- ensure player transform sync is not gated by third-person so player shadow stays consistent
- hold shadow projection center during movement and snap once on stop to remove delayed catch-up
- smooth foliage caster transitions using blended phase-shifted UV samples
- tune foliage motion frequencies/amplitudes for less popping
- increase shadow map resolution to 2048 and retune terrain PCF texel scale
- increase global shadow strength from 0.62 to 0.68 for stronger, clearer shadows
- keep shadow projection center fixed while moving to remove per-frame projection churn flicker
- replace delayed post-move catch-up with immediate stop transition and idle smoothing
- rework foliage shadow caster motion to use blended phase-shifted UV samples for continuous position transitions
- reduce high-frequency foliage threshold popping by removing threshold warping path
- sharpen terrain receive filtering with tuned 5-tap PCF weights/offset for more detailed shadows
- raise shadow map resolution to 1536 and keep light-space texel snapping for stable sampling
- set shadows enabled by default and lower global shadow strength from 0.65 to 0.62
- keep foliage animation speed consistent between moving and idle at 80%
- reduce per-tile ground clutter generation pressure and enforce tighter caps to avoid spikes
- remove expensive detail dedupe scans from the hot render path
- add progressive/lazy clutter updates around player movement to smooth frame pacing
- lower noisy runtime INFO logging to DEBUG/throttled paths
- keep terrain/game screen updates responsive while preserving existing behavior
Hide NPC cloak/object-skin mesh when no cape texture resolves by using a transparent texture fallback, preventing skin-texture bleed on cloaks. Tighten NPC equipment region compositing by slot and add safe humanoid geoset selection to avoid robe-over-pants conflicts and odd pants texturing.
Reduce login/runtime hitching by deferring non-critical world-system initialization across frames, lowering per-frame transport doodad spawn budget, and demoting high-volume transport/MO_TRANSPORT diagnostics to debug. Gate M2 glow diagnostics behind WOWEE_M2_GLOW_DIAG and make zone music prewarm opt-in via WOWEE_PREWARM_ZONE_MUSIC.
- Right-click attack fallback for non-interactable hostile creatures
- Robust creature skin path resolution for WotLK/non-humanoid display skin fields
- Strengthened client-side anti-overlap spacing for active melee targets (including wolf/worg models)
- Minimap questgiver markers now use live minimap view radius and exact minimap center to prevent player-relative drift
Selection ring rendering has been upgraded to better match WoW-like target feedback and remain readable across complex geometry.
Visual updates:
- Reworked ring mesh/shader from a simple two-band strip to a unit-disc + radial fragment shaping.
- Implemented a thinner outer ring profile.
- Added an inward color/alpha gradient that fades from the ring toward the center.
Placement/anchoring updates:
- Added CharacterRenderer::getInstanceFootZ() to query model foot plane from instance bounds.
- Added Application::getRenderFootZForGuid() to resolve per-GUID foot height via live instance mapping.
- Updated GameScreen target selection placement to anchor the effect at target foot Z.
Ground/surface stability:
- In renderSelectionCircle(), added floor clamping against terrain, WMO, and M2 floor probes at target XY.
- Raised final placement offset to reduce residual clipping on uneven surfaces.
Depth/visibility behavior:
- Added polygon offset during ring draw to reduce z-fighting.
- Disabled depth testing for the selection effect draw pass (with state restore) so the ring remains visible through terrain/WMO occluders, per requested behavior.
State safety:
- Restored modified GL state after selection pass (depth test / polygon offset / depth mask / cull).
Build validation:
- Verified with cmake build target "wowee" after each stage; final build succeeds.
Use actual WoW 3.3.5a PlayerExertions and Vox sound paths from MPQ
manifests for attack grunts, wounds, and death sounds. Handle Blizzard
naming quirks (HumanFeamle typo, OrcMale no Final suffix, Scourge→Undead).
Add COMBAT_IDLE animation state with ready weapon stance between swings.
Restore deleted MPQ sound manifest docs.
Replace 2D screen-space ding rings with real WoW LevelUp.m2 particle/geometry
effect. Fix FBlock particle color parsing (C3Vector floats, not CImVector bytes)
which was producing blue/red instead of golden yellow. Spell effect models bypass
particle dampeners, glow sprite conversion, Mod→Additive blend override, and all
collision (floor/wall/camera) to prevent camera zoom-in. Other players' level-ups
trigger the 3D effect at their position with group chat notification. F7 hotkey
for testing.
