size for upgrading 1.06 to 1.07 is about 184 MB, a fresh download will be about 2 GB. Note: saved games from previous versions are not compatible with 1.07.

TDM 1.07 has quite some new stuff in it, next to the usual slew of bugfixes there are a lot of improvements to AI and mission localisation. Last but not least, vine arrows make their first public appearance and are now available to mappers. The full changelog can be found on our wiki: http://wiki.thedarkm…new_in_TDM_1.07

Summary:

– Added fonts for foreign languages like Russian and German.
– Vine Arrows
– AI are noticing ropes
– Improved AI door handling and other behaviour.
– Adjustments to mines
– Improved combat sounds and animations
– Steam users: Fixed FM not staying installed and Saved games not running

It’s hard to describe all the ways our AI are going to 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.

Five contest missions are now available for the Halloween contest! The contenders are: “Dragon’s Claw” by Bikderdude, “House in Blackbog Hollow” by Stumpy, “Samhain Night on Bone Hill” by PranQster, “The Creeps” by Mortem Desino and “A Night to Remember” by Fieldmedic. Be sure to vote for your favourites in our forums!