SamandClaude Fable 5
6e3a67e039
- a corpse is a body you can hover, cursor and click: it enters the same ray pass as units with the winner switched on type at publish (the reference's own shape — one trace over every object), the cursor classifier is transcribed whole (lootable-by-me → the pickup cursor, grayed by range; else the insignia leg behind the learned-skill latch; your own body falls through to the clear), and right-click is "not mounted AND lootable" → CMSG_LOOT; CORPSE_FIELD_FLAGS bit 5 is the PvP insignia flag, not "reclaimable" as an old note had it; the widening also caught that a GameObject anywhere on screen could steal the click from a nearer corpse, and that a left-click on a body cleared your target as if you had clicked ground
- the cinematic sweep closes eleven holes: a shot plays its sequence band's WIDTH, not its end — two shipped fly-bys band away from zero and ran long with their opening frames frozen (the Night Elf intro measured 102333 → 102000 ms); CMSG_NEXT_CINEMATIC_CAMERA announces every shot, the first included — the old "between shots" reading meant it was sent NEVER, since every 1.12 sequence row carries exactly one camera; the ack invariant is stated once (one CMSG_COMPLETE_CINEMATIC per accepted trigger, over-acking tolerated, under-acking never — a dropped ack despawns the world around you until relog); the hardware cursor hides for the shot; and the music cut lands in the frame that starts it — it was one frame late, exactly long enough for a first login's zone fanfare to start under the narration and be stamped as played
- RunBinding exists, and a fly-by stops handing the world its mouse: CinematicFrame's OnKeyDown hands the SCREENSHOT chord back to its binding through RunBinding, a global we never had, so every press during a fly-by raised and took no picture; and the mouse was fully live under a shot — right-drag turned the character, clicks picked targets through the flying camera, both buttons walked the body — so the pointer now reads as over the UI while a shot plays
- AdvanceTime and ReplaceIconTexture are carved off the bytes: AdvanceTime really is a no-op in the reference (its one reachable call is mov eax,1; ret), ReplaceIconTexture is a material swap over a model's type-14 texture slots that stores nothing on the widget, and SetModel(nil) RAISES — the "documented clear" our binding claimed was invented, not read; and the addon roster now says WHOSE package is short when a .toc names files the folder doesn't hold — nine of the corpus's twenty-nine load failures are the addon's own manifest, which the real client also shrugs off ("Couldn't open %s", carry on), so they stop reading as our defects
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.
- The rest of the basics: battlegrounds, guild charters, the stable master, meeting stones, GM tickets, master loot, cinematics and whatever else turns up.
- 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.