[DC ONLY] DARKNESS WITHIN -a linear campaign mod for the IDH and WH:AS mods

**Incarnate** · 12th Feb 08 4:26 PM

DAWN OF WAR: DARKNESS WITHIN

Are you fed up with boring repetitive skirmish gameplay on the metamap? Do you yearn for a dow game that actually has a plot, but still has a knack of making you want to play the game again and again?

If so, we are currently working on something you could only dream was possible…

.

I am proud to announce the mod, Dawn of War: Darkness Within, a linear, story driven campaign mod for DC and Soulstorm. This is a conglomeration campaign, using and relying on both compiler’s Inquisition Daemonhunt and KRMZ’s Witch Hunters mods.

Features
Play as AS and ID forces!
A new seamless army-switch ability will be present, allowing you to control multiple armies at once…those being the AS and ID mod forces. Like large battles? You’re going to love this.

A thought provoking Plot
We have slaved away at creating an amazing plot spanning 7 missions that is both engrossing and is true to fluff. Unfortunately i wont be giving anything away about the plot; you will only find the details out when this is released and you're playing it! However, let me introduce some of our main characters:

Originally Posted by Bios courtesy of Andkat!

Lord Inquisitor Uther Harme:
A recently elevated Lord Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, Uther has served the Inquisition for over a century. He is a staunch puritan and is dedicated to the pursuit of his Thorian ideals and objectives. He is well-respected among his peers, and his clear and keen mind has foiled many a traitor and a heretic.

Canoness Commander Alona:
Orphaned at an early age, Alona entered the service of the Adeptus Ministorum early in her childhood. However, it was not until her actions during the Heresies of Garius that she distinguished herself by slaying a group of armed marauders threatening her abbey with little more than her faith and a blunt object. Her actions earned her the esteem of the Ecclesiarchy and the interest of the Adepta Sororitas, eventually culminating into her initiation into the Order of the Sacred Rose. She has distinguished herself throughout roughly a century of service to the Ecclesiarchy, eventually rising to the rank of Canonness Commander. She currently commands the Commandery of her Order situated on the holy Shrine World of Gamede III.

Lord Inquisitor Selenis Artime:
Lord Inquisitor Selenis has persecuted innumerable deviants and heretics during her long and glorious service in the Ordo Malleus. However, the work of a Daemonhunter is accompanied by great perils to mind and body, and even the most experiences of Inquisitors have fallen to dark temptation. Questions and doubts concerning her activities have been raised in some circles of her colleagues in the past, but her unimpeachable record of service, influence, and the general lack of any substantive evidence mean that few Inquisitors take such things seriously. Despite this, a few agents of the Inquisition still doubt the purity of her distinguished record in the service of the Inquisition and the wholesomeness of her methods.

New Linear Campaign UI
The mod features a new UI system capable of bypassing the metamap, and hence allowing you to play a linear campaign in DoW.

Commander Item and Ability Menus
Throughout the campaign you will gain various items that help you out on your quest. These items may have immense power, or may simply serve as a useful utility. These items will appear on a new item and ability menu, allowing you to field abilities quickly and easily at any point in the battle.

Retinue Units
Powerful retinue units can be gained throughout the campaign. Once gained, they will stay by your side, ready to fight in any battle. Some retinue units may only live once, others may return to your side… so use them wisely.

Experience
Similar to the Heroes Mod… commander units and retinue will gain experience throughout the campaign. If a unit dies however, its experience is lost.

Your effort will pay off!
All items, retinue and experience gained will be saved for future missions. Sub objectives can result in new objectives further down the line too…decisions matter.

Mega Replayability!
-all difficulties supported
-play in all gamespeeds
-alter resource rates
The facilities will be there to make this campaign so freaking hard that even seasoned veterans will have their work cut out!

New AI
The AI will be custom scar coded per mission to make maximum use of the terrain, as well as acting intelligently in the situation.

If you read all that and think; ‘WOW!’ then rightly so…we are excited as you are!

.

So let me introduce...

The Team

Mod Leader, Scar, nis, Screen & Lua: Incarnate
Mapping Lead GUI textures: Jaguar_Lord
Fluff Grand Visier: Andkat
Mapper & Music: SickSick6
Ext.AppProgramming: Shonkaa

Not forgetting the teams behind:
Inquisition Daemonhunt (Mod Lead: Compiler)
Witch Hunters (Mod Lead:KRMZ)
Without their mods, we would not be doing this.

