Modern open-source C# .NET 10 Asheron's Call client. Faithful port of retail client behaviour to Silk.NET with a plugin API.
f6f58a12db
Campaign V slice V6d, commit 2 of 3. TextRenderer and DebugLineRenderer were the only two renderers speaking the RHI, and both refused any device that was not a GlGpuDevice. They now refuse nothing: this is the first production rendering acdream can do on Vulkan.
Three things had to go.
The loose uniforms. debug_line declared uView and uProjection separately and DebugLineRenderer set them straight against the compiled GL program, because the pinned push-constant block carries one combined matrix and IGpuPassEncoder has no verb for arbitrary named uniforms. That was never portable — Vulkan has no default uniform block at all — so the shader converged on uViewProjection and Flush multiplies on the CPU. System.Numerics is row-vector convention while GLSL reads the floats column-major, which transposes, so the CPU equivalent of the old per-vertex uProjection * uView is view * projection. The product now rounds once per frame rather than once per vertex; these lines only draw when collision wireframes are switched on, so the offline gate sees nothing of it. ui_text's uScreenSize became the block's two spare scalars, uParamA and uParamB, with the same two divisions and the same NDC mapping around them.
The sampling mode. uUseTexture selected between font coverage, RGBA modulate and flat colour, and no field of the 96-byte block means that. It did not need one: which of the two texture-table slots is assigned IS the mode. uTextureIndexB assigned means a single-channel coverage source, uTextureIndexA assigned means an RGBA colour source, neither assigned means the vertex colour alone. GpuTextureSlot.Unassigned is already a loud sentinel for exactly this kind of question, and both branches guard so it never reaches a sampler. That also retired the 1x1 white fill texture: DrawFill routed solid quads through the sprite bucket relying on white times colour, and the untextured branch produces the same value with no texture at all. Multiplying by 1.0 changes no bits, and the gate agrees.
The texture binding. The classic glActiveTexture/glBindTexture path survived V4a because DrawSprite takes an arbitrary texture from sixty-odd widget call sites. But TextureCache had already registered every one of those into the device's table — the classic path was consuming the raw GL name that registration also produced. The UI's currency is now UiTextureTableHandle, a one-based table index whose zero is the same "no texture" every widget already guards on; a raw slot index would have turned all of those guards into silent false negatives, since slot 0 is perfectly valid. One-based rather than the slot itself because GpuTextureSlot is internal to the pinned contract while UiRenderContext.DrawSprite, TextureCache.GetOrUploadRenderSurface and a dozen widget properties are public, and neither publishing a contract type nor converting the retained UI to internal belongs in this slice.
Two consequences worth stating. The two backends disagree about what a 2-D table entry is — GL reconstructs a sampler2D from the bindless handle, Vulkan reads layer 0 of its sampler2DArray descriptor array — and ACDREAM_SAMPLE_2D is the one place that lives. Keeping GL on sampler2D is what leaves the UI's textures exactly as they are, including the paperdoll/appraisal FBO colour texture, which is an externally-owned GL_TEXTURE_2D from the §7.1 transitional seam and cannot become an array before V4g. On the Vulkan side, sampled views are now always layered, which also removes a latent invalid usage V6c shipped: it registered a Type2D offscreen view into a descriptor array whose element type is sampler2DArray.
And one real fix. Sampling through the table means a bound sampler object overrides the texture's own parameters. Nearest-requested UI art used to get its point filtering from a glTexParameter applied before the bindless handle went resident, so registering it with the stock WorldRepeat sampler would have made every retail icon and dat-font glyph silently bilinear. Those now register with a nearest-and-repeat sampler.
Supporting moves: GlGpuDevice.CreatePipeline splices common.glsl the same way Shader does, since an RHI shader that reads the table needs the table declared; GlGpuPassEncoder binds the device's table with the pipeline, which is the GL analogue of Vulkan binding descriptor set 2 per draw, and has to be per-bind because every raw-GL world renderer puts its own privately-numbered table at that binding; and the encoder derives GL_MULTISAMPLE from the pass's SampleCount, which is where the retained UI's hand-rolled glDisable belonged all along. TextRenderGlStateScope is deleted — the encoder's ambient capture restored a strict superset of it — and its failure-safety test follows the guarantee to GlAmbientCapabilityState, which gains a fakeable seam and, with it, the multisample-dimension coverage #249 recorded as missing.
