Modders Breath New Life in Dark Messiah, Including RTX Support, Co-op; Ubisoft Approves
Ubisoft has given the green light to a group of modders who have set their sights on improving the 17-year-old hit by Arcane: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is one of those somewhat forgotten gems that gamers would love to see refreshed. Unfortunately, neither Ubisoft, which was the publisher of the original, nor its creators, studio Arcane, have been eager on developing a remaster of the classic.
Fortunately, in such cases, modders, specifically the team known as wiltOS, can prove themselves. The enthusiasts have been actively preparing their fan project adding, among other things, a cooperative mode to the game for several years now. Unfortunately, in recent months you wouldn't find any information about wiltOS activities (the last entry of the creators on ModDB was from November last year). It was only a few days ago that the creators reminded us of themselves in a new announcement, which is sure to pour a lot of hope into the hearts of fans.
Green light from Ubisoft
It turns out that wiltOS' work is being watched vigilantly by Ubisoft, which, impressed by the team's efforts, has officially given it its full blessing in its efforts to modify Dark Messiah.
"(...) since May we have been given a completely free hand to do whatever we see fit with this mod and the development of the SDK! To quote Ubisoft, the company: 'does not want to impose any restrictions so that the community can truly appreciate the full value of the work put in here.'," reads the developers' latest post on Moddb.com.
Dark Messiah and ray tracing
In addition to improving the game itself, the developers are also working on an SDK toolkit to enable the players to mod it themselves. Unfortunately, it has not yet been completed, so the developers have in the meantime released one of its latest elements - a feature that allows for adding ray tracing to Dark Messiah.
"Nvidia released the Portal RTX mod and subsequent open source RTX Remix modules and I thought: 'how cool would Dark Messiah look with ray tracing-based lighting.' Unfortunately, the RTX Remix modules required the game to run in DX7, where Dark Messiah always crashed. So I did what any other reasonable person would do: I made the game work with DX7!," explained team founder David Wiltos, stressing once again that 'this is not a full-fledged mod, but only a toolkit to help people create their own RTX mod.'
You can find the RTX toolkit and instructions for downloading and installing it here
It is worth mentioning that wiltOS is also recruiting those willing to participate in the project. The team is looking for 3D model creators, character creators and game testers, among others.
Dark Messiah - a handful of information
Recall that Dark Messiah originally debuted on PC in 2006. At the time, Arcane's game, turning the popular Might & Magic universe into a first-person action game, met with an extremely positive reception from gamers and industry reviewers. Especially the former appreciated the game, as evidenced by the game's average ratings on Metacritic On the wave of popularity, two years later Dark Messiah lived to see a port to Xbox 360 consoles.
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