benilla-octo/README.md

# benilla — Everwood graphics

A graphics fork of [**benilla**](https://github.com/samwhosung/benilla), the from-scratch World of Warcraft
1.12.1 client in Rust and Bevy by samwhosung. This repository adds an optional modern look on top of it.
Every feature has its own switch under **Options → Advanced Graphics**, and the **Classic** preset keeps
the original 1.12 image.

**This repository is maintained and will stay open source. Contributions are welcome:** open an issue or a
pull request.

## Graphics features

**Lighting and shadows**
- Realtime sun shadows for characters and the world, including foliage; moon shadows at night
- Dynamic building interiors lit by their own fixtures
- Torches, braziers and lamps emit flickering light and cast cube-map shadows; terrain blocks torch light
- Daylight through doors and windows (including Stormwind's rooms and cathedral windows)
- Spell and ground-effect lights, lava glow
- Screen-space ambient occlusion (soft contact shadows)

**Sky**
- Smooth sky gradient with dithering, soft sun glow
- Procedural star field with a Milky Way
- Sun-lit, detailed clouds
- Zone skyboxes (Burning Steppes, Blasted Lands, Mount Hyjal) and the 1.12 `LightSkybox` clear-weather slot

**Fog and atmosphere**
- Modern fog model: the world fades into the horizon, sun-coloured toward the sun
- Volumetric fog with sun and moon light shafts
- Lamps glowing through fog at night
- Screen-space sun shafts
- Render distance up to 1497 yards

**Post-processing**
- HDR bloom for fire, lava, spells and lit windows
- Per-zone colour grading (day/night LUTs)

**Water**
- Enhanced water: refraction, caustics, depth colour, screen-space reflections
- Enhanced city and building water (Stormwind canals)
- Gerstner waves with whitecaps, finer mesh up close

**Weather and nature**
- Rain: wet ground, puddles, glossy stone, rings on water, shelter under roofs and bridges
- Wind: grass and tree sway with gusts, grass parts around characters

**Settings**
- One Graphics Preset: Classic / Low / Medium / High / Ultra / Custom (default High)
- Every feature individually switchable on the Advanced Graphics page

Details: [`LIGHTING.md`](LIGHTING.md), [`WATER.md`](WATER.md). Third-party credits, including code ported
from [WarcraftXL](https://github.com/WarcraftXL) by iThorgrim: [`THIRD-PARTY.md`](THIRD-PARTY.md).
Licence: same as upstream benilla, MIT OR Apache-2.0.

---

*The upstream benilla README follows.*

<div align="center">
  <h1>benilla</h1>
  <p><b>A complete World of Warcraft 1.12.1 client, written from scratch in Rust and <a href="https://bevy.org">Bevy</a></b></p>
  <p>
    <a href="https://discord.gg/wJSJx467G4"><img src="https://img.shields.io/discord/1529280129518538922?style=for-the-badge&logo=discord&logoColor=white&label=discord&color=5865F2" alt="Discord"></a>
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdCnpZNKxyb8"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/devlog-youtube-FF0000?style=for-the-badge&logo=youtube&logoColor=white" alt="YouTube devlog"></a>
    <a href="LICENSE-MIT"><img src="https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT%20%2F%20Apache--2.0-blue?style=for-the-badge" alt="License"></a>
  </p>
</div>

benilla plays the whole game: character creation, questing and professions, dungeons and raids,
battlegrounds and honor, groups, guilds, trade, mail and the auction house, on the stock 1.12
interface and with your addons. It connects to a 1.12.1 server over the original protocol and
reads the game's data from your own 1.12.1 install. Every file format, the network protocol and
the interface engine are written from scratch, with no original client code, no third-party WoW
crates and no bundled game assets.