Mod Team Vacancies
If you are interested in joining our cause, we currently have need for:
A talented animator with some modelling skills.
We only have 1 initial project; to give compilers inquisitor lord model a speech animation.
Someone to design and create environmental models for the maps.
As this is a mapping project as a mod, if you have some environmental models you would like to donate to us, or create some for us, we would be very grateful!
Someone to get existing models ingame for us
We may use free models from sources such as turbosquid, and need someone with max to put them into game for us.
People who are interested in directing sound and voice acting. We will not have any sound lines to record for some time, but please put forward your interest and I will contact you in due time.

If you would like to join the team in the above positions, please PM me!

We do not need beta testers, so do not ask at this stage.

OK, if youve read this far i suppose you want some screenshots...

Progress

First off, the new linear campaign manager. This is a recode of the skirmish engine, and is recoded throughout. This will be publicly released once i get some code from shonkaa (2 months at a guess) as a way for other mod teams to put a linear campaign in dow. Note that these pics are entirely placeholders that i made at the time, the final pics are being made by Jaguar_Lord and can be seen later on.

UI functions

We Then come to the actual UI pics for the mod. These are WIP, by Jaguar Lord.

WIP UI Pics

So far we have no new objects in game, but have some new models made (help!) completely ready models that i couldnt import (help!) and some rextured ones.

New Models

Last But not least, I bring you some of the pics of the maps.

Map Pics

Ok, thats all for now!
Thanks for the interest and wish us luck!

**Ice_JT** · 12th Feb 08 4:30 PM

Cool Idea Incarnate! wish you best of luck.

Steampunker · 12th Feb 08 4:38 PM

Oh, this looks promising indeed!
Wish you luck, chaps!

**Templar Mikeel** · 12th Feb 08 4:38 PM

This looks simply amazing! I hope this rolls forward without a hitch so we can all play it as soon as possible! Good luck!

me99 · 12th Feb 08 4:39 PM

For the Warp gods, im gonna cry

**horusheretic** · 12th Feb 08 4:41 PM

0_o nice!

definately got me sold.

Sentinel · 12th Feb 08 4:42 PM

This looks amazing, I can't wait.

**Kab** · 12th Feb 08 5:41 PM

May the empore bless you. I look foward to playing this mod.

**Khorney** · 12th Feb 08 11:40 PM

sweet jesus, linear campaigns in DC at last! are you able to have a system of hiding missions you haven't unlocked yet?

**Promythyus** · 13th Feb 08 12:18 AM

WOW! This is Awesome!!!

Q. Will you be releasing this amazing techknowledge to the general public so we can all make linear campaigns?

**Croaxleigh** · 13th Feb 08 12:33 AM

Promythyus: He answered that in the initial post... he'll be releasing this to the public for other mods to use as soon as he gets the stuff from the people who have it.

Khorney: My guess would be no, as he's using the Skirmish functions to do this... but then again I don't know what all the team has managed to do, so only Incarnate and company can say for sure. *smiles*

**fuggles** · 13th Feb 08 12:40 AM

o_0...

Woah. This means that I might one day actually get to finish my single player campaign I started in DoW 1.2....

This looks awesome - can't wait!!!

**Incarnate** · 13th Feb 08 12:59 AM

Yeah, the campaign manager files are all coded, except for one thing;
-it currently wont hide any custom skirmish maps you have
-it wont hide unlocked missions.

These are going to be fixed by requiring the mod to be ran through a new shortcut, which points to a short 'pre-exe'. The pre-exe will scan dow for all your maps, and make some dummy copies (blank text files renamed to mapname.sgb) so that they wont show up in the mod. DOW then plays as normal. This is being coded by shonkaa, as i havnt compiled an exe before, ive just done in game coding.

The unlocked missions is a problem really that i am working on. I am thinking i will code a lua to remove a character from the sgb file, and hence essentially corrupt the file. When the mission gets completed, i will try and re-write the character back in so that it becomes game-readable again.

If that fails, i can code it so that you cant play the mission that you havnt unlocked, but youll still be able to load the map and see it in the menu. You will just get kicked from the game.

Finally, i could just release each map 1 at a time, in an interval of a week or 2....just to make you guys go crazy with the wait. It would be interesting to see you all discuss what you think is going to happen plot wise, only to get it all wrong...he he he

**AceAngel** · 13th Feb 08 1:19 AM

Oh...my...freaking...almighty...God...I...can't...believe...this...

A linear campaign in DC?! This is gold! I can't tell how long I wanted to hear someone was able to crack this pot open!

Thank you!

**mdcertainty** · 13th Feb 08 1:27 AM

... a stunning read.... this will be awesome... just great

**shrp** · 13th Feb 08 5:03 AM

Great pictures, good luck with the project

**Jaguar-Lord** · 13th Feb 08 6:39 AM

thanks for the kind word.

