pkuzicandClaude Fable 5.1
de0d237a9a
Point lights - Synthesised lights for fire and lamp models that author none (benilla-formats fire_light.rs: flame route from the particle emitter's over-life colour, name and emissive-glass routes for lampposts/lanterns/candelabra; NoOmni braziers included — they are Orgrimmar's street lighting). Spawned on every lane: ADT doodads, WMO props in interior and exterior groups (2.5 yd dedupe against authored MOLT fixtures), GameObjects and creatures (carried). Cvar fireLightGain (synthetic only). - Light LANE decided by a down-ray at the light's position: exterior consumers (terrain, models, WMO exterior batches — new per-vertex point term) read exterior lights; the interior room lane reads interior fixtures. Fixes interior fixtures leaking onto lawns and street torches lighting nothing. - Interior attenuation: the authored MOLT reach replaces the flat 48 yd, with a soft long-tailed profile (constant 1.75 yd core so energy no longer scales with reach), cvar interiorAttenScale; a 1.6x default. - ROOM GATE: a WMO surface takes an interior fixture only if the fixture claims its group — claims = containment ∪ MOLR ∪ portal-adjacent rooms (2 hops), shared rule in benilla-formats room_claim.rs, packed per light into a 32 KB storage buffer; portal claims are weighted (1 across the door frame, fading into the next room) so doorways carry no seam; in-building exterior-class groups take claimed fixtures. Carried lights (GameObjects, pets) claim rooms from their world position once settled. Cvar interiorRoomGate. Torch shadows - Casters ranked by contribution at the player with hysteresis and fade weights (no pop-in); eligibility 4R+3 and the shadowDistance setting; caster geometry gathered around the fixtures, not the camera. - Static cube maps cached per fixture (rendered once), entity casters rendered per frame only for the nearest interiorShadowDynamic fixtures via a depth copy; up to 16 resident maps (interiorShadowCasters), interiorShadowSoft PCF radius. - Carried lights: rest-pose flame position (no hand-bone jitter), lane from the bearer's cross-fade weight, caster only while settled — the imp no longer strobes. Entities - Portal lane cross-fade (tag bits 15..18) and MATTE_INDOOR bit so a unit keeps its room lighting across a Bake/Matte flicker; hover highlight folded into the room lane; the blob shadow returns whenever the realtime sun lane is inactive (night, beyond shadow distance) with a crossfade at dusk/dawn. Robustness - A placement or WMO prop whose model fails to load is retired instead of pinning the loading screen forever (Stormwind's alliancebrasscannon_flat.m2). - benilla-extract: wmolights (MOLT + claims + group classes), wmolamps (corpus audit), m2firescan (synthesis routes). 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.