Bringing Back a Vanilla Server

If you've looked for a Cube World Alpha server recently, you'll know the situation: there's essentially one server left, and it's PvP-only. No vanilla world, no PvE, nothing like what the game was in 2013.

I've been working on changing that.

The server runs on cuwo, the open-source Cube World server originally written by matpow2. What makes cuwo special is that it doesn't try to recreate the game's world generation, it runs the original generator itself. Terrain, dungeons, loot, creatures: all produced by the game's own code, exactly as it was. Nothing approximated, nothing invented.

The catch is that cuwo hasn't been maintained since 2018, and software that old doesn't just run on a modern machine. Getting it working again meant real code changes and I did that work with the help of an AI assistant, which turned what would have been weeks of digging into a couple of days. Long-running servers used to have a nasty habit of dying after a few hours. That was the problem that killed my own server back in 2017, and it's the one I most wanted to solve.

As of this week: the server builds, runs, and generates authentic terrain. Along the way a number of bugs and long-standing warnings have been fixed, and it's been up continuously without issue. A real client has connected and played on it.

There's still work to do before launch, and more posts to come. If you still have an alpha client and you're interested in playing, keep an eye on this thread.

Progress update: an old bug fixed, two new features, and one still hiding

Passive abilities work now

Passive class abilities, the Fire Mage's aura and its equivalents on the other classes, have been broken on cuwo for years. A developer called coremaze worked out the cause and published a fix back in 2020, then asked for someone with a live server to test it. As far as I can tell, nobody ever did, and it sat there unused for six years.

I had a live server, so we tried it. It works.

As with the rest of this project, the code side was done with an AI assistant. My part was mostly running things, testing, and deciding what was worth doing.

Two new features

Timed announcements : Server messages on a set interval, either in order or shuffled so the same one doesn't come up twice in a row.

Vote rewards : Vote for the server on Cubeworld-servers.com and you get an item in game. The rewards are weighted, so the good ones stay rare. Based on Votifier, like Minecraft.

The item duplication bug is still open

Two people have reported in the past on cuwo github that mob drops reappear a few seconds after being picked up. I haven't been able to reproduce it so far.

Rather than keep guessing, the server now records what happens every time an item is picked up or dropped. If the bug does occur while someone is playing, it gets captured rather than lost. With that data in hand, it should finally be possible to fix it properly.

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More to come. If you still have an alpha client and you're interested in playing, keep an eye on this thread.

DarkCubes is now live

DarkCubes opened to the public on 28 July. The website is online and players can now connect using the original 2013 Cube World Alpha client.

The goal is simple: bring back a stable, vanilla PvE server for Cube World Alpha.

Server address: cw.darkcubes.net

No custom launcher, patch, or mod pack is required. Enter the address using the original Alpha client and play.

The first players have arrived

The server has welcomed its first public players, including several connected at the same time.
These early sessions are valuable because they test the server under real conditions. Players explore differently from automated test clients, visit unexpected areas, and use systems in ways that are difficult to predict in advance.

So far, the server has remained stable, and no major issue has interrupted normal gameplay.

Continued improvements

Work on the revived cuwo codebase has continued since the server opened.

Various parts of the server have been corrected or improved, including networking, entity updates, configuration handling, and general compatibility with modern systems.

Performance has also been improved, with lower CPU usage during normal gameplay and testing. The focus is not on making unnecessary changes to the original server. Improvements are limited to stability, performance, security, and features needed to operate a reliable public server.

Security and reliability

Several security and reliability issues have been found and corrected during the review of the old cuwo codebase.

Additional fixes are still being tested before they are added to the public server. This work is an important part of reviving a server project that had not received an official update since 2018.

Smaller changes

Night now passes eight times faster, reducing its duration from around 42 minutes to approximately seven minutes. The original day and night cycle remains, but players no longer have to spend so long exploring in near-total darkness.

Several smaller issues have also been fixed, including problems with announcement timers and the live server status system.

What comes next

DarkCubes is now open, but development is continuing.

The next stage is to keep testing cuwo under real gameplay conditions, fix problems as they appear, and improve the server without changing the original Cube World Alpha experience.

AI has been used extensively to analyse, repair, and modernise the code.

If you still have the original Cube World Alpha client and want to explore its world again, connect to: cw.darkcubes.net