Tribes 2 // Mod Development Handbook GitHub

57 · IronSphere RPG (DarkRealmsRPG)

The most heavily transformed mod in this handbook — a 1240-file total-conversion RPG that no longer resembles a Tribes 2 combat game in any respect except the engine underneath it.

   
Real product name DarkRealmsRPG — revealed by its own uninstaller, PROG_NAME=DarkRealmsRPG [mod-script]
Ships as IronSphere, in gamedata/IS/
Creator JeremyIrons (original creator); Trident_RX (head coder, later creator) [mod-script]
Scope 1240 files: 67 audio, 20 gui, 106 interior prefabs, 2 missions, 24 music tracks, 15 particle sets, 62 scripts, 135 shapes, 791 textures
Site http://TribesRpg.ServeGame.com [mod-script]

Two names for one project

The mod presents itself as “IronSphere” in its own in-game text, but its Windows uninstaller — un_DarkrealmsInstall_34048.txt — reveals the product registered under a different name entirely [mod-script]:

PROG_NAME=DarkRealmsRPG

with launcher scripts named Tribes2RPG_Online.bat, Tribes2RPG_dedicated_server.bat, and Tribes2RPG_Offline.bat. IronSphere is the mod’s public identity; DarkRealmsRPG is what it called itself at install time — the kind of discrepancy only a leftover uninstaller log would expose.

Credits

gamedata/IS/IS.txt opens with unusual warmth for a mod readme [mod-script]:

“Welcome and thank you for playing our Tribes2 IronSphere Total Conversion Modification!”

Credits: Goodie, Gul’Dar, HiVoltage, JeremyIrons (original creator), Lone Predator, Scourage (coder), SoulSlayer, Trident_RX (head coder and creator), Toaster (documentation), Twister, Fina (head mapper), Sirsteven (lead tester), and Jardin De Cecile (music score) — a large, role-differentiated team, consistent with the scope of what shipped.

What “total conversion” means here, concretely

gamedata/IS/scripts/ — 62 files — names the systems directly through its own file naming: character classes (rpgclasses.cs) and races (rpgraces.cs); leveling, stats, health and mana (rpgstats.cs, rpghp.cs, rpgmana.cs); skills with their own GUI (rpgskills.cs, rpgSkillGui.cs); inventory and items (rpginventory.cs, rpgitems.cs); an economy with shops and trade (rpgeconomy.cs, rpgshopscreen.cs, RPGtradeScreen.gui); guilds with their own management and registration interfaces (rpgguilds.cs, GuildManagementGUI.cs, GuildRegister.cs); player housing (rpghouse.cs); quests (rpgquest.cs); parties (rpgparty.cs); a jail system (rpgjail.cs); mining and smithing crafting loops (rpgmining.cs, rpgsmithing.cs); spells (rpgspells.cs); PvP zones (rpgzones.cs); a day/night time-of-day system (rpgTime.cs); an in-game admin GUI (RPGadminScreen.gui); and custom AI (aiRPG.cs, aiHunters.cs).

That is a full MMO-lite feature set — character progression, crafting, an economy, guilds, housing, and PvP zones — none of which exists in any form in base Tribes 2 or in any other mod this handbook covers.

The asset investment matches the script scope

106 interior prefabs — towns (one named “Keldrin”), player-class homes, defensive strongholds, mines, and a boss location named “Minotaur’s Lair.” 791 textures, over three times any other mod surveyed in this handbook. 24 original music tracks, credited to Jardin De Cecile as a full score rather than a handful of loops. A single dedicated T2RPG_Worldmap.mis mission anchors the whole persistent world, rather than a rotation of independent maps — the structural signature of a persistent-world RPG rather than a match-based shooter.

What this handbook can and cannot verify

The scope above is confirmed structurally — file names, credits, and asset counts are all directly readable. The actual balance and mechanics of the class/skill/economy systems are not analysed here in the depth this handbook gives combat mods elsewhere; a project of this size would need its own multi-page treatment to do that justice, and this section’s purpose is placing it correctly on the deviation spectrum, not exhausting it. It sits at the extreme end deliberately: everything else in sections 32–56 is still recognisably Tribes 2 under new rules. This is not.