App tests 4,057 passed / 3 skipped, unchanged from commit 1. Offline pixel gate against
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| .github | ||
| .vscode | ||
| docs | ||
| memory | ||
| references | ||
| src | ||
| tests | ||
| tools | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .gitmodules | ||
| AcDream.slnx | ||
| AGENTS.md | ||
| analyze_flap_live.py | ||
| CLAUDE.md | ||
| find_burst.py | ||
| launch-a6-issue98-capture.ps1 | ||
| launch-a6-issue98-cottage-gfxobj-dump.ps1 | ||
| launch-a6-issue98-polydump.ps1 | ||
| launch-flap-capture.ps1 | ||
| launch-flap-churn.ps1 | ||
| launch-flap-verify.ps1 | ||
| NOTICE.md | ||
| README.md | ||
acdream
A modern open-source C# / .NET 10 Asheron's Call client.
acdream ports the observable behaviour of the September 2013 retail client to Silk.NET and a modern, plugin-friendly architecture. The code is modern; the behaviour is retail.
Status: playable pre-alpha. M3, “Cast a spell,” landed on 2026-07-21 and
M4, “Live in the world,” is active. The graphical client supports the connected
combat, magic, movement, portal, inventory, loot, and retained-UI loops used by
the current test characters. The presentation-independent GameRuntime and
the Linux/Windows multi-session headless host are complete. Native Linux
graphics are intentionally parked at the L1 capability checkpoint; Windows is
the currently validated graphical platform.
The documentation map is the entry point for current milestones, roadmap state, architecture, issues, retail divergences, research, and durable project memory.
Technology
- Runtime: C# and .NET 10
- Graphics: Silk.NET, OpenGL 4.3 core, bindless textures, shader draw parameters, SSBOs, and multi-draw indirect
- Audio: OpenAL through Silk.NET
- Content: retail DAT files plus a machine-local, memory-mapped
acdream.pakproduced byAcDream.Bake - Networking: custom UDP, ISAAC cipher, and game-message layers compatible with ACEmulator
- UI: retained retail gameplay UI plus opt-in ImGui developer tools
- Automation: the same presentation-independent
GameRuntimeis hosted by both the graphical client andAcDream.Headless
The modern renderer is mandatory. There is no legacy renderer fallback. Startup reports an actionable error if the required OpenGL capabilities are missing.
What works
- ACE login, character selection, world entry, chat, client commands, reconnect, and graceful logout.
- Outdoor, building, cellar, and dungeon streaming with prepared terrain, scenery, buildings, EnvCells, collision, portal visibility, sky, fog, lighting, audio, and day/night presentation.
- Local and observed movement, animation, jumping, selection, radar, combat stances, melee, bows, crossbows, spell projectiles, death, corpses, chests, and looting.
- Inventory bags, stable server ordering, stack splitting, ground drops, paperdoll equipment, weapon switching, quick bars, item use, cooldowns, and giving items to NPCs.
- Retail-style retained UI for vitals, chat, toolbar, inventory, character, attributes, skills, spellbook, components, effects, combat/spell/jump bars, radar/compass, dialogs, external containers, and assessment.
- Complete end-of-retail spell catalog, learned and favorite spells, component preflight, connected casts, enchantments, DAT-driven projectiles and effects, recall, portal-space travel, Hidden/UnHide, and remote materialization.
- One presentation-independent runtime owner for session, entities, objects, inventory, character state, selection, interactions, combat, magic, movement, physics, projectiles, world environment, and portal transit.
- A no-window Windows/Linux host with deterministic bot commands/events, shared immutable content, multi-session scheduling, isolation, reconnect, resource telemetry, and tested 1/5/10/30-session ownership.
- Plugin loading, shared command/input abstractions, retained markup panels,
and permanent ImGui developer tools behind
ACDREAM_DEVTOOLS=1.
