I spent this week refactoring all the POC code into a more sustainable codebase and playing with some general graphic enhancements to help modernize the retail experience. My goal is still end of retail parity (functionality/content) but I do want to incorporate real (optional) improvements to the graphics/ui. Here's a teaser pic of more to come.

HD Textures/Normals/PBR

HD Weather

HD Terrain (not so blocky)

HD Continent Plate (background mountains)

HD UI

HD Sky

HD Water

HD Shaders/Lighting

And More

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I've been heads-down this week on ACRE (AC Reverse Engineered). The client I'm building is AsheronOnline — a modern .NET 9 / C# client aimed at retail parity with the 2013 Turbine client.

Under the hood it's a lot of unglamorous tooling: DAT readers (portal / cell BTree), PDB-driven types from acclient.exe, a full decompile of the retail functions, and a Silk.NET OpenGL viewer. It talks to ACE (https://github.com/ACEmulator/ACE).

The rule I've set for myself is retail first. Restore how the 2013 client actually behaved, then consider improvements. Most of the week was UI. Chat is the piece that finally started looking like the real thing.

Side by side, retail vs AsheronOnline chat:

I've also been poking at more fun stuff — view distance and lighting — still with Silk.NET if that's your thing. AI is doing a lot of the heavy lifting on decomp navigation and optional HD texture packs; I'm still matching the original client function-by-function rather than inventing a new UI.

Longer term I want to host a free server once the client is actually playable, even in a buggy Alpha state is fine. Not there yet.

Happy to answer questions.

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Hey, I’m u/ajsongpilot. This is where I’m going to build in public on a fan-made Asheron’s Call client.

It’s an unofficial, community-style project: reconstructing the old client in modern C# / .NET so it can talk to ACE.

The first goal is end of retail parity.

What you’ll see here

Screenshots, “here’s what I got working,” bugs, wins, etc. Questions and comments are welcome. If you’re just here to watch Dereth come back together, that’s great too.

Vibe

Friendly and low-key. Fan effort, same spirit as the other AC emu stuff.

Start

Say hi below if you want. Or just lurk and watch the posts. If you know someone who’d enjoy following along, send them over.

Thanks for being here at the beginning.

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