Hi all,

 

First thing I remember was the way we (Ciara and I) got into playing Spellborn.

It must have been a few months before Acclaim has put it into free to play mode because there was a level cap of 7 and later lvl 10 if I remember right.

I found the european client via the download website of gamershell.com, not knowing the fact that the european servers were allready down at that time.

I tried several things to get the game going, but didn't get further then starting it up and not being able to login.

 

It kept me searching for a working Spellborn client and at a certain moment I found the US Publisher for Spellborn had a different client download available.

having read something like IP ranges not being able to login into this client version made me worry it wouldn't work again, but it was a succes this time.

I could play my first few levels and liked the way the artists did the graphics, the music that felt like a surrounding blanket in which you would be during gameplay.

The way the music adapted to the area and fight or rest situation was something usefull to me.

 

Off course the level cap for several newly started characters was soon reached and it made me to want to play more and at higher lvl.

We went into our town centre and found that both the Free Record Shop and Bart Smit had the boxed version of Spellborn available.

The box at Bart Smit was on sale and it contained the cd and art-booklet and 90 days of free gameplay.

Due to the fact that Ciara liked the game as well we bought two of those boxes to be able to play with and against eachother.

 

At that time I was still playing on a trial account and could play a few more days this way before I needed to enter the 90 days key.

Now the funny ( or tragic) thing happened: The game went free to play at that time.

In other words I never got the chance to enter the game code's to see if they worked and spent the money on the game boxes which are now a bit of collectors item.

 

Now we both were able to play beyond level cap and it was great fun, new quests and area's to go through and it did take a while to get to level 50.

Being a member of the international guild and using the ventrilo server made it easier to get in contact with other players and in time of need others would help.

 

One of the great things was the SpellbornDB website where the information about the quests could be found.

 

I leveled a few chars up to lvl 50 and since there was no real way to start over with the same char I made several accounts for storing items and playing in different houses and guilds,

some just to see the chat going on.

 

I guess my WhoWannaKnow char might be known for that.

 

Then came the period where the problems with the servers started, sometimes the PVP server was down, then I played at the PVE server, or the other way around.

Also the times where you had to change your password each time via the Acclaim website before logging into the game, otherwise you couldn't play.

 

Begging for some support didn't seem to help and I guess that was about the time of Acclaim being bought by Playdom.

 

The Spellborn servers were still up and running and we could play, so not really worried about the game we just enjoyed the fun and time to spend there.

 

Next step was the overtake of Playdom by Disney, soon after that the servers were powered down and the it was over with the fun.

 

The company of Disney was deaf to the petition signed by the players to keep at least one server running and the contacts we made with some of the Original team

members told us we wouldn't be able to get things going again and they couldn't help since there was still the copyright active.

 

Having good memories of the game I kept the client files and after a certain while began to do some research in the way things are stored in the packages.

It all started with the sound files and with the Acordero Delphi code I could make some adjustments in order to read in the Spellborn files.

 

Comparing the way the Original UT2004 packages were build up and the way the Spellborn files were done gave me a certain way to rewrite the files into a format

which could be read by the UT2004 editor. In other words I could hear and see the items from which the game has been build with.

 

A few things didn't work straight out of the box (my program) and needed manual editing in the files.

There were problems with the pointer sizes and some things had to be deleted to be able to read in the files with UT2004.

 

Soon I found out together with Acid that the map files and the character mesh and animation files were the ones giving problems.

 

This has to do with the fact of the changes in the core and engine files of Spellborn.

The scripts contained in the packages have extra things that are not available with the standard UT2004 files.

 

Allready for a longer period I'm trying to get my thingers behind the way the character mesh and animation files are build up So I can add that part into

my rewrite program. I gave it few tries but so far no real succes.

 

I would say I'll keep you all posted, Still in    with the game.

 

Greetings Jan-Willem