SamandClaude Fable 5
3d0bc38978
- an incoming trade request is answered by the reference's eight-leg ladder, not by reflex — before, `CMSG_BEGIN_TRADE` went back the same frame it decoded, so any player in range could put a window on your screen mid-cinematic, mid-loading, while mind-controlled, at an auctioneer, or from your own ignore list; three legs answer with something other than "busy" (the ignore list sends `CMSG_IGNORE_TRADE`, two legs send no packet at all), Block Trades ships as the CVar and options row it is in 1.12 with its refusal on the chat line the catalog says, and the consent popup that was built came back out — 1.12 signals the trade dialog from nowhere, so asking first would be a divergence every player and addon feels, and the reference's answer to an unwanted trade is already in the ladder - the client's message catalog ships as a generated table instead of being read by eye: every refusal, notice and confirmation goes through one dispatcher taking only a message id into a 465-record registry, benilla names 163 of the keys, and the surface does not follow the key names — the byte-exact sweep settles 170 chat / 28 yellow / 267 red, none on the console arm, with the skill-up trio speaking CHAT_MSG_SKILL rather than system; a message's surface now comes from its record, not its call site, which found `ERR_SPELL_FAILED_NOTUNSHEATHED` painted red where the client paints it yellow (seventeen of our eighteen cast-fail overrides are red; that one is not, and nothing downstream could have known which id the dispatch chose) — and a new test walks the workspace's own source asserting every `ERR_` literal is a real catalog row, because an unresolvable key shows NOTHING and nobody files a bug about a toast they never saw - starting an attack stands you up — the stand sits after the reference's attackability cluster and before any range logic, so an attackable target out of reach stands you, a friendly NPC does not, and re-issuing an attack you are already making stands you too; the rest of the intended build is proven unnecessary rather than deferred: bare ground cannot stand you on any client (its two requirements are mutually exclusive in both CVar configurations), gossip is proven not to stand, and the loot leg is unproven and left alone - a kick returns you to the login screen again instead of the client reconnecting indefinitely and taking the account back off whoever kicked it: "nobody is here" is DECLARED now, never inferred — the login environment variables answer "log in without waiting for someone to type", which cannot answer "is anybody here?", so a run acts unattended only on `$WOW_UNATTENDED` (implied by a capture or rig run), with the doubt deliberately falling toward a loud probe timeout over a silent account fight; and the player-tests gate finally resolves the install that sourcing FrameXML off the chain has required, instead of failing red for its own reasons on any shell without `$WOW_DATA` exported Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <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.