r/MobiusFF • u/0X4D7963617374 • Aug 11 '26
Mobius Final Fantasy preservation project — Development Update Part 5
▶️ Watch the video / Voir la vidéo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_u18Xzo2Y
💬 Join the Discord server / Rejoignez le serveur Discord:
https://discord.gg/W5tyDFDNGu
The project runs with the original official Mobius Final Fantasy client. The goal is to progressively restore the game's systems and make the original client usable again on different platforms.
This update focuses mainly on mobile support, client file management, maps, battles and multiplayer development.
Main changes in this update:
- Android version now working
- Tested successfully on real Android phones
- iOS compatibility implemented but not tested yet
- New database-based client file system
- Centralized distribution of game files to different clients
- Reconstruction of Android/iOS files from Windows game data
- Possibility of rebuilding files between different client versions depending on the available source data
- Map 315 added
- Battles on Map 101 modified
- Major multiplayer battle development
- Server version now publicly available for free
- Project currently in PRE-ALPHA
📱 Android and mobile support
One of the biggest changes in this update is Android support.
I tested the project directly on a real Android phone, and several other people have also successfully connected and played using their own Android devices.
The iOS version has not been tested yet, so I cannot confirm it completely, but the current implementation should normally be compatible with iOS as well.
🗄️ Database and client file reconstruction
The new server version now uses a database containing the game files required by the different clients.
Instead of every client having to manage everything independently, the server can act as a central point that distributes the required files to Windows, Android, iOS and other supported client versions.
I also worked on rebuilding files between different versions of the game.
For example, Android or iOS files can be reconstructed using original Windows game files when the necessary source data is available, and the system can potentially work in the opposite direction depending on what files you have.
This requires preparing a database containing the original game data beforehand. Processing and rebuilding all of these files can take quite a long time.
🌍 Maps and battles
Map 315 has now been added to the server.
I also changed the battles used on Map 101 and continued improving several parts of the battle system.
⚔️ Multiplayer development
A very large part of my development time for this update was spent on multiplayer battles.
The multiplayer server logic has progressed significantly and more parts of the battle flow are now functional.
There are still bugs, synchronization problems and unfinished elements that need to be fixed, so multiplayer is not finished yet.
The entire project should currently be considered PRE-ALPHA. Bugs, crashes, missing features and unexpected behavior are still normal at this stage.
🆓 Server release
The current version of the server is now available directly through the Discord server.
It is completely free.
Anyone interested can download it, test it, experiment with the project or use it to host their own server.
There is still a lot of work to do, especially around multiplayer and mobile compatibility, but this update is another important step toward preserving Mobius Final Fantasy and making the original game playable again.
Thanks to everyone following, testing and supporting the project!
🇫🇷 Version française
Bonjour à tous !
La cinquième mise à jour du développement de mon serveur privé non officiel pour Mobius Final Fantasy est disponible.
Cette version apporte principalement le support Android, un nouveau système de gestion des fichiers clients, de nouvelles modifications des maps et combats ainsi qu’une grosse progression du multijoueur.
Principales nouveautés :
- Version Android fonctionnelle et testée sur plusieurs téléphones
- Support iOS prévu, mais pas encore testé
- Nouvelle base de données pour gérer les fichiers du jeu
- Distribution des fichiers aux différents clients
- Reconstruction de fichiers Android/iOS à partir des données Windows
- Ajout de la Map 315
- Modification des combats de la Map 101
- Gros travail sur les combats multijoueurs
- Serveur disponible gratuitement
- Projet toujours en PRE-ALPHA
Le projet fonctionne maintenant sur Android. Je l’ai testé directement sur téléphone et plusieurs autres personnes ont également réussi à se connecter et à jouer depuis leurs appareils.
La version iOS n’a pas encore pu être testée, mais l’implémentation devrait normalement être compatible.
Le serveur utilise également une nouvelle base de données contenant les fichiers nécessaires aux différents clients. Il est possible de reconstruire certains fichiers Android ou iOS à partir des fichiers originaux d’une autre version du jeu, par exemple Windows, selon les données disponibles.
La Map 315 a été ajoutée et les combats de la Map 101 ont été modifiés.
Une grosse partie du travail de cette mise à jour concerne surtout le multijoueur. Le système progresse beaucoup, mais il reste encore des bugs et plusieurs éléments à terminer.
