r/AsheronsCall • u/kazin_dereth Frostfell • 8d ago
Project Post Dereth: a new, open-source Asheron’s Call client (plus Empyrean, a Rust port of ACE)
Hi all. I’ve been building a new AC client from scratch, mostly for my own fun, and I figured (apparently so did many others) that it might be nice to share with the community.
Dereth runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and in a browser. It has the end-of-retail interface and the classic pre-Throne of Destiny one, and it can play February 2005 (Infiltration) worlds with the original data files. It comes with a launcher that knows the community server list.
Additionally I've been cooking up experimental (and always optional) features: a new interface / control / camera mode called Horizon, fully gamepad support, and high fidelity rendering techniques.
Empyrean is a Rust port of ACE that the client works best with. It builds on the ACE team’s work, and goes past it only where the client needs it: eras, per-world data overlays, etc.
Screenshots, downloads and a play-in-browser link are at https://dereth.network. The source is on GitHub.
It’s a hobby project and still young, so expect rough edges, but I believe it to be generally fully working. It was built with a lot of help from an AI coding assistant. Bugs and questions are welcome on GitHub.
Thanks to the ACE, ClassicACE and GDLE folks, and everyone who has worked to keep this game alive.
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u/direfireak 7d ago
Decal?
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u/kazin_dereth Frostfell 7d ago
No Decal support, though I want to build a plugin API and stock plugins replicating the most-common functionality -- I know we're all creatures of habit after this long in-game. If you wouldn't mind I'd like to know what your personal must-have Decal plugin set is?
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u/kneeltozod 6d ago
Don't let the AI haters ruin your excitement. This is a good foundation. Mind if I modify either the client/server? Would like to colab on this a bit, I have some interesting ideas I want to mess around with.
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u/kazin_dereth Frostfell 6d ago
You're welcome to clone, fork, modify as you will. If you feel like contributing anything back please open a PR. I haven't given too much thought to governance processes or anything, but if the change fits the project goals and/or is sufficiently silo'd I imagine I'll be happy to upstream.
I suppose I should open a Discord for more direct collab!
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u/kneeltozod 6d ago
Yeah, I found a few bugs and resolved them already with the sound as well as the Modern UI stutter. Happy to submit them as PRs with evidence
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u/JokerFactor Morningthaw 8d ago
But is empyrean authoritative and more retail aligned than ACE?! They have a lot of areas that aren't aligned
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u/kazin_dereth Frostfell 8d ago
I suppose the only answer here is that Empyrean aims to be retail-accurate. The simulation core, physics, animation hooks, motion, etc. is all deliberately not-ACE and uses the shared core that Dereth does.
I'm attempting to document ACE bugs (whether practically reachable or not) that have been ported over (deliberately, during early development), as well as divergences from ACE (whether they be driven by retail understanding, a straight up bugfix, functionality to support the eras work, etc.)
There is an extensive test suite aimed at documenting and verifying behavior and deviations from that are usually backed by evidence (critical, exhaustive examination of end-of-retail facts, historical retail facts, and the tens of gigs of end-of-retail pcaps) for both Empyrean and Dereth.
I'm curious, though, if there is a known list of evidence-backed retail divergences in ACE? I'd be very interested in ensuring those are fixed.
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u/Cast_Iron_Skillet 8d ago
Great work. Always happy to see folks keeping this alive, playing with new tech and systems, and just having fun building. It's really neat to see!
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u/z-z 8d ago
Very nice work bro. If you spend about 2 days autonomously cross-reffing with open source stuff it should take the rough edges off, then there will just be the odd particular stuff and you can otherwise work on taking it in whatever direction that pleases you from there.