I said it a few month ago " i want to make a linear campaign and i won't stop until it works".
What was only some rumors is becoming now a reality and if you want this to become a public reality as sooner as possible don't forget that we need workforce (see Incarnate Post).
So i invite all truly dedicated people to join the Darkness Within Crusade, all you need is faith, talent and willingness.

I think we won't be overprotective to out work once it is finished and released to the public. As a passionnate mapper i have been frustrated by the lack of diversity in the ME environment object choice, fx and units. But Darkness within will release along the campaign a drekk load of new object, decals, textures and i hope, environmental fx. So other mapper will have fun building their own maps to play with inquisition forces.
Plus the fact that we will release sides map not directly related to the campaign but exploring some theme and characters seen in the main scenario as a by product.
We are working hard on this project, we are working fast and even if we are not professional we are dedicated to bring you the best we can achieve. By adding skill and talent to the team we we just bring a better result and at a faster pace.

sincerely

Jaguar-Lord

ps: English is not my native language, please accept my apologies for any shocking spelling or gramatical heresy floating among the above and forthcoming sentences.

**s1_ONE** · 13th Feb 08 7:31 AM

:o finally you have decided to make it public!
I was just waiting your official announcement about this interesting project that involves also AS..

Just a curiosity: how do you manage to deal with SoB & AS?

**Jaguar-Lord** · 13th Feb 08 8:03 AM

i don't fully understand your question so i wont dare make a answer.

ps
Curiosity is a wicked fault btw.

**kindred ravens** · 13th Feb 08 9:19 AM

heya guys, this looks awesome, but wouldn't pathing, gameplay and graphics be better if you did it on a the diablo two engine or something similar?

**badgut** · 13th Feb 08 10:07 AM

but what about the tyranids tyranids are then the only race not in it splinterfleet is comeing out after soulstorm i dont know when but styrer said the it would be rel;eased after soulstorm why not put it in the mod then you have all the racess

**gabqo** · 13th Feb 08 10:11 AM

This is gonna be awesome!! Good luck with the project guys.

**cagecrawler** · 13th Feb 08 10:21 AM

Guys, nice work. This'll be very useful and might help mods like Visions of Treachery to finally make the jump to DC.

@s1_ONE: I assume you're talking about Soulstorm. The missions are coded like single player missions. If they bring it to Soulstorm (and that's a big if depending on what Relic/IL have done to the game frontend) then they will just not include the SoB. Their coding will decide what units are in each mission.

@badgut: I'm guessing that the storyline is going to be at least partly Chaos related, Tyranids won't fit in. Also, this is a single player campaign, no skirmish. It is unlikely you will see all of the other races as well.

**Shoota Fodder** · 13th Feb 08 10:50 AM

With Andkat as your fluffer, then there is no questioning wither the Storyline will be good or not

.

Have you done voice acting for the missions?

**Incarnate** · 13th Feb 08 11:33 AM

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

S1_One: Relics Sisters of battle may be included, depending on how stark the contrast is between them. We wont be mashing tech trees and the plot is done (well its being tuned), so if it turns out to be a good idea to use them for a particular task we will. We may perhaps only include the flyer.

Shoota: No voice acting has not been done, we want people to apply so we know there is interest now, but we have no dialogue yet. The dialogue wont be developed over night...

Cagecrawler: There is NO big if. I have recoded the whole thing, i know how the FE works as much as i need to to be able to mod it extensively. All filepaths have been redone for instance so this isnt dependant on relics files. My FE would in theory work in vanilla...

. The only thing that would completely shaft it would be if relic gfx the whole game, from the first loading screen right through to skirmish.

In fact, the only IF concerning soulstorm is if the inquisition and witch hunters mods get converted so they are compatible with soulstorm. Compiler has said that he is thinking about it and krmz has said that it will be made compatible in his thread. If Either of the mod teams dont convert, then this will be for DC. Its no biggie. I would like for this to be SS only, but obviously it is out of my hands so we plan it in but work for DC for now.

Badgut and kindred ravens, in fact everyone:

My team is made of very passionate and dedicated people who love modding dow. This isnt about just making a decent campaign. If thats all it was about then we could indeed go to another game. But it isnt. Its about Dow, and single player. We love the game, and w40k fluff just BEGS for stories to be told. Not only that, at the time there were two mods close to release that were just fabulous, a true labour of love. We decided to almost pay homage to these by offering them the opportunity to have a campaign made for them. Compiler took up the offer, and after some work we split up, and decided to raise the game by including the now interested AS mod.