Current boundaries
- The active M4 prelude is world interaction completion. Slices 1–3, including assessment and its final formula/icon/layout correction, are user-accepted. Equipped-child picking and vendor browse/buy/sell are the next uncompleted slices.
- Issue
#225retains the lifestone/particle shared-alpha visual comparison. Its connected lifetime and performance routes already pass. - Narrow carried behaviour debt includes issue
#153(an unstreamed far-teleport edge), issue#116(slide feel), issue#235(30 Hz capped/RDP jump presentation), and the live temporary-stopgap rows in the retail divergence register. - Native Linux graphics are deferred. L0 portability and L1 backend/capability
reporting are implemented; WSLg reaches the GPU through Mesa D3D12 but does
not expose mandatory
GL_ARB_bindless_texture. Resume with a supported physical Linux AMD/NVIDIA driver before beginning later Slice L work. - Advanced vendor/trade/crafting/social surfaces and larger M4 quest, character-creation, and emote bodies remain roadmap work.
Prerequisites
- .NET 10 SDK
- Your own retail Asheron's Call DAT directory containing:
client_portal.datclient_cell_1.datclient_highres.datclient_local_English.dat
- A machine-local
acdream.pakbuilt from those DATs - A running ACE server for connected play; the examples use
127.0.0.1:9000 - For the graphical client, a driver exposing the mandatory modern OpenGL capabilities
The project does not distribute Microsoft/Turbine DAT files or derived prepared packages.
Build and test
dotnet restore AcDream.slnx
dotnet build AcDream.slnx -c Release
dotnet test AcDream.slnx -c Release --no-build
The current baseline is a successful Release build with 8,826 passing tests
and 5 intentional skips. The build currently reports 17 test-project
warnings tracked by #228;
production compilation has zero errors.
Prepare content
Production rendering and collision use the validated prepared package rather than decoding world meshes on the frame path:
dotnet run --project src\AcDream.Bake\AcDream.Bake.csproj -c Release -- `
--dat-dir "C:\Games\Asheron's Call" `
--out "C:\Games\Asheron's Call\acdream.pak"
A complete package is approximately 30 GB. It is machine-local and must not be
committed. ACDREAM_PAK_PATH overrides the default
<DAT directory>\acdream.pak.
Run the graphical client
$env:ACDREAM_DAT_DIR = "C:\Games\Asheron's Call"
$env:ACDREAM_PAK_PATH = "C:\Games\Asheron's Call\acdream.pak"
$env:ACDREAM_LIVE = "1"
$env:ACDREAM_TEST_HOST = "127.0.0.1"
$env:ACDREAM_TEST_PORT = "9000"
$env:ACDREAM_TEST_USER = "testaccount"
$env:ACDREAM_TEST_PASS = "testpassword"
$env:ACDREAM_RETAIL_UI = "1"
dotnet run --project src\AcDream.App\AcDream.App.csproj -c Release
The DAT directory can instead be supplied as the first positional argument:
dotnet run --project src\AcDream.App\AcDream.App.csproj -c Release -- `
"C:\Games\Asheron's Call"
Run a headless session
AcDream.Headless loads no App, UI, OpenGL, native-window, or audio assembly.
Create a version-1 configuration such as bot.json:
{
"version": 1,
"process": {
"content": {
"datDirectory": "/opt/ac",
"preparedAssetPath": "/opt/ac/acdream.pak"
}
},
"sessions": [
{
"id": "bot-1",
"endpoint": { "host": "127.0.0.1", "port": 9000 },
"account": "testaccount",
"character": { "index": 0 },
"policy": { "id": "idle" },
"credential": {
"provider": "environment",
"reference": "ACDREAM_BOT_PASSWORD"
}
}
]
}
Then validate and run it:
export ACDREAM_BOT_PASSWORD='testpassword'
dotnet run --project src/AcDream.Headless/AcDream.Headless.csproj -c Release -- \
validate --config bot.json
dotnet run --project src/AcDream.Headless/AcDream.Headless.csproj -c Release -- \
run --config bot.json
For a single local session, run also accepts
--user <account> --password <password>. Add uniquely identified session
entries and credential references for a multi-session process. Available
built-in policies are idle, lifecycle-smoke, observer-movement, and
portal-route-smoke.
