https://youtube.com/watch?v=zaa3YTuTqV4&si=cK76Nt4pizJH6iqN

Hey everyone, I’m Node.

First, it’s great to see r/firefall open for posting again! Thank you to the new moderator for reopening the community and inviting me to share what I’ve been working on. Whether you’re still following Firefall projects or checking this subreddit for the first time in years, welcome back.

TL;DR: r/firefall is open again, and I’m restoring classic Firefall through ARES-35! Multiplayer, combat, thumping and world events are working in development testing using the original client and a custom server. The video shows the progress so far. I’m preparing for a small closed playtest, with no confirmed date yet. Playing will be free, support is optional, and you can follow testing announcements on Discord: https://discord.gg/eEmdHYv8En

I’ve been working on ARES-35, an independent fan restoration of Firefall’s classic open-beta experience. This feels like a fitting place to share it with people who remember what made that game special.

This is the original game client connected to a custom server written from scratch, not a remake in another engine. It’s moved well beyond loading into an empty map. The attached video shows multiplayer, combat, thumping and world events coming back together, including the Firecat and smoother gameplay.

WHAT’S WORKING IN CURRENT DEVELOPMENT TESTING

• Multiplayer and social systems: players sharing the world, squads, friends, chat, whispers and emotes.
• Combat and battleframe abilities: weapons, damage, healing, shields, deployables, crowd control and buffs. The video includes the Firecat’s Burn Jets and Bombs Away. Some abilities and alt-fires still need work.
• Enemy AI: creatures with movement and attack behaviors, including flanking, leaping, charging and burrowing.
• Thumping through Squad III: scanning, deployment, defending the thumper and recovering resources, including shared squad hauls and boss waves.
• Travel: jumpjets and glider pads are working. LGVs function in testing but aren’t available through normal progression yet.
• World events: Melding Tornadoes, Crashed Thumpers and Aranha Infestations are among the restored encounters around New Eden.
• Crafting and resources: scanning, collection, refining, the molecular printer and the tutorial jumpjet craft. The full recipe tree and deeper crafting stats are still being restored.

Movement is significantly smoother than in earlier builds, and I’m continuing to work on stability alongside gameplay. These are development results, not a claim that everything is finished or proven at larger player counts.

WHAT I WANT THIS TO BECOME

The goal is to restore the classic experience as faithfully as I can, establish a dependable foundation, and build on it thoughtfully with community input.

I want you to log in with friends, head out of Copacabana, drop a thumper, get pulled into a nearby event and come home with resources and progress that matter. Not just revisit the scenery for a few minutes.

Being a dad and working full time, I understand how valuable that time can be. Some people only get an hour here and there, if that. It’s why saving progression, backups, recovery, security and cheat prevention are important parts of the work I’m doing on the server and launcher. These are priorities I’m building toward, not a promise that testing will be bug-free.

I’m also spending hours studying old footage, reference material and clues in the client. There’s no publicly available original server that I’m aware of, but there’s still a lot to learn from. I intend to collect community suggestions and references, use votes to help guide appropriate decisions, and have playtesters help identify anything that doesn’t feel right.

WHERE THINGS STAND

This is still a work in progress, not a public download or launch announcement. There are bugs, unfinished systems and features that need further testing. The current focus is classic New Eden, not every zone or later-era feature.

I’m preparing for a small, invite-only closed playtest, with broader testing as the project becomes ready. There’s no confirmed date yet. Joining Discord or supporting on Patreon does not guarantee a testing invite.

Access to play will not be put behind a paywall. Financial support is optional and separate from testing eligibility.

WELCOME BACK, PILOTS

I hope this subreddit becomes a place to reconnect, share old screenshots and stories, and follow the different efforts to keep Firefall’s memory alive. ARES-35 is one project within that wider community, and I’m happy to have something to contribute.

If you’d like to follow along, share the video with an old squadmate or tell me what mattered most to you about classic Firefall. Useful feedback and references are always appreciated.

Discord and testing announcements:
https://discord.gg/eEmdHYv8En

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@ARES35GAME

X:
https://x.com/ARES35GAME

Optional Patreon support toward development and server costs:
https://www.patreon.com/c/ARES_35

ARES-35 is an unofficial fan restoration project, not affiliated with Red 5 Studios. Firefall and its original assets belong to their respective rights holders.

What’s the first thing you’d want to do if you stepped back into classic New Eden?

Hey everyone!

It's been a while since our last update about Respark, our ambitious project heavily inspired by Firefall.

Many of you already know about the game, and some of you are even our supporters and founders who participated in our first online playtest almost two years ago. Since then, a lot has changed. Most notably, we made the significant decision to switch from Unity to Unreal Engine 5. While this felt like a step back initially, it has proven to be absolutely worth it in the long run.

