SamandClaude Fable 5.1
0e83531e8c
- your shadow no longer reads through the Stranglethorn river or the Stormwind mage-tower portal (in the reporter's own shot the crocolisk casting it was invisible under the surface and its shadow was not): the reference draws the blob shadow in PHASE 1 among the opaque drains (`0x6812c5`), before the footprints, the M2 opaque pass, the water surfaces and both M2 transparent passes — ours rode a +4096 sort rung above the whole world band (item 81 of the sorted transparent phase, now item 4); the footprints and the ground-target reticle move with it into a pre-water decal band at their own byte-known slots, and the print/shadow order was inverted too — the reference draws a print one slot AFTER the shadow - the ping meter was measuring a client frame, not the server: the RTT was computed in the ECS drain, one frame or more after the pong had landed, so it read high exactly when the client was slow — the world-enter hitches inflated the first sample by hundreds of ms and the 30 s averaging ring carried it for minutes, a meter that opens at ~600 ms and sinks toward the truth over two or three minutes, as reported; the read thread measures where the packet lands now, the way `OnData 0x537b10` hands `SMSG_PONG` to `HandlePong 0x537d60` inline, the ring is 15 usable slots not 16, the average is the reference's unsigned truncating divide, and the keepalive is per-connection from the last SEND, so the first ping is a full 30 s after world enter instead of anywhere inside the load storm; localhost reads 0–3 ms where it read 58 - an extra bar's empty slot no longer loses its hotkey label (E/R/C showing in one screenshot and not the next): one line left behind by the slice that shipped the multibars with no bindings cleared the corner outright, which became a wipe of a live label the day those wells got real `MULTIACTIONBAR` bindings — painted by `UPDATE_BINDINGS`, wiped by the next repaint; the empty arm repaints the corner now, as the reference's `ActionButton_Update` never touches the text there, pinned by a test that drives the reporter's shape through the real shipped `ActionBar.xml` - an unattended probe run opened focused and borderless over the director's work — `WOW_UNATTENDED` joins the background-window prefixes — and the world-API wall was measuring a prefix of every file: a `#[cfg(test)]` guard switched the scan off from the first test module to the end of the file, so the ceiling moves 166 → 172 as a measurement correction, not six crossings Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Important
Issues and pull requests are closed here. benilla is a solo project developed in a private tree; this repo is its export, published as squashed snapshots, so a PR here has nothing to land on. The best way to contribute is to join the Discord and report the bugs you find. Questions and ideas are welcome in the same place.
benilla speaks the original 1.12.1 protocol, so it connects to any server the real client could, and reads its game data at runtime from your own 1.12.1 install. Every file format and the network protocol are implemented from scratch, with no original client code, no third-party WoW crates, and no bundled game assets.
What works
- Formats: readers for the full asset stack (MPQ patch chain, BLP, DBC, ADT/WDT/WDL, M2, WMO), wired into Bevy as an asset source.
- World: streamed terrain out to the horizon, portal-culled WMOs with interior lighting, doodads and ground clutter, swimmable liquids, sky and weather, and the client's own day/night lighting, fog and gamma passes.
- Models: GPU-skinned M2s with the full animation controller, a near feature-complete particle system, ribbons, and animated gameobjects from doors to lifts.
- Characters: customization end to end, the armor texture composite, weapons with sheathing and enchant glows, shapeshift forms, stealth and mounts.
- Movement: a WoW-feel controller, networked movement in both directions, the server-granted modes from slow fall to roots, a follow camera with collision, boats, zeppelins and taxi flights.
- Networking: SRP6 auth through world-session crypto, the object mirror into the ECS, and live wire coverage from movement and chat through spells, party, quests, mail, trade, vendors, bank, loot, the auction house and PvP honor.
- UI: a from-scratch FrameXML + Lua engine driving the built-in interface, from the login and
character screens through the full HUD, the classic windows (guild, macros and key bindings
included), chat, nameplates, floating combat text and tooltips; third-party addons load from
a
benilla-config/AddOns/folder beside the executable (partial: AtlasLoot and Bagnon run, see below). - Combat: melee on the faithful swing law, ranged and Auto Shot, casting with GCD and cooldowns, combo points, crowd control that really holds you, and the spell visual pipeline.
- Audio: music, ambience and SFX under the client's own selection and crossfade rules, with interior and underwater transitions and zone reverb.
Where it's going
benilla is done when a 1.12.1 player can do everything here that they could in the original client, it looks and feels the same, and it runs from a download on Windows, Linux and macOS. No dates; the order is what is likely, not a promise.
- Battlegrounds and meeting stones, then the long tail of small features that separates a working client from a finished one.
- Addons, options and performance, ongoing.
- The no-brainer fixes from VanillaFixes, SuperWoW and the like.
- Playable downloads for Windows, Linux and macOS. Linux first.
Not planned: other expansions or client versions, Warden (anticheat).
Running it
You need a 1.12.1 (build 5875) client install for game data, a vanilla server to connect to, and stable Rust. Any 1.12.1 core works; vmangos is what development runs against, and cMaNGOS and the rest speak the same protocol.
WOW_DATA=/path/to/WoW/Data cargo run --release -p benilla
The server defaults to localhost:3724, the stock realmd auth port. Point WOW_HOST
at any IP or hostname, appending the auth port if yours is remapped
(WOW_HOST=play.example.com:5000). Credentials go in at the login screen, or set WOW_USER /
WOW_PASS to skip it.
Early inspiration and file format guidance came from the wowemulation-dev community, and warcraft-rs in particular.
benilla is an independent fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment.
It ships no Blizzard content — no art, models, sounds, maps, MPQ contents or FrameXML; you
provide your own legally obtained 1.12.1 client. The interface code under
crates/benilla-app/assets/ui/ is ours, written to the client's own layout and API names so that
the windows look right and 1.12.1 addons find the names they expect.
World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Our own code is licensed under MIT or Apache 2.0, at your option.