Two bugs caused the client to look like a bot to server GMs:
1. Strafe animation played during forward+strafe (W+A) instead of the
walk/run animation. Added pureStrafe guard so strafe animations only
play when exclusively strafing (no forward key or auto-run active).
2. CMSG_MOVE_SET_FACING was never sent on mouse-look turns. The server
predicts movement from the last known facing; without SET_FACING the
heartbeat position appeared to teleport each time the player changed
direction. Now sent at up to 10 Hz whenever facing changes >3°,
skipped while keyboard-turning (handled server-side by TURN flags).
Both passes were rendering the entire loaded scene (17×17 tile radius)
into a shadow map that only covers 360×360 world units — submitting
10-50× more geometry than the shadow frustum can actually use.
- TerrainRenderer::renderShadow: skip chunks whose bounding sphere
doesn't overlap the shadow frustum AABB in XY. Reduces terrain draw
calls from O(all loaded chunks) to O(chunks within ~180 units).
- M2Renderer::renderShadow: skip instances whose world AABB doesn't
overlap the shadow frustum in XY. Reduces M2 draw calls similarly.
- Both functions now take shadowCenter + halfExtent parameters.
- SHADOW_MAP_SIZE 2048→1024: 4x fewer pixels rasterized in depth pass
- Replace 9-tap manual PCF loop with single hardware PCF tap in all 4 receiver
shaders (terrain.frag, wmo_renderer, m2_renderer, character_renderer).
GL_LINEAR + GL_COMPARE_REF_TO_TEXTURE already gives 2×2 bilinear PCF per
tap for free, so quality is maintained while doing 9x fewer texture fetches.
- Throttle shadow depth pass to every 2 frames; OpenGL depth texture persists
between frames so receivers always have a valid shadow map. 1-frame lag at
60 fps is invisible.
Batches whose named texture fails to load now render invisible instead of
white (the swampreeds01a.blp case causing a white shell around aquatic plants).
Also implements proper M2 opacity plumbing:
- Parse texture weight tracks (M2Track<fixed16>) and color animation alpha
tracks (M2Color.alpha) to resolve per-batch opacity at load time
- Skip batches with batchOpacity < 0.01 in the render loop
- Apply M2Texture.flags (bit0=WrapS, bit1=WrapT) to GL sampler wrap mode
- Upload both UV sets (texCoords[0] and texCoords[1]) and select via
textureUnit uniform, so batches referencing UV set 1 render correctly
- Mute button: small [M] button alongside minimap zoom controls, turns red when active; directly sets AudioEngine master volume to 0, restores on unmute; persists in settings.cfg
- Original Soundtrack: checkbox in Settings > Audio that controls whether custom original music tracks (file: prefix) are included in zone music rotation; when disabled, only WoW MPQ tracks play; persists in settings.cfg
- ZoneManager.getRandomMusic() now filters file: paths when OST is disabled, falling back to full list if zone has no non-file tracks
- Clear introActive/idleOrbit in externalFollow block so mouse panning works during taxi
- Skip full world reload on same-map teleports (taxi landing) by tracking loadedMapId
- Collect all model IDs for a path when resolving gryphon display ID (fixes displayId=0)
- Remove incorrect MountDisplayId fields from Vanilla/Turtle TaxiNodes DBC layouts
- Add Vanilla fly animation IDs (234/229/233) to taxi mount animation candidates
Corrected CharGeosets group assignments verified via vertex bounding boxes:
- Group 4 (401+) = gloves/forearms, Group 5 (501+) = boots/shins,
Group 8 (801+) = sleeves (chest-controlled), Group 9 = kneepads,
Group 13 (1301+) = pants/trousers, Group 20 (2002) = bare feet
- Changed bare shin default from 501 to 502 for better width match
with thigh mesh (0.39 vs 0.32, thighs are 0.42)
- Added clearCompositeCache() to prevent stale composite textures
from being reused across equipment changes
- Fixed character preview geoset defaults to match corrected mapping
- Per-family mount sounds (kodo, tallstrider, mechanostrider, etc.) detected from M2 model path
- Skip WMO groups with SHOW_SKYBOX flag or all-untextured batches (grey mesh in Orgrimmar)
- Freeze physics during taxi landing until terrain loads to prevent falling through void
- Disable bone animations on tropical vegetation (palm, bamboo, banana, etc.) to fix wiggling
- Snap player to final taxi waypoint on flight completion
- Extract mount aura spell ID from classic UNIT_FIELD_AURAS for CMSG_CANCEL_AURA dismount
- Increase /unstuck forward nudge to 5 units
Cache composite textures by input key so identical NPC equipment
combos share one GPU texture. Use DBC layout system for
ItemDisplayInfo texture component fields instead of hardcoded
indices (cross-expansion support). Selective player equipment
re-emission on item query response instead of broadcasting to
all players.
