Dark Messiah of Might & Magic Tweak Guide

[Page 4] Patches, Steam & Mods



Official Patch


Dark Messiah of Might & Magic has received a new 1.02 Singleplayer patch which resolves many of the games bugs. Arkane has also released a 1.04 Multiplayer patch solely through Steam. You can download and apply the latest standalone singleplayer patch to the retail version of the game, or you can update both retail and Steam versions via Steam if they are installed through Steam - see the Steam section further below for details of how best to do this. Theses patch contain a large number of very important fixes and changes, so I strongly recommend all Dark Messiah players update to the latest version particularly if you're experiencing any issues with the game.


As details of updates and patches become available I will update this section and the rest of the guide accordingly, so stay tuned.



Click to enlarge

Steam


Ubisoft, the distributors of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic, have teamed up with Valve, the developers of the Source engine upon which Dark Messiah has been developed, to allow the game to be distributed via the Steam online distribution system as well as through normal retail channels. For more details of how Steam works, and to troubleshoot any Steam issues you may have see the Steam Support Page.


The Steam application is required to run whenever you run the Multiplayer aspect of Dark Messiah. However if you purchased a normal retail DVD copy of Dark Messiah, you don't have to run Steam at any time to run the Singleplayer aspect of the game. But there is a bug in the retail version of the game such that if you install the multiplayer component along with the singleplayer component of the game, after installation Steam will launch and commence redownloading a major portion of the entire singleplayer portion of the game again. As mentioned in the patch section above, I recommend that you do install Steam and allow it to update your singleplayer game files as these updates are necessary, however to save it from redownloading existing files, follow these steps:


1. Close down Dark Messiah and close the Steam client so it is not displaying in your System Tray.


2. Go to your Program Files\Ubisoft\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic\mm\ folder and highlight and copy all the .gcf files.


3. Go to your \Program Files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\ folder and paste these files there.


4. Restart Steam while online - Steam will now update your Dark Messiah singleplayer component more quickly as it needs to download/update fewer files now.


In general it is recommended that you allow the game to be updated by Steam as often as possible. You don't need to keep Steam running all the time to do this, but make sure to check this page for notification of major updates, and also regularly restart your Steam client while online to see if any updates are required - they will download and install themselves automatically if any exist.


As a final note, make sure to defragment your drive after updating via Steam, and to make absolutely certian that all your game files are valid and working properly, in Steam right-click on your game name under My Games, select Properties>Local Files>'Verify integrity of game cache'. This will run a check to make sure all your game files are sound, and that nothing has been corrupted.



No-CD Patch


Dark Messiah uses the SecuROM copy protection, which normally requires that you keep the DVD in the drive while playing if you've purchased the DVD edition. This is very annoying, however it doesn't harm performance as such. There are a couple of problems inherent to SecuROM but these are discussed in the Troubleshooting Tips section. In general while you can use a No-DVD to play Dark Messiah singleplayer, I can't mention any details of where to get it for legal reasons. However you can run the game without the DVD in the drive if you use Steam - see below.


Steam versions of the game don't have a disk check, but require that you verify and install your copy of the game over the Internet, and Steam needs to be running for the Multiplayer component in particular to work on all versions. Even if you bought the DVD edition, you can install/download the entire singleplayer component through Steam and this will then allow you to run the game through Steam without requiring a DVD in the drive.



Mods


As mentioned in the introduction, Dark Messiah of Might & Magic is powered by the Source Engine from Valve. This engine has proven to be highly modifiable, and thus there is absolutely no reason why DMOMM will not get some mods of its own in the future. I will list any prominent mods in this section as they are released.



The next section of the guide covers the In-Game Settings for Dark Messiah.