Installation

Important

This article tells you how to install the full version of The Dark Mod. If you are installing one of the demos: Thief's Den or Saint Lucia, then you can ignore this page. Instead, follow the instructions here: Thief's Den Installation or Saint Lucia Installation.

Important

You'll need to install the Doom 3 patch 1.3.1 (mirror) otherwise the Mod won't run.

Prerequisites

System Requirements

At a minimum, you'll need a machine which is capable of running the Doom 3 game. The team recommends adding more RAM and a bit more CPU to the basic requirements, however, otherwise running the larger maps will be difficult.

Supported operating systems are Windows (2000/XP/Vista/Win7) or Linux. Doom 3 currently supports Macs, but The Dark Mod has not been ported to that platform.

Install Doom 3 Patch 1.3.1

In order to install The Dark Mod, you need to have the v1.3.1 patch for Doom 3 installed. See the download section below for links.

Linux users: make sure that the install path for Doom 3 is all lowercase (e.g. /usr/local/lib/doom3).

Space Requirements

This is only an estimation of the space requirements needed to play TDM missions. Keep in mind that development on TDM is going to continue over time and new stuff will be added all the time.

• For the D3 installation you roughly need 1.5 GB.
• For the base TDM 1.00 package you need another 1.6 GB.
• Plus a variable amount of space you need for downloaded FM packages.
• Plus a variable amount of space for screenshots, savegames, etc.

So the minimum can be estimated to be slightly above 3 GB.

It's difficult to give numbers about FM package size, as this depends on the amount of custom content the FM author is packing in. Usually FMs are very small, if they're using the stock TDM content (1 to 10 MB). Note: FMs are in PK4 (i.e. ZIP) format, so textures and mission files are shipped in compressed form.

Savegames are of varying size, they can be up to 10-20 MB per save depending on the size of the FM you're playing, plus a small 700 kB screenshot generated per savegame.

Screenshots depend on the screen resolution you're using (~2 MB per shot).

References

See the article Known System Configurations for a (hopefully growing) collection of system configurations and the corresponding user feedback.

Installing The Dark Mod

Install on Windows

You need a working and patched Doom 3 installation on your hard drive. These steps will assume that you installed Doom 3 in the folder C:\Games\Doom3.

1. Download the TDM Updater from one of our mirrors.
2. Save the file to your Doom 3 folder, i.e. C:\Games\Doom3.
3. Run the file. The installer will connect to one of our download mirrors and start the download process.
4. Be patient and wait. The download will take a while.
5. After installation, you'll find an executable tdmlauncher.exe in your darkmod folder, i.e. C:\Games\Doom3\darkmod\tdmlauncher.exe. Use this to start The Dark Mod.

Install on Linux

1. You need the native version of Doom 3 installed and patched to v1.3.1, see below for download links and install instructions.
2. Since there is no 64 bit version of either Doom 3 or The DarkMod, on 64 bit systems you also need the 32 bit compatibility libraries installed. On some distributions like SuSE, these are included in the default installation, but on Kubuntu/Ubuntu you need to install the package called ia32-lib and all its dependencies. Otherwise, even the installer for Doom 3 will fail to run.
3. Create a folder ~/.doom3/darkmod in your home directory. Mind the dot in the path.
4. Download the Linux version of the TDM Updater and save it to ~/.doom3/darkmod/
5. Run the updater, it will connect to our mirrors and download the packages for you.

If you get an error about GLIBCXX_3.4.9, delete or rename the files /usr/local/games/doom3/libstdc++.so.6 and /usr/local/games/doom3/libgcc_s.so.1.

Launching The Dark Mod

Use the tdmlauncher application to run The Dark Mod. This small application will take care of launching the Doom 3 process with the correct command line arguments. TDM Launcher is available for both Windows and Linux.

• Windows: C:\Games\Doom3\darkmod\tdmlauncher.exe
• Linux: ~/.doom3/darkmod/tdmlauncher.linux

Note: The tdmlauncher application will also be used by the game itself when installing/re-installing/uninstalling FM packages, so don't ever think about deleting that file.

• See also Creating Desktop Shortcuts for TDM.

Passing custom command line arguments

Some people like to have custom command line arguments to the game, which is supported by tdmlauncher. Open the dmargs.txt in your darkmod folder and add any arguments you'd like TDM Launcher to pass to the Doom3 command line.

• See also Doom3 command line arguments.

Troubleshooting TDM Launcher

The tdmlauncher executable will generate a small logfile tdmlauncher.log each time it is invoked. The log file is located right next to the executable and might give some insight about why the game fails to load.

First Startup

• Please take your time to read through The Dark Mod Gameplay article to get familiar with the game.
• TDM ships with a trainer mission which is designed to practice your skills.
• Adjust the settings in the menus, like screen resolution and gameplay settings.
• See also the Performance Tweaks article to make TDM run a little bit faster if you're on a lower end machine.

Installing and Running Fan Missions

Go to www.thedarkmod.com to get hold of mission packages available for The Dark Mod. Each FM is contained in a PK4 file, which contains all the files necessary to run the mission.

1. Download the mission PK4
2. Drop the file into the fms/ folder, e.g. C:\Games\doom3\darkmod\fms\
3. Launch The Dark Mod
4. The mission should now be listed in your New Mission menu.
5. Highlight the mission and hit Install to install. TDM will automatically restart.
6. Hit New Mission and then Start this Mission on the upper left.

See the full article Installing and Running Fan Missions for a detailed explanation.

Weblinks

• Doom v1.3.1 patch for Windows (mirror)
• Doom v1.3.1 for Linux: FTP BitTorrent