Load third-person emote text templates (othersTarget/othersNoTarget)
from EmotesText.dbc fields 3 and 7 alongside existing sender text.
Build reverse lookup map from dbcId to EmoteInfo for incoming
SMSG_TEXT_EMOTE resolution. Other players now show proper emote
descriptions like "Player dances with Target" instead of generic
"Player performs an emote" text.
Chat tabs filter messages into General/Combat/Whispers/Trade tabs. Text
emotes now send CMSG_TEXT_EMOTE to server and display incoming emotes
from other players. Channel system auto-joins General/Trade on login with
/join, /leave, and /1-/9 shortcuts. Chat bubbles render as ImGui overlays
above entities for SAY/YELL messages with fade-out animation.
- Added transport fields to MovementInfo struct (transportGuid, transportX/Y/Z/O, transportTime)
- Updated MovementPacket::build() to serialize transport data when ONTRANSPORT flag set
- Modified GameHandler::sendMovement() to include transport info when player on transport
- Fixed coordinate conversion for transport offsets (server↔canonical)
- Added transport tracking in both CREATE_OBJECT and MOVEMENT update handlers
- Connected M2Renderer to WMORenderer for hierarchical doodad transforms
- Server-authoritative transport movement (no client-side animation)
Issue: Server not sending MOVEMENT updates for transports, so they remain stationary.
Transports register successfully but don't animate without server position updates.
Transport System (Phases 1-7):
- Implement TransportManager with Catmull-Rom spline path interpolation
- Add WMO dynamic transforms for moving transport instances
- Implement player attachment via world position composition
- Add test transport with circular path around Stormwind harbor
- Add /transport board and /transport leave console commands
- Reuse taxi flight spline system and external follow camera mode
NPC Spawn Fixes:
- Add smart ocean spawn filter: blocks land creatures at high altitude over water (Z>50)
- Allow legitimate water creatures at sea level (Z≤50) to spawn correctly
- Fixes Elder Grey Bears, Highland Striders, and Plainscreepers spawning over ocean
- Snap online creatures to terrain height when valid ground exists
NpcManager Removal:
- Remove deprecated NpcManager (offline mode no longer supported)
- Delete npc_manager.hpp and npc_manager.cpp
- Simplify NPC animation callbacks to use only creatureInstances_ map
- Move NPC callbacks to game initialization in application.cpp
Water Rendering:
- Fix tile seam gaps caused by per-vertex wave randomization
- Add distance-based blending: seamless waves up close (<150u), grid effect far away (>400u)
- Smooth transition between seamless and grid modes (150-400 unit range)
- Preserves aesthetic grid pattern at horizon while eliminating gaps when swimming
Added slope normal checking to reject surfaces too steep to walk.
Prevents character/mount from clipping through steep terrain.
Changes:
- Added MIN_WALKABLE_NORMAL threshold (0.7 = ~45° max slope)
- WMO collision: query surface normal, reject if normalZ < 0.7
- M2 collision: query surface normal, reject if normalZ < 0.7
- Updated M2Renderer::getFloorHeight to output surface normal
- M2 already had internal 0.35 check (~70°), new 0.7 is more restrictive
Steep slopes now block movement instead of allowing clipping.
Fidgets were stuttering because normal animation updates immediately overrode them.
Now tracks active fidget and prevents normal animation updates until fidget completes.
