Also, if anyone still has an original Project Entropia CD from around 2003–2006, please let me know. I would be very interested in examining it, or in getting access to an ISO image for historical and technical analysis.
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What you’re doing is a great idea, I hope you succeed!
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Thank you! I’ve wanted to do this for almost ten years. In 2018 I managed to extract parts of the map and some textures, but my technical knowledge and reverse-engineering skills were still too limited.
McCormick’s Content of Oblivion project was also a big inspiration. I had been a silent reader of PCF for years, but eventually something clicked. Nobody had fully rebuilt the old world, so I thought: if I don’t try, perhaps nobody will.
Then, in April this year, YouTube randomly recommended the old Project Entropia soundtrack. In May I stopped circling around the idea and started working on it seriously.
I’m now at a fairly advanced stage. If progress continues, I should soon have the first playable demo with the original terrain, converted models, textures and animations. You’ll be able to walk around and explore the world roughly as it once was. Mobs will take longer, as they require much more research. Having the old files is only the beginning. 
Veteran players often say that PE was difficult and grindy, but it was still enjoyable. Even after hours of grinding, you could finish the day feeling that you had achieved something.
That feeling seems to be disappearing from modern EU. The real-cash economy should not be an excuse for turning a game into a second job. Games are supposed to be played and enjoyed. Work is where we earn money…
_________
Hey McCormick, if you ever read this… thank you for all the videos, forum posts and old PE content you shared over the years. Somewhere in the world I’m rebuilding, there will be a small monument dedicated to one of the most devoted fans of that old Brave New World.
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By a lucky coincidence, I also found a 2008 ISO with a complete game installation, and managed to obtain a local copy of the 2003 installer as well.
MindArk changed many of the file extensions over the years, added a lot of new data, but also removed quite a few older files. While digging deeper and loading more objects into the renderer, I came across several interesting 3D test assets. It looks like the developers were experimenting with buildings, unusual structures and some rather strange monuments.
That reminds me of a wacky idea I had: installing arcade machines running Project Entropia inside Entropia Universe ! 
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Funny you mention that, because I have already made a few rather surprising discoveries.
After obtaining an original 2003 installation ISO, I found assets that appear to come from the beta period. I have also managed to extract many models and animations from the old game files.
It is clear that the people at MindArk put a huge amount of work into the game. There are numerous models, animations and experimental objects that, as far as I can tell, were never actually used in the released world.
It would be a shame to leave all of that forgotten on an old disc.
Once the reconstructed world becomes a little more playable, it might be fun to give some of those forgotten creations a second life. 
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A small and honest progress update.
At this point, I would say the whole project is around 35% complete.
For a first proper playable demo, I am probably closer to 55–60%. A complete and faithful reconstruction of Eudoria with its cities, buildings, objects, characters, creatures, animations, collisions and correct world placement is still closer to 25–30%.
The strongest part of the project is currently the world itself.
The original terrain data has been decoded and rebuilt into a verified 16-bit heightmap. The atmosphere, fog, lighting and sky are already working well. The terrain texture system has also been reconstructed, including the rather interesting way several textures were blended across individual terrain blocks.
The pipeline for extracting old NIF models, textures and some collision data is working too. A large number of environmental models have already been recovered and prepared for use.
So the technology and the data are in a fairly advanced state.
The actual game still needs much more work.
The biggest challenge is placing everything back in its correct location. I can recover a building, tree or object and see exactly what it looks like, but in many cases I still need to determine where it originally stood, how it was rotated and what scale was used.
The player character also needs more work: proper movement, terrain and object collision, camera behaviour, spawning and animations for walking, running and jumping. After that come creatures, combat and interaction systems.
Fortunately, trees are not a major blocker. In the original game you could walk through most of them, so the majority can remain visual-only. Proper collision is mainly needed for buildings, platforms, bridges and other important structures.
My next major goal is to finish one complete playable area most likely Port Atlantis or Twin Peaks with terrain, buildings, trees, atmosphere and a working character.
Once that is done, the project should make a fairly big jump from an impressive technical reconstruction into something that actually feels like a game again.
So the honest summary is the foundations are strong, much of old Calypso has already been recovered, but the colonists still have some time left to sleep aboard the ship.
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A small progress update.
| Area | Progress |
|---|---|
| Heightmap and terrain shape | 90–93% |
| Scale, orientation and terrain chunks | 88–92% |
| TDF structure | 75–80% |
| Terrain materials and masks | 65–70% |
| Original texture blending system | 35–45% |
| Water, vegetation and object placement | 10–55% |
My honest estimate is that I am currently around 58% of the way toward an accurate reconstruction of Eudoria.
The heightmap is almost finished. The scale, orientation and terrain chunks are working correctly, and the continent already has the right overall shape.