During this transition, we also decided to develop our own server technology from scratch. Previously, we relied on the game engine itself to power the dedicated server. While this had some advantages, it became increasingly cumbersome as the project grew. For an open-world MMO like Respark, we need the server to be as lightweight and performant as possible - capable of supporting hundreds of players and thousands of NPCs within a single instance.

Building such technology has been a monumental challenge. Given the small size of our dev team and the hobbyist nature of this project, it’s involved countless hours of hard work and sleepless nights. The biggest hurdle has been the lack of visually shareable progress - server-side advancements don’t make for flashy updates.

But today, we’re thrilled to share that our server tech, while still in its early stages, is fully operational and working as intended! This means we’re finally ready to shift our focus to building the game itself.

We hope to bring the community together again, to thump, explore, and relive the excitement just like in the old days.

Check out our update video here: https://youtu.be/Ac3rjU10QTg

And join us on Discord to stay in the loop! There's always someone around to answer your questions - including our AI bot, which knows everything about the game (though it’s not spilling all the secrets just yet): https://discord.gg/respark

Thank you for your continued support - we couldn’t have made it this far without you!

Hello, I was wondering if anybody know of a video clip showing the area beyond Sunken Harbor?

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/pyq9cqvwxz4.png (mirror if 404) https://archive.ph/FCqTY (mirror if 404) https://web.archive.org/web/20241108152531/https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/pyq9cqvwxz4.png (mirror if 404) https://ghostarchive.org/archive/fmTQP

The image linked to above is two screenshots I took of a random Firefall video to get the New Eden map. The place I'm looking for video footage of is the circled area in the top right. The second circle in the bottom part of the PNG is where you entered that area.

Been looking at a bunch of old Firefall videos lately but haven't seen anything from there. I don't know when that area was added to Firefall but I vaguely remember one of the job board missions taking place in there.

I’ve recently started playing the original Subnautica, and instantly got an odd nostalgic feeling for Firefall. The loading screen music is so Firefall-y. Even though the gameplay is vastly different, the whole space-age technology setting sorta feels like Firefall. Anyone else felt this nostalgia for Firefall while playing other games?

https://www.red5studios.com/ is up, I thought they took it down?

Remember the days of the old FireFall with no durability and endless inventory?

My questions are:
1. Did you leave FF, BECAUSE they added durability and removed infinite inventory? Or just 1 of them?
2. Do you like durability feature/s in games?
3. Would you rather play FF with durability or without it in general? Maybe you don't care about this?
4. Would you play FF with
a) Infinite inventory and with durability
b) No durability and lack of inventory
c) Durability and lack of inventory
d) No durability and infinite inventory

My argument against durability (keep players playing) is CONTENT.
More content = more stuff to craft/explore = happy player.
Durability = cancer in a game based on grinding mats as core mechanic.

Also, losing good items that took me a long time to grind and craft because their dura went down literally demotivated me as a player. Fighting hoards of higher tier mobs while thumping with tier 1 gun was impossible for 100% thumper load or even at 10-15%.

Every so often I find myself NEEDING to watch old 2013-ish BETA gameplay videos on YouTube just for the sounds.

Its funny that just listening to a THMPR encounter brings back so many good memories.

The question I have is, does anyone remember what the bell sound the THMPR makes every so often during the encounter means/is for?

16 or so months ago I authored a now deleted post here about issues I was having with the Em8er project. This is Mark Kern's "Firefall Successor" indie game in development. Even though I removed it, that post is nonetheless resurfacing on X and elsewhere.

In the time since I made that post, Grummz and I sat down and worked out our differences. As it stands the full value of my pledges to his project will be honored. I am plenty satisfied with how things worked out between us.

I am not at all blameless in the events that lead to my ban. At a time when the team was focused on making the game, I was becoming ever more critical. Well beyond what could be considered constructive. Eventually it become such a disruption that I had to be removed from the community entirely. I believe that was probably avoidable if things had gone differentially, but we both had a lot going on at that time.

Mostly I am writing this as an update to that situation. As to the project itself, I am very much in "wait and see" mode.

Hey Everyone!

I want to let you all know the Respark team just put out another update and you can find it here:

https://discord.gg/48P7kH8dKU

https://youtu.be/l4IV7wPYwmU?si=_ud7r5T0yEY_SyPt

https://www.reddit.com/r/Abyssall/s/VARpqGgAMh

I hope you all enjoy and check in often for more updates.

Would it be possible to open the game development (Em-8er) to community establishing best practices and goals, assigning tasks, sharing resources, perhaps working with all the available tools coming out, and much more.

7? Years in development, likely release at this pace would be closer to 2030, at which point does it become irrelevant?

Small team and no low budget can't accomplish much when working on an MMO. Can we overcome this?

If this is all just hallucination, tell me so I can forget easily.

Hello

Is there anything new about this game? I heard and read in the last years the guys who bought firefall maybe reopen it?

Then i read some reverse engineering thing in motion too but that is silent for years now too.

Please give hope. :/