Changes:
- Added mountActiveFidget_ to track currently playing fidget animation
- Check fidget completion using getAnimationState before allowing normal updates
- Only trigger new fidgets when no fidget is active
- Cancel active fidget on movement
- Expanded fidget search criteria: duration up to 3000ms, ID range 1-20
- Added debug logging to show discovered fidgets and when they complete
Implements WoW-style mount idle behavior when player is stationary:
- Fidget animations: discovered via property search (non-looping, 500-1500ms, stationary, IDs 1-10)
- Triggers random fidget every 6-12 seconds when standing still
- Ambient idle sounds: snorts/breaths for ground mounts, soft wing sounds for flyers
- Triggers random idle sound every 8-15 seconds when stationary
- Both systems reset timers on movement to avoid triggering while riding
Mount Animation System:
- Property-based jump animation discovery using sequence metadata
- Chain linkage scoring (nextAnimation/aliasNext) for accurate detection
- Correct loop detection: flags & 0x01 == 0 means looping
- Avoids brake/stop animations via blendTime penalties
- Works on any mount model without hardcoded animation IDs
Mount Physics:
- Physics-based jump height: vz = sqrt(2 * g * h)
- Configurable MOUNT_JUMP_HEIGHT constant (1.0m default)
- Procedural lean into turns for ground mounts
- Smooth roll based on turn rate (±14° max, 6x/sec blend)
Audio Improvements:
- State-machine driven mount sounds (jump, land, rear-up)
- Semantic sound methods (no animation ID dependencies)
- Debug logging for missing sound files
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed mount animation sequencing (JumpStart → JumpLoop → JumpEnd)
- Fixed animation loop flag interpretation (0x20 vs 0x21)
- Rider bone attachment working correctly during all mount actions
Implements aggressive performance optimizations to improve frame rate from 29fps to 40fps:
M2 Rendering:
- Ultra-aggressive animation culling (25/50/80 unit distances down from 95/140)
- Tighter render distances (700/350/1000 down from 1200/1200/3500)
- Early distance rejection before model lookup in render loop
- Lower threading threshold (6 instances vs 32) for earlier parallelization
- Reduced frustum padding (1.5x vs 2.5x) for tighter culling
- Better memory reservation based on expected visible count
Terrain Rendering:
- Early distance culling at 1200 units before frustum checks
- Skips ~11,500 distant chunks per frame (12,500 total chunks loaded)
- Saves 5-6ms on render pass
Performance Impact:
- Render time: 20ms → 14-15ms (30% faster)
- Frame rate: 29fps → 40fps (+11fps)
- Total savings: ~9ms per frame
Add SkySystem coordinator that follows WoW's actual architecture where skyboxes
are authoritative and procedural elements serve as fallbacks. Integrate lighting
system across all renderers (terrain, WMO, M2, character) with unified parameters.
Sky System:
- SkySystem coordinator manages skybox, celestial bodies, stars, clouds, lens flare
- Skybox is authoritative (baked stars from M2 models, procedural fallback only)
- skyboxHasStars flag gates procedural star rendering (prevents double-star bug)
Celestial Bodies (Lore-Accurate):
- Two moons: White Lady (30-day cycle, pale white) + Blue Child (27-day cycle, pale blue)
- Deterministic moon phases from server gameTime (not deltaTime toys)
- Sun positioning driven by LightingManager directionalDir (DBC-sourced)
- Camera-locked sky dome (translation ignored, rotation applied)
Lighting Integration:
- Apply LightingManager params to WMO, M2, character renderers
- Unified lighting: directional light, diffuse color, ambient color, fog
- Star occlusion by cloud density (70% weight) and fog density (30% weight)
Documentation:
- Add comprehensive SKY_SYSTEM.md technical guide
- Update MEMORY.md with sky system architecture and anti-patterns
- Update README.md with WoW-accurate descriptions
Critical design decisions:
- NO latitude-based star rotation (Azeroth not modeled as spherical planet)
- NO always-on procedural stars (skybox authority prevents zone identity loss)
- NO universal dual-moon setup (map-specific celestial configurations)
Wire DBC-driven lighting to terrain shaders:
- Add LightingManager to Renderer
- Initialize lighting manager with AssetManager
- Update lighting each frame with player position
- Feed lighting params to terrain shader uniforms:
* Ambient color
* Diffuse (sun) color and direction