## What's inside

- **Formats:** readers for the whole asset stack (the MPQ patch chain, BLP, DBC, ADT, WDT, WDL, M2
  and WMO), wired into Bevy as an asset source.
- **World:** terrain streamed out to the horizon, portal-culled buildings with interior lighting,
  doodads and ground clutter, swimmable water, sky and weather, and the client's own day/night
  lighting, fog and gamma.
- **Models:** GPU-skinned M2s with the full animation controller, particles, ribbons and the spell
  visuals, and characters end to end: customization, the armor composite, weapons with their
  enchant glows, forms, stealth and mounts.
- **Movement:** 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 and the object mirror into the ECS,
  covering the game from movement and chat through combat, spells, groups and raids, quests,
  trade, mail, the auction house and battlegrounds.
- **Interface:** a FrameXML and Lua engine that runs the stock 1.12 interface off your install's
  patch chain, and third-party 1.12 addons: Questie, pfUI, Bagnon, Bartender2 and most others
  run. By choice, the options window and the ESC menu follow the Classic Era client's rather than
  1.12's.
- **Audio:** music, ambience and effects under the client's own selection and crossfade rules,
  with interior and underwater transitions and zone reverb.

The format readers and the UI engine core are plain Rust with no Bevy in them, and the world
renderer runs with no game attached. [`docs/MAP.md`](docs/MAP.md) maps every crate and subsystem,
generated from the code.

## Status

Complete and fully playable. What is left:

- The long tail of small features that separates a working client from a finished one, tracked
  as [issues](https://github.com/samwhosung/benilla/issues).
- Addons, options and performance, ongoing.

benilla is a faithful 1.12.1 client and the foundation people build on. There are no prebuilt
downloads: a packaged build, a particular server's changes or anything 1.12.1 never had belongs
in a fork, and forks are welcome. GitHub lists
[every public fork](https://github.com/samwhosung/benilla/forks).

Not planned: other expansions or client versions, Warden (anticheat).

## Running it

benilla builds and runs on macOS, Linux and Windows. You need:

- **An English 1.12.1 client (build 5875)** for the game data. benilla only reads it.
- **A 1.12.1 server with Warden off.** [vmangos](https://github.com/vmangos/core) is what
  development runs against, and it ships with Warden off; cMaNGOS and the other 1.12.1 cores speak
  the same protocol.
- **Stable Rust and a C compiler**, because the client's Lua is built from source: on macOS the
  Xcode command line tools, on Linux the ALSA and udev development packages and pkg-config, on
  Windows the MSVC build tools that the Rust installer sets up.

```sh
WOW_DATA=/path/to/WoW/Data cargo run --release -p benilla
```

`WOW_DATA` names the install's `Data` folder; a link to the install named `WoW` at the repo root
does the same. The server defaults to `localhost:3724`, the stock auth port. Point `WOW_HOST` at
another (`WOW_HOST=play.example.com`, or `play.example.com:5000` for a remapped port), or set it
from the Realmlist button on the login screen, which remembers it. Credentials go in at the login
screen, or set `WOW_USER` and `WOW_PASS` to skip it.

Settings, screenshots and addons live in `benilla-config/` at the repo root: a 1.12 addon goes in
`benilla-config/AddOns/`. [`docs/CONTRIBUTING.md`](docs/CONTRIBUTING.md) has the rest, from the
player build to the tests.

Optional, locally built skybox and colour-grading data: [`Optional/sky-and-grading/`](Optional/sky-and-grading/README.md).

## Contributing

Issues and pull requests are open. [`docs/CONTRIBUTING.md`](docs/CONTRIBUTING.md) says where to
start, what gets in, how a change is judged and what happens to a pull request once it is open.
Bugs, questions and ideas are welcome on the [Discord](https://discord.gg/wJSJx467G4) too.

---

Early inspiration and file format guidance came from the
[wowemulation-dev](https://github.com/wowemulation-dev) community, and
[warcraft-rs](https://github.com/wowemulation-dev/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, and the stock interface runs off its FrameXML at
runtime. The few files under `crates/benilla-app/assets/ui/` are our own, not copies of it:
adapters over stock files, and the settings windows and script error log benilla draws itself.

World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Our own code is licensed under
[MIT](LICENSE-MIT) or [Apache 2.0](LICENSE-APACHE), at your option. The two vendored components
under `third_party/`, the kira audio engine and a Lua 5.1 patched to the 1.12 client's dialect,
keep their own upstream licenses, alongside each. Code and techniques ported from other projects
(WarcraftXL, by iThorgrim) are credited file by file in [`THIRD-PARTY.md`](THIRD-PARTY.md).