I decided to write an open source implementation of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon‘s render and flight model.

So far, my goal is to write an open platform for further gameplay experiments.

I love Ace Combat series and want to be able to play it in the way I want. And I want to see the guts: solving mystery of how does it work will be my special pleasure in this project. I’m using PC version’s resources in development.

In short, the plan is:

Phase one:

• Initial game resources’ data structure research
• Basic renderer, to allow visual testing of flight model
• Flight model reconstruction, with aim to get it as close as possible to the original game

After this phase, prospects of the project will be much clearer.

Phase two:

• Clean code rewrite under MIT license
• Further resources’ formats research
• Advanced renderer, attempt to recreate original AH’s eye-candy graphics.

As long as I will not provide original AH resources in my releases and will not use disassembly to get original algorithms, I hope it will not violate original game creator’s license.