SamandClaude Fable 5
a40cc4a905
- a tooltip change costs ~1.3 ms — five whole-interface recomputes, each working as designed: the quad re-convert at 474 µs, the Lua tick at 287, the layout resolve at 200, bevy's `Assets<Mesh>` tax at ~270 and the mesh rebuild at 146 — pinned with new hover probes (a jitter dial, a `WOW_PROBE_HOVER_DUTY` duty cycle so run drift cancels, an `AssetChanged` tax meter), and the layout preamble's two whole-roster scans become lists maintained at the writer (52–83 µs → 1–11) - the splice compared this frame's entries against last frame's by index, so one inserted highlight shifted the 160 entries behind it and read as "everything changed"; it now aligns on `z` — an identity, not a position — and a `Text` entry that writes only quads became spliceable, so a tooltip change re-converts 22 entries instead of 520 (`convert` +439 µs → +107), with `WOW_UI_SPLICE_VERIFY` running the full conversion behind every spliced frame: 0 mismatches over 1,078 - a spell-less macro is a usable action button, not the 0.4 grey — the reference's usable compute has a dedicated leg answering usable for the bound-spell zero, cross-checked at the bytes in the reference's disassembly — and the button's Name line is written unconditionally from `GetActionText` as the reference does, so the macro's name sits under its icon and a `/cast` of a spell the character does not know now greys, which is also 1.12's behaviour (B340) - a capture bounds its run in wall-clock seconds, because a frame cap is no cap at the ~1 fps a starved `nextDrawable` leaves — 1800 frames is thirty minutes there — and the teardown backstop runs on every run as a liveness guarantee, carrying the exit code the run asked for; the Multisampling row reads Off / 2x / 4x, since "1x" contradicts the no-multisampling byte both of the reference's enumerators normalise to and the bit-depth prefix was identical on every row 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.