So this has progressed a little beyond adding grass and bush.

A lot has happened since the last update, and the whole “I wonder if I can recreate Dark Majesty in Unreal Engine” experiment is rapidly becoming something you can actually play.

The world has gotten a pretty big scenery pass. More trees, vegetation, environmental details and other little touches are filling Dereth out while I’m still trying to keep the original geography and that unmistakable AC feel.

But the bigger progress is underneath the visuals.
You can now actually fight things.

Melee combat is working. Spell casting is working. Creatures fight back. You can kill them, loot them, and continue on your merry way committing violence across a considerably more vegetated Dereth.
A bunch of other gameplay pieces are starting to come together too.

I’m still keeping the original characters, creatures, buildings, UI and general art direction for now. The point isn’t to make a generic Unreal MMO that happens to use AC’s world. I want you to look at it and immediately know where you are, while seeing what that same world can become with a modern engine underneath it.

There’s still a ridiculous amount left to do, plenty of rough edges, and optimization is very much a future-me problem judging by the VRAM warning currently yelling at me in half these screenshots.
But this started as a random experiment not very long ago.

Now I’m running around Dereth, casting spells, fighting creatures and looting corpses in Unreal Engine.

So… I guess I’m committed now.
For anyone following along or interested in the technical side:
Discord: https://discord.gg/QPCw85TQA

So, for some reason I decided to see if I could bring the old Dark Majesty-era Asheron’s Call experience into Unreal Engine.

This was supposed to be an experiment.
It is becoming significantly less of an experiment.

At this point I’ve got the world coming together, terrain, original structures and scenery, characters, equipment, creatures, the classic UI, radar and a bunch of the little pieces that make it immediately recognizable as AC.

The first picture is probably my favorite comparison so far: remaster vs original.
I’m deliberately trying not to turn it into “generic Unreal Engine fantasy game with Asheron’s Call assets.”

The goal is to preserve that weird, unmistakable Dereth look and feel, just with a modern engine underneath it and the ability to improve things where it actually makes sense.

There’s obviously still a ton wrong. Textures need work, lighting needs work, models are still the originals in a lot of places, plenty of systems aren’t there yet, and some things are currently held together with hopes and questionable life choices.

But considering this started with “I wonder if this would work…” I’m pretty happy with where it has already ended up.
And yes, apparently keeping the original UI was mandatory. It just doesn’t feel right without that backpack staring at you.
I’ll keep posting pictures as this inevitably gets more out of hand.

If you want to follow along, talk about the technical side, or watch me continue making terrible decisions about the amount of work I give myself:

Discord: https://discord.gg/QPCw85TQA

Hi all,
Wanted to do a quick update.

While bugs, it is playable! I mentioned a launcher last post, that’s what works, and if you did do beta signup, those accounts work. If don’t have an account can sign up on website

Hey everyone,

I’ve had people in my Discord testing builds, finding bugs, breaking things, and helping me verify fixes.

That has made progress move much faster than it probably should have.

Apparently rebuilding an old MMO emulator, reverse-engineering a legacy client, fixing portals, combat, loot, magic, movement, and character creation was not the real final boss.

The real final boss was getting the game installed on somebody else’s computer.

So I launched Aetherium Play.

Aetherium Play source code⁠ is available publicly, and the premade releases are at

⁠ https://github.com/Vanquish-6/Aetherium-Play

Your accounts DO work.

The goal is simple: run AetheriumPlaySetup.exe, follow the setup, and play Aetherium.

It downloads and verifies the required Dark Majesty files, runs the original installer, installs Aetherium Play and compatibility files, presets the Aetherium connection, and gives you a proper launcher.

You no longer need to hunt down the correct client, install a separate runtime, remember which executable to use, or figure out which folder contains which version of the game.

The old installation process was starting to feel like an optional Dark Majesty quest:

Find the correct client.
Install the correct launcher.
Copy this file into that folder.
Do not launch the wrong executable.
Hope Windows remembers what you did.

That should be less necessary now.
Recent launcher releases have also fixed keyboard movement, preserved patched client data between launches, and added Alt+Enter fullscreen switching.

On the emulator side, I’ve also made a fairly ridiculous amount of progress.

A few things I’ve been working on:

Legacy Dark Majesty login and client patching are much more reliable.

Login failures now produce the correct in-game response instead of silently hanging.

Floor pickups, corpse looting, containers, wielding, unwielding, and inventory refreshes behave much closer to the original client.

Dungeon transitions, indoor portals, teleport placement, doors, vendors, and movement approaches have all received major fixes.

