The Dark Mod
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The Dark Mod is a single-player Doom 3 total conversion mod by Broken Glass Studios. The mod intends to convert Doom 3 into a dark medieval stealth game, and heavily draws inspiration from the Looking Glass Studios / Ion Storm game series Thief. Initially released on October 17, 2009 as a Doom 3 mod, it eventually became a stand-alone, free and open-source game on October 8, 2013, just a few days shy of the mod's fourth anniversary.
The mod features several new weapons familiar to Thief players (sword, non-lethal blackjack, bow with different types of arrows), enemy AI, and a player movement system that takes into account hiding in shadows and noises generated when walking on different surfaces. Appropriate tweaks to the physics engine are also included. Despite all the similarities with the Thief series, the mod does not use any of the original series' intellectual property, akin to the Doom community's FreeDoom project.
Initially the primary goal was to release a toolkit for map/mission makers – to allow modding in vein similar to the fan missions of Thief series – but the final version will also include a campaign. Currently, only a training map and two stand-alone mission maps featuring a protagonist named Corbin are available to play. Fan-made mission maps, which remain the largest appeal of the mod itself, can be directly downloaded and selected within the mod's Missions List feature.
The first alpha version, with one short playable map titled Thief's Den, was released on January 18, 2008. A feature-complete beta version of the complete toolkit was released on October 17, 2009.
Mission maps are all made with DarkRadiant, a fork of GtkRadiant specifically suited for the mod, although it can also be used to make custom maps for other id Tech 3 and 4 games.
Differences with Thief series[edit]
While the mod is largely based on the first two Thief games, there are significant differences between them and The Dark Mod, particularly in regards to game mechanics. Several features based on the third game Thief Deadly Shadows can also be found.
- The use of the open-source id Tech 4 instead of the proprietary Dark Engine, allowing further customizations (such as in-game scenes using the engine's renderer or additional voices/music without overriding the original files) and mods, alongside remedies to several bugs from the original two games (one such bug allows the player to knock down NPCs mid-fight while behind them, provided the player is located at a dark enough place as indicated by the light indicator which informs the player's visibility).
- Fully customizable AI settings for the NPCs, which can add to fan missions' difficulty settings.
- An addition to the HUD consisting of a pair of metal arches surrounding the light indicator. Its function is to subtly inform whether the player is currently standing or crouching.
- Lockpicking now requires precise timing to successfully perform (marked by rhythmic lockpicking sounds), instead of simply holding the interact ("frob" in Thief community jargon) button to open locks. While significantly more challenging than the first two classic Thief games, this is much simpler compared to the lockpicking minigame in Thief Deadly Shadows.
- Non-loot items can now be frobbed without the need to carry them (done by holding the frob button and dragging the mouse to the desired position), making gameplay relatively much faster and more convenient compared to the original games.
- This is particularly useful to hide unconscious bodies or corpses from NPCs and/or items that might raise AI suspicion if spotted/stumbled upon.
- Ragdoll physics for all NPCs. This means knocked out or killed NPCs drop in a more realistic manner, instead of playing a custom animation that approximately lasts for three seconds as seen in the original games or the exaggerated ragdoll physics found in Thief Deadly Shadows.
- As in Thief Deadly Shadows, weapons carried by them will also drop away instead of staying on their hand, raising possible AI suspicion if not carefully placed elsewhere.
- A more intuitive climbing ("mantling" in Thief community jargon) system, which can now be executed with a separate button instead of having to jump nearby structures/items to climb them.
- Classic mantling system is still available by default for players accustomed to the original games.
- Several NPCs, particularly those with a helmet, cannot be knocked out with the blackjack, thus requiring players to take a more tactical approach at avoiding them (most missions discourage players to murder NPCs, although a few do feature a goal of assassinating one assigned NPC, and some even have an additional goal on harder difficulties that forbids players to knock NPCs out with the blackjack).