We want to do justice to you all, and above all to ourselves. The mods are great. The game is great. The fluff is great. How could we want to do anything else with it?

Yes, andkat is our fluffer. This does not mean that our plot is good, but we have tried our best to get it to be pretty damn decent. Andkat is a living wealth of fluff knowledge, so the campaign should be entirely fluff compatible! Back this up with some new gameplay to dow and your looking at a bloody hot package.

If you want this to be even hotter, help us out!!!

**Dekdence** · 13th Feb 08 11:38 AM

can't wait....

**p0seidon** · 13th Feb 08 11:41 AM

Yes, andkat is our fluffer.

I never knew andkat was in the sex industry.

Joking aside, good to see you have kitty kat the walking 40k fluff bible under your wing

.
Give me a pm if you ever need any models done for this, be they environmental or not.

**s1_ONE** · 13th Feb 08 12:26 PM

Yeah, i was just thinking about the possible divergence between AS & SoB, in a linear campaign...

curiosity is voluble, and JL you know how voluble I am.. ^^

**Incarnate** · 13th Feb 08 1:02 PM

Thanks for the offer lefty, i may just do that

.

And dont diss kitty, hes very talented...

**MaggikWabbit6** · 13th Feb 08 1:20 PM

If you wanted extra environment models you could try and contact Beroc, (I think it was Beroc). He made a "map mod" back for orignal dawn of war, it had lots of new textures and models for maps, i just can't find the damn thing. I'll keep on looking at let you know if I find it.

Edit;
Found it here Dowfiles is more useful than I previously thought.
This was really helpful to me but it was made for DOW 1.3 so you may have to update some things.

**Jaguar-Lord** · 13th Feb 08 1:32 PM

@Left wing :
any new model ?....oh yes we have a "special project" of ours that would reclam great care. pm is you friend !

@MaggikWabbit6 :
this is a good news, tkhs for the information i'll download it asap.

**Kendallv2000** · 13th Feb 08 2:15 PM

Incarnate i'm not sure how you did it but kudos to you

**Pocktio** · 13th Feb 08 2:18 PM

Simply put, I love you. You are trying to make this game complete for me. I WISH THE BEST OF LUCK!

By the way, you spelt initialising wrong.

**Flufball** · 13th Feb 08 4:43 PM

Shoota: No voice acting has not been done, we want people to apply so we know there is interest now, but we have no dialogue yet. The dialogue wont be developed over night...

As long as you don't murder any form of scripting then it'll be ok, bad scripting will kill any plot you're developing - you need to believe the characters are who they're supposed to be.

Forgive me for being a stickler for this, but I'll be after whoever writes the script with a hatchet if it's poorly done!

**Blade44** · 13th Feb 08 5:00 PM

ah so this is the big project. i am glad someone finally cracked it. good luck and keep up the good work.

**SickSick6** · 13th Feb 08 6:49 PM

Only up for half a day and already 3 pages of responses eh? Take that Witch Hunters thre- ... oh yeah.

But seriously, this mod has nothing but potential written all over it! We have an expert fluff manager, 2 experienced mappers (myself included, ahem, s'cuse me. there's some dirt on my shoulder

), and a scar-coder/lua-coder/mapper/whip-cracker/helluva mod-leader!
Prepare to pollute thine breeches in delight!
It's that good.

Edit: Oh and tell me those UI pics and marble objects aren't dead sexy!

**Flufball** · 13th Feb 08 7:06 PM

There are so few mods focused upon creating a new campaign, rather than focusing upon the multiplayer, that the ones that do crop up, especially the good looking ones, are most likely going to pull in a crowd, they're certainly worth noting.

The downside to this of course is that they take somewhat more time to put together, so they're not the best of mods for the impaitent.

**Imperial Dane** · 14th Feb 08 7:56 AM

A singleplayer campaign eh ? That actually sounds interesting

Might actually bother with this mod. Though the use of the witch hunters mod irks me a little. Never liked the look of their models.

**ElizLestrad** · 14th Feb 08 8:01 AM

Sounds cool, between the campaign KRMZ and them guys are working on for Adeptus Soritas (last time I heard), your campaign, and the one in....well....guess I cant really call it a "campaign" in the traditional sense. Anywho, looks very promising.

**pwtool** · 14th Feb 08 9:44 AM

Very cool and very needed! Hope you can get it to work flawlessly.
Intressting screenshots aswell.

Best of luck

**Ice_JT** · 14th Feb 08 6:08 PM

Hey Incarnate, who`s going to be writing the plot and dialouge, will it be a team effort or what.