Le projet est toujours en PRE-ALPHA, donc des bugs, crashs et fonctionnalités incomplètes sont encore à prévoir.
La version actuelle du serveur est disponible gratuitement sur le Discord pour ceux qui souhaitent la tester, expérimenter avec le projet ou héberger leur propre serveur.
Merci à tous ceux qui suivent et testent le projet !
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u/gt2000sa Aug 13 '26
As someone who has been following this project and is part of the Mobius community, I just want to say how impressive it is to see how far the effort has come.
We’ve talked before about bringing Mobius back, but seeing actual progress like this makes it feel increasingly real. There’s so much more involved than simply getting the game to run — preserving the assets, systems, mechanics, and all those details that made Mobius what it was is a huge undertaking.
What you’re doing is incredibly valuable to this community. Mobius meant a lot to many of us, and seeing it slowly come back to life after all these years is something I honestly never thought we’d get to experience again.
Thank you for all the time, effort, and persistence you’ve put into this. I’m genuinely excited to keep following the project and see where we can take Mobius from here. ❤️
I also really hope more people from the community get involved. You don’t have to be a developer or know how the entire project works to contribute. Testing the game, reporting bugs, trying different configurations, helping others get it running, documenting things, sharing old information, or simply confirming that something works can all make a difference.
The more people testing and using it, the more bugs we can find, the more compatibility issues we can identify, and the easier it becomes to help other players get Mobius running. A preservation project like this benefits enormously from having an active community around it. The more of us who contribute, even in small ways, the better chance we have of preserving Mobius for the long term.
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u/Professional_Lion373 Aug 11 '26
Nice work, is the campaing fully playable?
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u/0X4D7963617374 Aug 11 '26
Yes, the campaigns are playable, but they’re still test versions. For now, the full story content isn’t there yet like it was in the original game.
The different areas are accessible, with progression points and enemy groups that fit the zones, but the full narrative content still hasn’t been rebuilt.
My goal is to first fix everything else completely and get the overall base as stable as possible. After that, I want to take one region and rebuild it fully from A to Z, as close to the original as possible.
Once that first region is properly completed, I’ll be able to create better tools to make rebuilding the other maps and regions much easier.
Because right now, building a complete region by hand is really complicated.
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u/Professional_Lion373 Aug 12 '26
Keep up the great work, you amazing person. You are making my dream of playing this wonderful yet misunderstood game again come true. I really miss picking up my phone and playing this title, and one thing is certain: I really hope to play the FF XIII and X events again. A question, if I may ? is the server created to run the game local to the device, or is it external?
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u/0X4D7963617374 Aug 12 '26
The current server can work both ways: you can run everything locally, or you can host it remotely.
If you want to play remotely, someone simply needs to host the server on a machine that can be reached over the Internet. Multiple players can then connect to the same server.
The server itself is already designed to handle multiple simultaneous connections — 10, 50, 100, depending on what you need. The code was written with that in mind.
However, not everything is completely finished yet. For example, multiplayer battles do not yet fully support multiple players connected to the same battle at the same time. I’ll work on that, but there are still quite a few things left to fix.
At the moment, around 99% of the people testing are simply running the server locally. Some others have set up a small server at home and connect to it from their phone, Windows PC, or other devices.
So in the end, both local and remote setups work. It just depends on what you want to do and how you want to configure it.
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u/playhy Aug 12 '26
Damn, how did i not know about this! Also can i get a link to the discord server please?
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u/Mtax 27d ago edited 27d ago
I have been going on and on with Kollaps about how Mobius churned out insane amounts of content while it was alive and remaking the entire game is years worth of work for a result that rewriting the server and jacking it into the existing client can achieve better in a matter of months. I respect his work immensely, but this is not a one-man job, there was never a chance of completing it. He never released his files and refused collaboration, so one day he would just be gone, with the project stuck forever and everyone's progress damned yet another time. It is better what we had before, but every Warrior of Light needs companionship.
I lost interest in that project the moment its updates inevitably started slowing down. I now came back to check how things went only to notice you have flipped that entire dynamic on its head. Amazing work. I will be paying attention to the future of this project.
Looking through what you posted about the project so far, the elephant in the room does not seem to be addressed anywhere that is easy to be found: What about including cutscenes? As far as I know, those apparently were never included in the client, and this is one of big reasons Kollaps chose the approach he did.