Portal gems, Portal Tie, Recall, Summon, Fellowship Send, and lifestone recall now use authored game data instead of guessed behavior.

Melee and missile attacks repeat properly, projectiles collide with the world, and NPC attacks apply damage at the correct animation timing.

Loot tiers, mutations, materials, values, gems, spells, cantrips, appraisal, item enchantments, and spell components have all been brought closer to the original behavior.

Character creation now validates heritage, gender, templates, attributes, skills, clothing, palettes, starter spells, and starting areas properly.

Lifestone Sanctuary is now used consistently for binding, recall, respawn, and death handling.

XP, level-ups, vitae, healing, regeneration, and current vitals are synchronized more correctly.

Added password recovery, native abuse reports, and server-backed @bug reports.

The web portal now includes account, character, report, live-world, audit, and server-management tools.

Added graceful restart and shutdown countdowns with final database saving.

Added a Lua scripting bridge for events, timers, NPCs, spawns, effects, sounds, quests, teleports, and temporary city events.

The less-visible work has grown considerably too.

Authoritative game data now drives loot, magic, physics, animations, appearances, character creation, NPC behavior, and world placement, with much stricter verification and regression coverage around it.

There is still plenty left to test and clean up.
This is not the “everything is finished forever” announcement although I would love to make that announcement and immediately retire.

The next major step is continuing live-client testing, especially the full first-login patch, multi-client behavior, and the remaining edge cases that only appear when the game is allowed to surprise me in real time.

But Aetherium has moved well beyond “the client connected and I could walk around.”

Aetherium Play makes it easier to get into the world.
The emulator is starting to make that world feel familiar again.

And thanks to everyone in my Discord who has been finding bugs, and testing fixes before I can pretend they’re finished.

The Golems, Wasps, and Mosswarts are once again ready to inconvenience new players.

Apparently I’m posting twice in the same week, so enjoy it before I disappear for another few months and forget to share half the updates again.
That’s basically what happened with WorldBuilder - ACME, by the way. It is still being worked on… I just kept making progress and neglected to post most of it here… heh

Anyway, back to Aetherium.
I’ve now added support for an even older client, including the old spell research system. Seeing a mechanic that has been gone for this long appear in a connected client again is equal parts nostalgic, satisfying, and mildly ridiculous.

To be clear, the original and first major goal is still the later Dark Majesty era without spell research.

However, the earlier spell-research client shares a surprising amount with the late-DM client, so both are now being worked on in parallel. Naturally.
A lot of the underlying work can be shared, but the eras are not identical. Some mechanics, packets, content rules, and behaviours will need to be wired in, replaced, or deliberately wired back out depending on the selected client and era.
The goal is not to force every mechanic into every version. Each era should actually feel like the era it is supposed to represent.

I also genuinely appreciate everyone who has been excited about these posts. It is nice seeing people interested in old clients, forgotten mechanics, and versions of the game they may not have experienced in soooo many years or ever really haha

For the handful of people getting upset simply because this is not ACE: relax.

This is not an attack on ACE or anyone else’s work. It is another option. After years of largely having the same route available, something genuinely different should be interesting, not cause a meltdown.

People should be able to choose the era they want and customize their server and content around the experience they want to create. The intention is to provide tools that make that possible without requiring every server operator to fight through the emulator internals.

So why share it if it is not open source?
Aetherium is currently not open source. I am also not making any permanent promises about what that status will look like in the future, because that has not been fully decided yet.

What I can say is that there are plans for actual Aetherium servers to launch, rather than this being a private screenshot collection that never leaves my computer.
Anything that players need to install locally such as client patches, installer patches, launchers, compatibility tools, or similar components I 100% will have its source shared. I do not expect people to install mystery software on their personal machines and simply trust it.

For server operators, the plan is to provide prebuilt server binaries, along with tooling or an automated process for generating and deploying builds that match the selected client, era, data, and server configuration.

The secure core can remain protected while server owners are still given meaningful control over their content and experience.
There is also quite a bit more already working that I have not shown yet, including a functional late-DM-era admin UI panel based around the real administration workflow.

So yes:
Late Dark Majesty remains the first target.
The earlier spell-research era is now progressing alongside it.
Retail support is also possible.
WorldBuilder is still alive.
More tools and administration systems already exist than I have shown.
And apparently I have now committed myself to supporting multiple historical eras at once.

Old client. Old mechanics. New emulator. Questionable respect for my own free time.

-Vanquish aka Chosen iykyk