SamandClaude Fable 5.1
72e78ebc92
- a 40-man raid cost +5 to +8 ms of CPU per frame — a population, not a hot function — and three cuts landed where it was measured: the rig palette upload sends one `write_buffer` per run, bridging the gaps parked bodies leave between live rigs (calls 93 → 3); a built material becomes an asset when something visible binds it, not when a spawner builds it — 9.9k material assets were alive for 36 drawn batches, so a material is realized only once bound and visible, readers that clone before binding doing it themselves through one new function in the engine's wall (172 → 173): a 17× cut in live GPU objects; and a body's batches spawn as material groups — a geared body stood as 12–27 mesh parts, its skin composite drawn as five separate batches, and two visible batches now join when nothing downstream can tell them apart: parts per body 17 → 12, the Stormwind raid leg 17.0–21.0 → 15.65–15.82 `cpu_ms` (1929, 1940) - the instruments that priced it, all on the probe line: wgpu's own resource census, because a sampled profile put roughly half of the pass encoder in usage trackers sized to the device's live buffer and texture counts — a term that scales with residency, not with what is drawn, and nothing printed the number; the active camera count, since every view is its own pass set; the UI's live texture-identity runs, one 2D draw each, which is the number a UI change moves, not the quad count; and parts and materials per dressed body on the dress census, the ceiling on merging a body's batches read off a real body instead of guessed from a model's batch table (1940) - the coin kit retires: every remaining money display — quest progress, the mail purse and postage, the trade recipient, the tooltip, the quest log, the trainer's purse and cost — moves onto the reference's `MoneyFrameTemplate`, each seat already matching ours; the progress panel's required-money flow is ported in full — `QuestFrame.lua:168-190` colours the FRAME red/white AND the LABEL black/dark-grey when the quest costs more than you hold, where ours had neither colour; the mail postage takes the reference's name and label, trade and mail issue no explicit update because the frames repaint on their own events, and the trainer's cost label is shown or hidden with its `local COSTS_LABEL` shadow deleted; with the trainer converted the hand-built coin trios have no consumer, so their templates and the `BenillaMoney_*` helpers are deleted and `MoneyFrame.xml` is the only money kit (1937) - the crowd-control ladder's aura exemption exists, and it is a join between two `Spell.dbc` records — each arm asks whether the spell being cast is itself an immunity covering the aura that blocks it (Ice Block cast while stunned), the school arm shifting because `School` is an index and `EffectMiscValue` a mask; what the scan mostly decides is WHICH message a refusal carries — a blocking aura the cast does not counter renames the reason to "Can't do that while %s" (1941); bevy_audio leaves the build — its plugin had been disabled since 0530, but disabling a plugin does not remove a crate, and rodio, a second cpal and an Ogg/Vorbis decoder were still linked into a client that mixes through kira (1932); and cpal has four stream errors, not two — a routine ALSA underrun was treated as "the device is gone", tearing the stream down on every hiccup; now only a lost or invalidated device rebuilds (1939) 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.