- the world froze on every resize or graphics change: the backdrop was resized by writing a fresh image through the existing handle, and a mutated `Image` is a whole new GPU texture while a material's bind group is captured once and never re-captured — so the camera drew into a texture the UI never sampled, and the last frame stretched over the window forever; a resized world target is now a NEW asset (publish, retire the old one, and the UI pass forgets materials for removed images so a window drag does not leak a 46 MB target per frame), and a resized capture now matches the native render bit for bit - terrain tile layer arrays take the DXT blocks when the tile's whole layer set allows it — one array has one format, so eligibility is the tile's, not a texture's — and the install's own census says narrow is enough: 87 % of Azeroth's tiles and 92 % of Kalimdor's pass, layer bytes 1.57 GB → 0.63 and 2.23 → 0.76; the decode-tax comment is corrected on the way past — decoding costs 8x DXT1's bytes and 4x DXT3/DXT5's, not 4x and 2x - Environment Detail is the reference's slider, not a dropdown — row 27 of 1.12's own slider table, with the readout keeping the stop names because a bare "1" means nothing to a player — and the shipped ground cover comes off High to Medium: the x3 clutter density had been matched to a configured install, and Medium is the nearest stop no sparser than what a fresh install draws on capable hardware - Display Mode is modern Classic's two-entry dropdown — Windowed (Fullscreen) / Windowed, a boolean at Blizzard's own source, where the three-mode list is pre-8.0.1 folklore — riding `gxWindow` so saved configs keep meaning, with the label-against-value polarity pinned by the row's first test; the Multisampling row comes off the Graphics page for now (the CVar, the device clamp and the bindings all stay): with alpha-to-coverage set nowhere, MSAA touches polygon silhouettes only, and render scale on the same page measures four times the visual change 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 — 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.
Not built yet
Battlegrounds. Third-party addons are partial: AtlasLoot and Bagnon run, and the addon API fills in as other addons are tried.
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.