SamandClaude Fable 5.1
f7e232b2db
- a refused auto-attack is no longer silent, and the display is a latch, not a toast: six opcodes, four arms — `0x145 SMSG_ATTACKSWING_NOTINRANGE` and `0x146 SMSG_ATTACKSWING_BADFACING` latch a code through `0x5ecdb0`, which writes `[0xc4d758]` and `[0xc4c270]` together; `0x148 DEADTARGET` and `0x149 CANT_ATTACK` share arm `0x625ab8` verbatim (StopAttack, no message), so the client cannot tell them apart and `AttackSwingError` collapses them into one `DeadOrUnattackable`; `0x147 NOTSTANDING` is never registered by the reference and `SendAttackSwingNotStanding` has zero callers in vmangos, so a test pins that it stays an unknown opcode; and the fourth arm hides: `0x14e SMSG_CANCEL_COMBAT` is registered at `0x5e3303` by the SPELL TU, not the combat one, so the eight-opcode census every note quotes did not contain it, and its handler `0x5e7dd0` is arm 4's body instruction for instruction; vmangos sends each refusal on the edge alone, so the repeat the player sees is the client's own: the tick `0x5ec950` — `CGPlayer_C` vtable `0x80af78` slot 14, dispatched once per object per rendered frame on the `CWorldFrame::OnPaint` chain, so a Bevy `Update` system is the exact cadence — prints `ERR_BADATTACKPOS`/`ERR_BADATTACKFACING` (catalog rows `0xd8`/`0xd7`, both red) at once and again every 4000 ms while an attack target is set, and a landed swing clears it: `SMSG_ATTACKERSTATEUPDATE`'s arm calls `0x5ea800`, whose first act is `0x5ecdb0(0)`, gated on the attacker being the active player AND the victim resolving (both gates kept — wow-re's round had glossed the second away, and sending that back corrected the note); the latch is one `Option<(Latched, Duration)>` because `[0xc4c270]` has no meaning while `[0xc4d758]` is 0, a second refusal packet defeats the cooldown and the re-arm precedes the print (both tested), the clear also runs once per world entry (`0x5e2510`), and both edges ride ONE `SwingRefusalEdge` stream so a refusal and a landing in the same frame stay in packet order; `SMSG_FEIGN_DEATH_RESISTED` (`0x2b4`) arrives beside them and is built differently because its handler `0x6e9800` is two instructions — a bare `DisplayError(421)` = `ERR_FEIGN_DEATH_RESISTED`, the single word "Resisted" — so it takes the plain `UiErrorKeys` route with no latch; the `--attack` world probe now reports the refusals it tallies; and two remainders are named, not built: `0x5ea800`'s post-swing leash — `R = 4.0 * max(5.0, reach(victim) + reach(self) + 1.3333333730697632)`, floor 20.0, sending a bare `CMSG_ATTACKSTOP` past it — a new packet-sending behaviour left for the director's call, and `StopAttack 0x5ecac0`'s two one-shot tutorials (10 low-health, 11 low-mana), which benilla's copy has never fired (2037)
- the trade arc stops being silent: eighteen of the twenty-three `SMSG_TRADE_STATUS` arms print where benilla printed none, all through `UiErrorKeys` so the text is the player's own `GlobalStrings.lua` and the surface is the catalog record's `+0x04`; the four-row start was the trade block's own emit-site census, which answered "which arms raise a TRADE-keyed message" — eleven of the ids come from elsewhere in the 465-row table (`ERR_PLAYER_BUSY_S` `0x3e`, `ERR_PLAYER_DEAD` `0x7e`, `ERR_GENERIC_NO_TARGET` `0xb8`, `ERR_PLAYER_WRONG_FACTION` `0xff`, `ERR_IGNORING_YOU_S` `0x13d`, the stunned pair `0x191`/`0x192`, the logout pair `0x19d`/`0x19e`, `ERR_RESTRICTED_ACCOUNT` `0x1be`, and `ERR_TRADE_WRONG_REALM` `0x1ca`, whose text is the ONLY_CONJURED sentence), and the surfaces do not follow the English — a successful trade's two lines are the yellow ones, `ERR_PLAYER_BUSY_S`/`ERR_IGNORING_YOU_S` are chat lines, the refusals red; `TRADE_REQUEST_CANCEL` fires from the top of the CANCELED arm (`0x4bf832`, the dispatcher's one `SignalEvent`) where nothing had fired it; `ERR_INITIATE_TRADE_S` prints — it is client-emitted from inside the `CMSG_INITIATE_TRADE` sender, at once on a name-cache hit (`0x5d4042`) and from the query callback on a miss (`0x5d40ca`), so clicking Trade had produced no text in either direction; the three arms that name a player (0/5/14) read the network handler's guid cell `[0xc4bed0]`/`[0xc4bed4]` behind the outbound-initiate latch `[0xc4bec8]` — `InitiateTrade 0x5d3fb0` writes the target's guid and then the latch, the `BEGIN_TRADE` arm writes the initiator's and no latch — which is what keeps a client that just ignored a trade from printing "X is ignoring