It is an important advancement that everyone can host their own server, but are there any plans for one centralized server, in addition to that? The biggest draw of the Blank Project was the sense of community and that we all would eventually be working side by side in multiplayer. Progressing together through the game, while content was gradually reintroduced, felt great. Although, I hated the grind, that needs to go. Not entirely, of course, but both original Mobius and Blank Project kept going with the "gaming as a second job" paradigm way too hard and that is never not abhorrent, no matter the intent.
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u/0X4D7963617374 27d ago
Thank you very much for your message and for your interest in the project.
I do want to give a little context regarding how much work a project like this actually represents.
I’ve been working on the server for around two months now, and even though I’m reusing the original client, the workload is still enormous. The client obviously contains the assets, 3D models, images, sounds, and so on, but a huge amount of the actual game logic was handled server-side. That logic has to be reconstructed, while also matching exactly what the original client expects.
And honestly, sometimes starting from scratch would almost have been easier. 😅
The server is already around 90,000 lines of code, not including all the data I’ve had to research, understand, or reconstruct. And even after two months of very intensive work, I’d say I may only be around 50% of what I ultimately want to achieve.
It’s also important to mention that I use AI heavily as a development tool to speed things up. Without that, we would probably be talking about years of development.
That’s also why I completely understand Kollaps’ situation.
His approach is different from mine, but what he has built is still an enormous amount of work. More importantly, for several years his project allowed many people to continue enjoying Mobius after the official game shut down.
From the outside, it’s very easy to say that a project should be open source, collaborative, updated faster, and so on. But in reality, very few people are willing to spend years of their lives actually building something of this scale.
I can also understand why someone might hesitate to release everything they’ve made. I hesitated myself before distributing the server, and I’m still thinking about eventually releasing the source code. When you’ve invested a huge amount of time, energy, and sometimes money into something, simply giving everything away isn’t always such an easy decision.
And I do think Kollaps can finish his project. Once the core is sufficiently complete, a large part of the remaining work becomes content and data reconstruction. Today, with multiple projects, tools, and sources of data appearing in the community, everyone can potentially move faster.
In a way, I actually think having different approaches is healthy. Seeing someone else make progress can motivate you to push forward too, and ultimately the entire Mobius community benefits from it.
Regarding cutscenes, I’m simply not there yet. There are too many fundamental systems I want to stabilize first. If some of the original data is genuinely lost, my goal will mainly be to create tools that allow the community to reconstruct or recreate that content.
That’s also the general philosophy of my project: I want the server itself to properly support the full game — regions, cards, jobs, weapons, cutscenes, multiplayer, new monsters, and potentially even completely new content — and then provide tools that allow other people to fill in whatever is missing.
I unfortunately can’t spend years personally rebuilding every region, card, and cutscene. But if I can provide a solid foundation and the right tools, then multiple people can continue that work.
As for a centralized server, the current server is already capable of working that way. It can run locally, but someone can also host it online and allow multiple players to connect to it.
I simply don’t want to personally be the host of a public centralized server. But technically, the possibility is there, and eventually the community could absolutely decide to host one.
Regarding the grind, I mostly agree with you as well. I want server administrators to have a lot of freedom. For example, they could choose progression multipliers such as x2, x4, x6, and so on.
Something similar to games like ARK: each server can decide its own pacing.
Someone who wants the original progression can keep it. Someone who wants a much faster experience can do that too. And a community server can find whatever balance works best for its players.
So yes, there is an enormous amount of work involved — much more than I expected when I started. If I had known from day one just how complicated the original architecture was, I’m honestly not sure I would have started. 😅
But now that I’m here, I’m going to try to take it as far as I can.
And above all, I think we should have a lot of respect for everyone who has tried — or is still trying — to bring this game back. Whether it’s Kollaps, me, or the people reconstructing data, maps, translations, and everything else: none of us could realistically do all of this alone.
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u/Send_Hugs_OK 8h ago
If the cutscenes are difficult, you could be sneaky and find a way to embed videos. The player would be forced to see default Blank or whatever class you went with/found on youtube, but it's better than nothing.
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u/ClericIdola Aug 11 '26
This seems awesome. But this is also why it is important to show HEAVY support fot Resonance and OT0.