I have also confirmed that the original terrain blocks used several materials with small blending masks. The biggest challenge now is recreating exactly how Project Entropia layered those textures and produced detailed ground when viewed up close.
From a distance, the terrain already looks convincing. At ground level, however, some areas are still too soft because I am currently using a mostly baked terrain texture.
So, roughly speaking:
Heightmap: 92%
Visual terrain: around 60%
Complete world map with water, vegetation, buildings and placements: around 40%
The hardest geometric work is mostly done. The next major step is getting the original terrain-texture blending system working properly.
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One of the inspirations behind this project was the old Content of Oblivion forum thread and McCormick’s blog:
https://content-of-oblivion.blogspot.com/
I remember reading those posts about forgotten locations, removed features, unused assets and ideas that never made it into Project Entropia.
It showed just how much history was slowly disappearing. For years, a part of me kept thinking that somebody should try to preserve more than screenshots and memories.
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I am not entirely sure what was happening in the MindArk office back then, but apparently somebody thought this was funny.
The deeper I dig into these files, the more I feel that the developers had a rather unusual sense of humour.
Those are still in use in the game today, they are the wallpapers inside the apartments at Billton Towers
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That somehow makes it even better. I thought I had uncovered some hidden developer joke, but apparently it is just officia interior design Clearly apartment decorators were ahead of their time.
A little update from a different side of the project.
I have now started digging directly into the original 2003 client to understand how its terrain renderer actually worked. Instead of simply trying to imitate the old look, I am tracing the original Direct3D 8 code and following the path from terrain data to the final image on screen.
Today I found the first real texture-binding call inside the old renderer. The next challenge is locating the exact point where the terrain materials and their small blending masks were applied before each piece of ground was drawn.
It sounds like a tiny technical detail, but it is actually the difference between terrain that only resembles Eudoria from a distance and terrain that behaves and looks like the original world when standing on it.
At this stage I am no longer rebuilding only the map itself. I am slowly reconstructing the logic that once rendered it.
A small update from the last few days.
I am now trying to reconstruct the full path the original 2003 client used to build and display the terrain.
The terrain starts inside the old BNT archives. These archives contain thousands of small TDF terrain files. Each TDF stores a piece of Eudoria: its height data, terrain materials and small masks describing how those materials were blended together.
I already know how to extract these files and rebuild the continent from them. The next step is understanding what the original client did with that data after loading it.
The chain I am currently following looks roughly like this:
BNT archive → TDF file → height and material data → terrain manager → terrain blocks in memory → material system → Direct3D 8 renderer → final ground visible on screen.
During the last few days, I found direct references inside the original executable to TerrainManager, InitTerrain(), .tdf, BNT_C1, BNT_C2 and HeightPixels.
This is important because these names appear to connect the files I have already decoded with the actual terrain system inside the original game client.
I have also nearly finished mapping the general material and rendering system. I now understand most of the path used to prepare textures, material states and geometry for drawing.
The missing part is the final terrain-specific bridge: the code that takes the materials and masks from a TDF block, assigns them to the correct terrain geometry and sends everything to the renderer.
Once that connection is understood, I should be able to reproduce not only the shape of Eudoria, but also the way the original client layered and rendered its ground textures.
So at this point I am no longer only rebuilding the map from old files. I am slowly connecting the archives, terrain data, game objects and original renderer into one complete pipeline.
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all day working
A few words about my long-term plan for the project.
The first version will be completely offline. You will be able to install it, create a character, explore the reconstructed world and play locally without connecting to any server.
Later, I would like to add optional multiplayer support based on community-hosted servers. The idea is closer to the private-server scene around older MMORPGs: many independent servers rather than one central world controlled by me.
I would also like players to be able to move their character between compatible servers. The servers would exchange only gameplay information, such as the character profile, item IDs, equipment, PED balance and progression — not the original game assets.
The project itself is planned to be open source and available through GitHub, but the repository will not contain any original Project Entropia or Entropia Universe models, textures, sounds, executables or other MindArk files.
Players would need to provide their own original installation media or an existing installation from the relevant period, for example a 2003/2004 CD or the 2008 client files.
During setup, the application would ask for the location of the original game installation and then extract and convert the required assets locally on the player’s own computer. The files would remain on that computer and would not be uploaded to GitHub or distributed between players.
In simple terms:
GitHub provides the reconstructed engine, tools and game logic.
Your original Project Entropia installation provides the assets.
Everything is unpacked and prepared locally.
You can then play offline, or eventually connect to a compatible community server and play with friends.
This is still a long-term goal. For now, I am rebuilding the foundations one subsystem at a time: terrain, renderer, scene graph, models, characters, animation, inventory, interaction and finally networking.