Useful startup options
| Variable | Effect |
|---|---|
ACDREAM_DAT_DIR |
Retail DAT directory |
ACDREAM_PAK_PATH |
Prepared package path; defaults to <DAT dir>/acdream.pak |
ACDREAM_LIVE=1 |
Enable connected mode |
ACDREAM_TEST_HOST / ACDREAM_TEST_PORT |
ACE endpoint |
ACDREAM_TEST_USER / ACDREAM_TEST_PASS |
Graphical-client credentials |
ACDREAM_RETAIL_UI=1 |
Enable the retained retail gameplay UI |
ACDREAM_DEVTOOLS=1 |
Enable ImGui developer tools |
ACDREAM_NO_AUDIO=1 |
Suppress OpenAL initialization |
ACDREAM_UNCAPPED_RENDER=1 |
Disable normal frame pacing for diagnostics |
ACDREAM_DISPLAY_PROTOCOL=auto|x11|wayland |
Select the Linux GLFW backend |
ACDREAM_DAY_GROUP=N |
Force a day-group index for weather/lighting comparisons |
ACDREAM_STREAM_RADIUS=N |
Legacy override over configured streaming radii |
ACDREAM_DUMP_SKY=1 |
Dump sky interpolation and draw diagnostics |
ACDREAM_DUMP_MOTION=1 |
Dump inbound movement and motion-cycle decisions |
Additional diagnostic and budget controls are documented beside their typed owners and in the linked research plans; they are not stable user settings.
Repository layout
src/
AcDream.Runtime/ presentation-independent GameRuntime
AcDream.App/ graphical host, retained UI, renderer, audio
AcDream.Headless/ Windows/Linux no-window multi-session host
AcDream.Core/ retail gameplay, movement, physics, world logic
AcDream.Core.Net/ UDP, ISAAC, protocol and message routing
AcDream.Content/ GL-free DAT and prepared-package content
AcDream.Bake/ offline acdream.pak builder
AcDream.Cli/ offline DAT inspector
AcDream.UI.Abstractions/ shared UI/input models and contracts
AcDream.UI.ImGui/ developer-tool presentation
AcDream.Plugin.Abstractions/ BCL-only plugin contracts
AcDream.Plugins.Smoke/ example plugin
tests/
AcDream.*.Tests/ layer-matched xUnit projects
docs/
README.md documentation authority and current map
architecture/ ownership, structure, divergence, WB inventory
plans/ milestone, roadmap, and execution plans
research/ retail pseudocode, traces, fixtures, evidence
audit/ completion and conformance audits
memory/ durable engineering references
references/ gitignored external reference repositories
Development workflow
All AC-specific behaviour starts from the named retail oracle in
docs/research/named-retail/:
- Search the named retail pseudo-C and headers by
class::method. - Use the older Ghidra chunks only when the named oracle is insufficient.
- Cross-reference ACE and the relevant client/viewer implementation.
- Record readable pseudocode and exact constants/order.
- Port the retail mechanism into the correct modern owner.
- Add conformance, lifecycle, and failure-boundary tests.
- Run the automated gate and the appropriate connected or visual gate.
- Update architecture, roadmap, divergences, and durable memory with the same change.
Guessing at AC-specific algorithms is forbidden. See AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, and the architecture guide for the full rules.
Reference projects
- ACE / ACEmulator: authoritative server and protocol behaviour
- ACViewer: character appearance and DAT presentation cross-check
- WorldBuilder: extracted Silk.NET DAT/rendering foundation
- Chorizite.ACProtocol: clean-room protocol reference
- holtburger: broad non-retail client behaviour reference
- AC2D: terrain and movement-packet cross-checks
The retail binary/decomp remains the behavioural oracle when references disagree.
Licence and game assets
The acdream source has not yet been assigned a top-level licence and is not ready for public redistribution. External reference code retains its own licence.
Asheron's Call DAT files, art, names, and other game assets remain the property of Microsoft/Turbine. This repository does not distribute them; users must supply their own retail installation.