In July 2020, we informed you about the release of The Dark Mod V2.08. And today, we are happy to report that its development team has launched a brand new version of this freeware THIEF-inspired game.

The Dark Mod 2.09 brings various performance and graphical improvements. For instance, it uses a brand new Backend that takes advantage of UBO, Persistent Mapping, Bindless textures, and Multi-Draw. Additionally, Normal Map compression now uses RGTC resulting in lower storage, VRAM requirements, and less artifacts.

This new version of The Dark Mod also adds a new Sharpening filter. Moreover, it improves its particle physics for both accuracy and performance.

You can download The Dark Mod 2.09 from here. Below you can also find its key features.

Have fun!

The Dark Mod 2.09 Key Features

Better performance:

• Added a brand new Backend that uses UBO, Persistent Mapping, Bindless textures, and Multi-Draw.
• “Frontend Acceleration” (Multi-Core job based rendering based on Doom 3 BFG) now works as expected.
• Normal Map compression now uses RGTC resulting in lower storage, VRAM requirements, and less artifacts. Load times should also improve in future TDM versions with pre-compressed RGTC textures.
• Improved background texture loading. This should shorten load times and reload.

Better visuals:

• Added a new Sharpening Filter. It can make 70% Render Scale look almost like native resolution (more performance).
  ( It also cleans up some blurry textures for all Render Scales. )
• Bumpmap lighting is smoother, so that lighting does not instantly flip to off when getting close to edges of occluded objects.
• Substantially improved particle physics for both accuracy and performance.
• Borderless Fullscreen works properly on Windows.
• Water and other GUI effects that did not respond to Gamma now brighten properly.
• Added AMD and Intel fixes for SSAO rendering

Better gameplay:

• Added Experimental Gamepad support.
• Creep works in alway-run mode

Better mapping:

• A new linking system allows The Dark Mod to act as a real-time preview of Dark Radiant
• The redesigned particles now have improved setup and configuration.
• Created automated fixes for “rotation hacked” models
• Prefabs have been seen numerous fixes and reorganization to make them easier to use

Better Sound:

• Conversation and other sounds are no longer stopped by saving or going to main menu.
• Added EFX reverb to “Mission 1: A New Job”
• Extinguished gas lamps are no longer noisy when doused

New Assets:

• Dragofer, Epifire, Bikerdude, LDAsh, Kingsal, Dram have all added substantial asset updates ranging from updated Werebeast animations, Steam Engines, fireflies

More stable:

• A huge number of fragile code areas have been overhauled to either fix crashes or prevent likely crashes due to risk of divide by zero, uninitialized values, or dangling pointers (leftover settings) on entities and functions.