With modern lighting effects, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic shines in new splendour. But the modders have a lot more planned for the old fantasy game.
It’s been 17 long years since Dark Messiah of Might & Magic saw the light of day. In the meantime, you can see that in the title’s graphics, which are anything but opulent from today’s perspective. The modder group wiltOS under the leadership of David Wiltos wants to counteract this.
In the following video, the modders show their current success in bringing ray tracing into the game. While the lighting effects look very nice now, the textures are of course still at the level of 2006. Nevertheless, what is shown makes us wish for a remake or sequel!
The ray tracing implementation must have been quite a lot of work. The game had to work in DirectX 7 to do that, but it crashed all the time at the beginning. So I did what any other sane person would do: make the game work with DX7!
, says Wiltos on (moddb.)
But the mod is not finished yet, the video makes it clear at the beginning that it is a proof of concept so far.
There’s more to it than that
David Wiltos is far from finished with Dark Messiah, though. Originally he wanted to enable a co-op mode but for that, more comprehensive mod tools were needed. So the goal came about to produce a fully functional software development kit – also for other modders out there.
Even rights holder Ubisoft is enthusiastic about the project: According to Wiltos, Ubisoft doesn’t want to impose any restrictions so that the community can appreciate the full value of the work that is being put into this.
The team is currently looking for more supporters, including 3D modellers, artists and playtesters.
What do you think of the project? Would you dig out Dark Messiah of Might & Magic again with a co-op mod or will you only face the orcs again when a remake is released? Or would you prefer a sequel? Drop us your thoughts in the comments, we’re excited!
