SamandClaude Fable 5
d7fb26713c
- cinematics play: `SMSG_TRIGGER_CINEMATIC` resolves through `CinematicSequences.dbc` → `CinematicCamera.dbc` → a `Cameras\*.m2` whose camera record is an eye path, a look-at path and a roll — cubic tracks with the full step / linear / Bézier / Hermite dispatch the bone loops collapse to step-or-linear (every shipped fly-by is Bézier), planted at the row's origin and facing (`Rz(+facing)`, checked against vmangos's own waypoint table: 8.5 yd mean on the human path, 154 with the other sign); FOV is per shot (the Undead intro authors 90°, the rest 45°), roll is authored around whole turns, the flight ends at the sequence band's end, a trigger arriving before the loading cover lifts is latched and started when it does, ESC skips through `CinematicFrame`'s own `OnKeyDown` (`StopCinematic` has zero native callers), and every path acks — natural end, ESC, or an unresolvable trigger immediately, as before; `.debug play cinematic <id>` replays any of them - a cinematic hides the HUD — `UIParent:Hide()` reaches nothing here because the HUD frames are not its children, so the ALT-Z draw-level hide is used and the letterbox moves out of FrameXML onto Bevy UI nodes where that hide cannot reach it, recomputed per frame (bars only wider than 4:3, the picture cropped to 2:1) — and the restore only un-hides a UI this module hid - a lit particle's normal is world up, one constant per draw, not camera-facing: Onyxia's always-on floor haze read about four times brighter from a level camera than from above because the shader dotted a to-eye normal against a fixed light; the reference uploads row 2 of the view matrix — world +Z carried into eye space — on every vertex and carries the light into the same frame, so the rotation cancels; 400 lit emitters (the waterfalls, chimney and campfire smoke, Westfall dust, Dun Morogh snow) stop brightening and dimming as you turn - the `play` profile drops ThinLTO — rustc #86049 was intermittently poisoning the incremental link with `_anon.<hash>.llvm.<id>` symbols promoted by an earlier compile (48 unresolved across 7 codegen units; 1065 such symbols → 0 after) — and `benilla-formats` stops taking `image` with default features, which had been compiling a complete AV1 encoder into a crate that writes two PNGs: 499 → 466 workspace crates 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.