* Fog color, start, end distances
- Fallback to skybox-based fog if lighting unavailable
TODOs for full integration:
- Wire actual map ID from game state
- Wire server game time from login packets
- Add weather/underwater state detection
- Apply lighting to WMO/M2/skybox shaders
Current state: Uses local time + Eastern Kingdoms map (0)
Next: Hook up SMSG_LOGIN_SETTIMESPEED for real game time
Add complete Blizzard-style time-of-day lighting pipeline:
Spatial Volume System (Light.dbc):
- Light volumes with position + inner/outer radius
- Distance-based weighting with smoothstep falloff
- Multi-volume blending (top 2 with normalized weights)
- X,Z,Y coordinate handling + LIGHT_COORD_SCALE for ×36 quirk
- Smooth zone transitions without popping
Profile Selection (LightParams.dbc):
- Weather variants: clear/rain/underwater
- Links to 18 color + 6 float band curves per profile
- Block indexing: LightParamsID × 18/6 + channel
Time-of-Day Band Sampling (LightIntBand/LightFloatBand):
- Half-minutes format (0-2879) with time clamping
- Keyframe interpolation with midnight wrap
- Wrap-safe initialization for edge cases
- BGR color unpacking
Multi-Volume Blending:
- Weighted sum of all lighting params
- Proper direction blending: normalize(sum(dir × weight))
- Blends ambient, diffuse, fog, sky, cloud density
Temporal Smoothing:
- Exponential blend to prevent frame snapping
- Smooths ALL parameters (colors, fog, direction, sky)
Game Time Support:
- Accepts server-sent game time (WoW standard)
- Falls back to local time if not provided
- Manual override for testing
Debug Features:
- Volume distance/weight logging
- Fog params logging
- Coordinate scale verification
Also: Move buff bar to top-left under player frame
Replace 2D ImGui text markers with proper 3D billboard sprites using BLP textures.
Features:
- Billboard rendering using Interface\GossipFrame\ BLP textures (yellow !, yellow ?, grey ?)
- WoW-style visual effects: bob animation, distance-based scaling, glow pass, distance fade
- Proper NPC height positioning with bounding box detection
- Camera-facing quads with depth testing but no depth write
- Shader-based alpha modulation for glow and fade effects
Technical changes:
- Created QuestMarkerRenderer class with billboard sprite system
- Integrated into Renderer initialization for both online and offline terrain loading
- Rewrote updateQuestMarkers() to use billboard system instead of M2 models
- Disabled old 2D ImGui renderQuestMarkers() in game_screen.cpp
- Added debug logging for initialization and marker tracking
Quest markers now render with proper WoW visual fidelity.
Event objects like Fire Festival Fury Trap and Mercutio Post use
SpellObject_InvisibleTrap.m2 models which were rendering as white
tiles using WHITE1.BLP texture. These are meant to be invisible
spell trigger objects that should not obstruct player movement.
Changes:
- Added isInvisibleTrap flag to M2ModelGPU struct
- Detect models with "invisibletrap" in name during loading
- Skip rendering invisible trap instances in render loop
- Disable all collision checks (floor/wall/occlusion) for invisible traps
- Objects remain functional for spell casting but are now invisible
- Add distance-based + backface culling for STORMWIND.WMO LOD shell groups
- Hide floating cathedral shell when within 185 units of group center
- Enable backface culling for LOD shell to reduce artifacts from inside
- Increase WMO view distance from 160 to 500 units for better visibility
- Extend fog distances to 3000-4000 units for clearer long-range views
- Add fog support to water renderer matching WMO fog settings
Added deduplication for WMO instances based on uniqueId, matching the
existing M2 doodad deduplication logic. This prevents creating multiple
instances of the same WMO when it's referenced from multiple ADT tiles.
Before: STORMWIND.WMO (uniqueId=10047) was being rendered 16 times
(one instance per ADT tile that references it)
After: Only 1 instance is created and shared across all tiles
Changes:
- Added placedWmoIds set to TerrainManager (like placedDoodadIds)
- Check uniqueId before creating WMO instance
- Skip duplicate WMO placements across tile boundaries
- Log dedup statistics: 'X instances, Y dedup skipped'
This should fix the floating cathedral visual issue if it was caused by
rendering artifacts from 16x overdraw, and will massively improve
performance in Stormwind.
