Sam SungandClaude Opus 5.5
2f323ff0b3
Part of #41: the second of five `benilla-app` pieces. This one is the UI windows: chat, the NPC windows (gossip, merchant, trainer, taxi, bank, mail, auction, quest giver), the unit, party, raid and aura feeds, the action bar, bags, tooltips, macros, the spellbook, the world map and the smaller panels. Their comments are rewritten to the rule in `docs/METHOD.md`, which is what the code does and the reference fact behind it, in a line. 26,648 comment lines become 9,221. Fixes #98. - **The mechanical strip.** The citations that were only a private record number go first, and each edit is shown to be a pure removal. - **Wrong facts corrected.** The rewrite corrects the comments that stated wrong facts. Among them: - Several client addresses carried a `0x400000` slip (`UPDATE_MACROS` is `0x852460`, not `0x452460`; the macro store's globals likewise). - `QUEST_WATCH_UPDATE` carries the quest-log row (`0x4df880` scans the log table at `0xbb71c0`), not a watch-list position. - The stock `ChatFrame_DisplayTimePlayed` now ships, so benilla's own `/played` lines duplicate it (#194); trainer refusals are logged, not shown on the error line; the player's cast result is `SMSG_CAST_RESULT`. - Stock FrameXML and `Blizzard_*` line citations are checked against the stock 1.12 files, and vmangos line citations against the vmangos revision nearest the one the local server runs. - Dozens more turned up on the way: docs sitting on the wrong item, removed functions, stale counts, broken intra-doc links. - One test comment in `ui_script/questlog_tests.rs`, which landed with #184, carried the same watch-index slip and gets the same fix. - **Deviation labels.** "Deviation:" now marks only a choice with a reason. An unbuilt behaviour, or one whose reference side is untraced, says so plainly. - **Verification.** Every file strips to identical code, and `cargo fmt --check` is clean. Six second readers compared every file old against new, restored the facts the rewrite had dropped, and checked each new citation against the code, the stock files, vmangos and the reference. Behaviour differences the rewrite surfaced are filed as their own issues (#188, #204, #222 and #259 among them). The comments here state what the code does. String literals are untouched; they are #92. 🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
benilla plays the whole game: character creation, questing and professions, dungeons and raids, battlegrounds and honor, groups, guilds, trade, mail and the auction house, on the stock 1.12 interface and with your addons. It connects to a 1.12.1 server over the original protocol and reads the game's data from your own 1.12.1 install. Every file format, the network protocol and the interface engine are written from scratch, with no original client code, no third-party WoW crates and no bundled game assets.
What's inside
- Formats: readers for the whole asset stack (the MPQ patch chain, BLP, DBC, ADT, WDT, WDL, M2 and WMO), wired into Bevy as an asset source.
- World: terrain streamed out to the horizon, portal-culled buildings with interior lighting, doodads and ground clutter, swimmable water, sky and weather, and the client's own day/night lighting, fog and gamma.
- Models: GPU-skinned M2s with the full animation controller, particles, ribbons and the spell visuals, and characters end to end: customization, the armor composite, weapons with their enchant glows, forms, stealth and mounts.
- Movement: 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 and the object mirror into the ECS, covering the game from movement and chat through combat, spells, groups and raids, quests, trade, mail, the auction house and battlegrounds.
- Interface: a FrameXML and Lua engine that runs the stock 1.12 interface off your install's patch chain, and third-party 1.12 addons: Questie, pfUI, Bagnon, Bartender2 and most others run. By choice, the options window and the ESC menu follow the Classic Era client's rather than 1.12's.
- Audio: music, ambience and effects under the client's own selection and crossfade rules, with interior and underwater transitions and zone reverb.
The format readers and the UI engine core are plain Rust with no Bevy in them, and the world
renderer runs with no game attached. docs/MAP.md maps every crate and subsystem,
generated from the code.
Status
Complete and fully playable. What is left:
- The long tail of small features that separates a working client from a finished one, tracked as issues.
- Addons, options and performance, ongoing.
benilla is a faithful 1.12.1 client and the foundation people build on. There are no prebuilt downloads: a packaged build, a particular server's changes or anything 1.12.1 never had belongs in a fork, and forks are welcome. GitHub lists every public fork.
Not planned: other expansions or client versions, Warden (anticheat).
Running it
benilla builds and runs on macOS, Linux and Windows. You need:
- An English 1.12.1 client (build 5875) for the game data. benilla only reads it.
- A 1.12.1 server with Warden off. vmangos is what development runs against, and it ships with Warden off; cMaNGOS and the other 1.12.1 cores speak the same protocol.
- Stable Rust and a C compiler, because the client's Lua is built from source: on macOS the Xcode command line tools, on Linux the ALSA and udev development packages and pkg-config, on Windows the MSVC build tools that the Rust installer sets up.
WOW_DATA=/path/to/WoW/Data cargo run --release -p benilla
WOW_DATA names the install's Data folder; a link to the install named WoW at the repo root
does the same. The server defaults to localhost:3724, the stock auth port. Point WOW_HOST at
another (WOW_HOST=play.example.com, or play.example.com:5000 for a remapped port), or set it
from the Realmlist button on the login screen, which remembers it. Credentials go in at the login
screen, or set WOW_USER and WOW_PASS to skip it.
Settings, screenshots and addons live in benilla-config/ at the repo root: a 1.12 addon goes in
benilla-config/AddOns/. docs/CONTRIBUTING.md has the rest, from the
player build to the tests.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are open. docs/CONTRIBUTING.md says what gets
in and how a change is judged. Bugs, questions and ideas are welcome on the
Discord too.
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, and the stock interface runs off its FrameXML at
runtime. The few files under crates/benilla-app/assets/ui/ are our own, not copies of it:
adapters over stock files, and the settings windows and script error log benilla draws itself.
World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Our own code is licensed under
MIT or Apache 2.0, at your option. The two vendored components
under third_party/, the kira audio engine and a Lua 5.1 patched to the 1.12 client's dialect,
keep their own upstream licenses, alongside each.