I by no means stop to be amazed on the modding group’s capacity to make PC video games greater, higher, and in lots of instances weirder. But the love proven by modder KingDavidW to Arkane’s pre-Dishonored hack ‘n’ slash Dark Messiah of Might and Magic goes above and past. As just lately outlined in a prolonged replace on ModDB, KingDavidW has been actively working with Ubisoft—Dark Messiah’s writer—and Nvidia to carry a swathe of mods and modding instruments to the 2006 motion recreation. Now, that collaboration has begun to yield fruit.
KingDavidW leads with particulars concerning the collaboration between themselves and Ubisoft/Nvidia, which feeds into quite a few mods presently being created by the sport’s modding group. “The official help we have had from the Ubisoft and Nvidia partnership has allowed us to achieve heights we by no means thought we may in our work right here,” he writes, noting that “Our contacts at Ubisoft have been preventing for us to carry all the pieces we will consider to this superb group”.
One of the methods Ubisoft has assisted the modders is with restoring minimize content material to Dark Messiah, which is the new goal of the suitably titled “Dark Messiah: Restoration Mod”. KingDavidW explains this mod was initially restricted to fixing “gameplay associated bugs” similar to buggy ropes, degree soft-locks and “the dreaded French keyboard popup”, a phrase that feels like a very troublesome magic trick.
However, Ubisoft offered entry to some “superb property” from Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Element, the Xbox 360 model of the sport. “Within that there was a load of minimize content material by no means earlier than seen In Dark Messiah.” Now, the Restoration mod supplies entry to bonus missions, alternate ranges, a “minimize degree” from Dark Messiah known as The Caves, and several other minimize weapons such because the “Sword of Misery or the Necromancer Staff”.
Alongside this minimize content material, Ubisoft can be serving to the modders work on an “superior SDK”, which KingDavidW hopes will end in a launch inside “the subsequent few months as a substitute of the top of the yr.” As for Nvidia’s help, KingDavidW does not specify exactly how the corporate has helped. Presumably it has to do with the Dark Messiah RTX mod the group is engaged on. This stays closely in growth, because it requires remodeling fashions and textures which KingDavidW says take “extraordinarily lengthy to make”. The group has put collectively a trailer exhibiting the mod’s progress up to now, which you’ll be able to view under:
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Finally, the modders have sort-of launched a cooperative mod for Dark Messiah. This remains to be technically unfinished and hasn’t been added to ModDB but, however the modders have made it obtainable on Github for public testing,. KingDavidW says that “all the primary kinks must be ironed out for a playable expertise” however that the workforce must “refine” the degrees to make them superb for co-op play. Regardless, I can simply think about how a lot enjoyable Dark Messiah should be in co-op, what with its bevy of physics-based traps and spells. Who fancies a recreation of keepie-uppies with a ragdoll orc?
You can learn the complete replace right here. Although most of those tasks stay unfinished, it’s nonetheless a formidable quantity of labor from the Dark Messiah modding group, and KingDavidW is themselves greatly surprised by the way it has all fallen into place. “To see all of it come collectively has been very emotional for us” he writes. “We’re strolling into a brand new period for Dark Messiah.”
