benilla

A from-scratch World of Warcraft 1.12.1 client in Rust and Bevy

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 and loot.
• 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, chat, nameplates, floating combat text and tooltips.
• 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

Guilds past the name over a head, the auction house, the hunter and warlock pet bar, battlegrounds and honor, the fishing minigame, the dressing room, macros and key bindings, and third-party addons; the Lua engine runs only the built-in UI so far.

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.