A quick update
I know there have not been many new screenshots lately, but the project has definitely not stopped. Quite the opposite I have spent the last few days digging much deeper into the original 2003/2008 client.
The biggest progress is that I am finally starting to connect the terrain files I decoded earlier with the actual systems that used them in the game.
I found the path the client used to locate a TDF file, load it from a BNT archive, decompress it and pass the data further into the terrain system.
I have also mapped a large part of the old scene structure. The client kept separate branches for the sky, camera effects, terrain, static objects and animated objects. This is especially interesting because it may eventually lead me from the terrain system directly to buildings, trees, vegetation, creatures and other objects placed around the world.
The general material and rendering system is also now mostly understood. What I am still looking for is the last terrain-specific connection: how the height, materials and blending data stored in each TDF block became the final ground rendered by the original client.
I also took a closer look at the character files. There are hundreds of skinned models and a surprisingly large number of animation files, including many named animation sequences. I have put that part aside temporarily, because I want to finish the terrain before I start rebuilding the first proper character.
As for the missing screenshots: I did prepare a new terrain comparison, but the test revealed a couple of problems in my current runtime. Some texture variants were accidentally identical, and in a few cases the game was still loading the original baseline texture instead of the selected test version.
So the screenshots looked different in places, but I could not honestly prove whether the difference came from the texture, streaming, mipmaps or simply timing.
I would rather wait and show a real comparison than post something misleading.
Once the texture selection is fixed and I can confirm exactly what the runtime is loading, I will repeat the test from the same position, with the same camera, lighting and environment. Then I should finally have some new screenshots worth posting.