you." to itself, and behind `0x468460(guid, TYPEMASK_PLAYER)`, a live-object test the initiate line does not share, so `NamedLine::needs_live_object` drops a status line the moment its player stops being streamed while an initiate line waits; a network-cell clear is not a window close: `0x4bf4e0` has four call sites in the dispatcher — one opens, `{3, 8, 12}` close — and the other fourteen run the handler's tail `0x5d490a`, which drops the latch and the pending guid and leaves the window standing, so `close()` splits into `close_window()` and `clear_pending()`; `REJECTED` drops only the partner's accept, `BACK_TO_TRADE` reaches `0x4bf230(0)` and sends `CMSG_UNACCEPT_TRADE` on a real change, `ONLY_CONJURED` bounces the offending slot out of our own offer; `CLOSE_WINDOW`'s message is deliberately not built (`0x4bfd70` maps `result` over a 61-id range with a flagged self/other polarity inconsistency, and vmangos never sends status 12); and `ERR_TRADE_BLOCKED_S`'s transcribed English literal is deleted along with `ChatLog::pending_texts` (2042)
- both halves of B373's lighting closed: `MeshTag` bits 6..=13 mean two things — the exterior payload's ground-shade byte and the low eight bits of the interior payload's 13-bit probe slot — and the overlap cannot be removed (the four mode-independent fields cost 19 bits, leaving 13 for a payload region the two modes want 21 of), so the payload question becomes a witness the accessors demand: `mesh_tag::ExteriorPayload` is a zero-sized proof only `exterior_payload(on_bake_law, own_probe)` mints, when both probe-slot populations answer no, and `with_shade`/`shade_of` take it, so no expression in the crate reaches those bits without having asked; `describe` alone reads the raw masks and prints both readings (2041); and a transport's deck cargo is lit by its own doodad def, not by the boat (B373): a transport's WMO is linked into the same global `TSExplicitList<CMapObjDef>` at `0xca7d98` the ordinary scene walk iterates, so its MODDs are ordinary doodad defs; `[def+0xa4]` has exactly four writers image-wide — the ctor `0x6a7d73` (0.0), the doodad-set commit `0x695bb3` (1.0), the ADT MDDF commit `0x6b01bb` (1.0) and the MCSH refresh `0x698cb4` (0.5) — and none is the light node, whose 2.5-producer and ramp are reachable only through `[obj+0xe0]`, a path a doodad def never takes; the MCSH sample is one-shot (`0x698c50` unlinks each entry) and its null-tile legs return lit; so we had the wrong source, the wrong cadence and the wrong mechanism: `entity_shade::DoodadDefLit` marks every WMO-gameobject prop batch from inside the placed-model assembler — the engine asserts it, not the caller; the world-API wall failed the first cut, and a following card is reachable only there — both shade write sites skip it on ownership, separately from 2041's payload question, and exterior props take one `doodad_ground_shade` at their own footprint at spawn, frozen, which answers lit for a non-resident tile so a boat at sea needs no special case and the unverified "a boat is never MCSH-shadowed" goes; 749 prop parts under a shade root carry the marker on a live run — the same 749 B373 measured reading a foreign probe — and the ADT doodad path is deliberately untouched, since the D3D capture's measured 2.5 gain outranks the closure (2047)
- 2043's unit-predicate law is confirmed byte-exact by the round it dispatched — all 29 `Unit*` predicates push the constant double 1.0 or nil, exactly one value at every live `ret`, and a BFS from all 83 bindings in `0x850438` reaches 460 functions without hitting `lua_pushboolean` — and three of its supporting citations are corrected in the comments, no behaviour changing: `lua_pushboolean 0x6f39f0` EXISTS with seven call sites, one of them the registered FrameScript binding `IsPetAttackActive 0x4be0e0`, which answers a real true/false and never nil (ours already did, and its doc already named itself the exception), so 2043's "no boolean on its binding surface at all" is withdrawn for the scoped claim 1830 actually made; `IsEnabled` is `0x7800b0`, not `0x780270` (that is `SetButtonState`), and its number-1-or-0-never-nil fact stands; and `UnitReaction 0x5167e0` pushes `0x6061e0(u1, u2)` PLUS ONE, so 0 is unreachable and its nil means only that a token did not resolve — our `reaction == 0` → nil stays, named now as a feed gap rather than a mechanism the binary does not have (2048)
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.