**Zany Reaper** · 15th Feb 08 7:30 AM

Pretty ambitious-looking project, nice work!

Hopefully this'll make the Witch-hunters mod team get a little more respect for their hard work (obviously daemonhunt was a hard-earned project too). Currently I get the impression that they're a tad disheartened.

Chaos_Seer · 15th Feb 08 10:21 AM

Wow, this is looking kick-ass. I can't wait to play it

**Jaguar-Lord** · 15th Feb 08 12:17 PM

Sounds cool, between the campaign KRMZ and them guys are working on for Adeptus Soritas (last time I heard), your campaign, and the one in....well....guess I cant really call it a "campaign" in the traditional sense. Anywho, looks very promising.

I closely folow what is said on the Adepta Sororitas forums and the only rumors of a campaign were posted by me (Jaguar-Lord) so far there is only one campaign project which is "Darkness Within".

And yes, you can call it a campaign in a "traditional sense" : there will be scenario, cutscenes, dialogs, you won't choose the race or army scheme to be played.....etc.
More: the use of the skirmish screens will alow the player to use a never seen tool in campaign mod wich is the "replay" function at end of each mission.

so yes this his truly a traditional campaign, i can assure you.

**Flufball** · 15th Feb 08 12:21 PM

I closely folow what is said on the Adepta Sororitas forums and the only rumors of a campaign were posted by me (Jaguar-Lord) so far there is only one campaign project which is "Darkness Within".

I'm not sure if you're refering exclusivly to AS, but if you're talking about campaigns in general, then all I have to say is: Lies. Utter Lies. And then some more Lies!.

**Incarnate** · 15th Feb 08 3:02 PM

Hey Incarnate, who`s going to be writing the plot and dialouge, will it be a team effort or what.

The plot was a team effort, but when andkat joined we soon got whipped into fluff shape. It made more sense for us to direct andkat who pumps out fluff so we ended up with something that we were happy with that the fluff agreed with. I have no GW background at all, Jag has some, but andkat knows more than GW so it made sense that way. Plot is done, but its more like first draft done. I reckon we will go through 3 drafts, fine tuning it.

Dialogue will be written last as and when we go through the mission gameplay, as it all has to fit together perfectly. There is extensive character development so anyone in the team can put a draft forward of how they interpret the character in the scene, and we can all go through it and improve it. Dialogue is important to us so we do want to get it right.

Yes flufball, that was some shameless VISIONS OF TREACHERY CAMPAIGN MOD pimpage, i mean, you shouldnt mention such a GREAT MOD in this thread, when it was perfectly clear that jag was talking about AS mod campaigns.

besides, there are other campaigns in the works elsewhere..

**Kendallv2000** · 15th Feb 08 3:09 PM

So once this is done a released, how accessible is the code to the average mapper (person) - because i was going to try to make my own campaign but i was unable to convert the DC meta map campaign into a liner campaign.

**Flufball** · 15th Feb 08 3:14 PM

I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist, like I said, I wasn't sure if it was an exclusive reference to AS or if it was simply a statement saying that there where no other mods covering single-player.

Besides it gives me a great excuse to yell at people to hurry up: Barbarians at the Gate and all that.

Waiting till the end for the actual dialogue sounds good, but I think alot of people seem to forget that there is so much more to a plot than simply words - you need to know where the story is headed, what is going to happen to the characters to give it direction and idealy you need to know these things either before or roughly at the same time as designing the gameplay simply because it gives things a much more coherent vision than a grouping of missions strung together loosely.

**Incarnate** · 15th Feb 08 3:29 PM

So once this is done a released, how accessible is the code to the average mapper (person) - because i was going to try to make my own campaign but i was unable to convert the DC meta map campaign into a liner campaign.

This does not use the metamap, it uses a different system that will be released when it is finished so that anyone can use it. This is will be before the mod is completed. The code for this will be more accessible come SS mod tools i believe....(possible .screen editor release).

As for the mission code, most features will be modular with the usual basic scar in the individual map files. So for average mappers, your still going to have to learn scar, you cant get round it im afraid. As much as a lolcode parser appeals to me....

And flufball, believe me, we are doing what you are saying and MORE. God its hard work though.

**HiveMind** · 15th Feb 08 3:46 PM

I KNEW someone would figure out how to do this. I just KNEW it.

INCARNATE SCORES!

All this needs is a proper plot (which I have no doubts it will) and I won't need to get out vanilla every time I want to play a campaign.

[DC ONLY] DARKNESS WITHIN -a linear campaign mod for the IDH and WH:AS mods

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