Standalone wowee_editor tool for creating custom WoW zones.
This is a rough initial implementation — many features work but
M2/WMO rendering still has issues (frame sync, texture layout
transitions) and needs further polish.
Terrain:
- Create new blank terrain with 10 biome types (Grassland, Forest,
Jungle, Desert, Barrens, Snow, Swamp, Rocky, Beach, Volcanic)
- Load existing ADT tiles from extracted game data
- Sculpt brushes: Raise, Lower, Smooth, Flatten, Level
- Chunk edge stitching prevents seams between tiles
- Undo/redo (100-deep stack, Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Shift+Z)
- Save to WoW ADT/WDT format
Texture Painting:
- Paint/Erase/Replace Base modes
- Full tileset texture browser (1285 textures from manifest)
- Per-zone directory filtering and search
- Alpha map editing with 4-layer limit (auto-replaces weakest)
Object Placement:
- M2 and WMO model placement with full manifest browser (11k M2s, 2k WMOs)
- M2Renderer + WMORenderer integrated (loads .skin files for WotLK)
- Ghost preview follows cursor before placing
- Ctrl+click selection, right-click context menu
- Transform gizmo (Move/Rotate/Scale with axis constraints)
- Position/rotation/scale editing in properties panel
NPC/Monster System:
- 631 creature presets scanned from manifest, categorized
(Critters, Beasts, Humanoids, Undead, Demons, etc.)
- Stats editor: level, health, mana, damage, armor, faction
- Behavior: Stationary, Patrol, Wander, Scripted
- Aggro/leash radius, respawn time, flags (hostile/vendor/etc.)
- Save creature spawns to JSON
Water:
- Place water at configurable height per chunk
- Liquid types: Water, Ocean, Magma, Slime
- Rendered as translucent colored quads
- Saved in ADT MH2O format
Infrastructure:
- Free-fly camera (WASD/QE, right-drag look, scroll speed)
- 5-mode toolbar: Sculpt | Paint | Objects | Water | NPCs
- Asset browser indexes full manifest on startup
- Editor water/marker shaders (pos+color vertex format)
- forceNoCull added to M2Renderer for editor use
- AssetManifest::getEntries() and AssetManager::getManifest() exposed
Known issues:
- M2/WMO rendering may not display on first placement (frame index
sync between update/render was misaligned — now fixed but untested
end-to-end)
- Validation layer errors on shutdown (resource cleanup ordering)
- Object placement on steep terrain can miss raycast
- No undo for texture painting or object placement yet
Squared distance optimizations across 30 files:
- Convert glm::length() comparisons to glm::dot() (no sqrt)
- Use glm::inversesqrt() for check-then-normalize patterns (1 rsqrt vs 2 sqrt)
- Defer sqrt to after early-out checks in collision/movement code
- Hottest paths: camera_controller (21), weather particles, WMO collision,
transport movement, creature interpolation, nameplate culling
Container and algorithm improvements:
- std::map<string> → std::unordered_map for asset/DBC/MPQ/warden caches
- std::mutex → std::shared_mutex for asset_manager and mpq_manager caches
- std::sort → std::partial_sort in lighting_manager (top-2 of N volumes)
- Double-lookup find()+operator[] → insert_or_assign in game_handler
- Add reserve() for per-frame vectors: weather, swim_effects, WMO/M2 collision
Threading and synchronization:
- Replace 1ms busy-wait polling with condition_variable in character_renderer
- Move timestamp capture before mutex in logger
- Use memory_order_acquire/release for normal map completion signaling
API additions:
- DBC getStringView()/getStringViewByOffset() for zero-copy string access
- Parse creature display IDs from SMSG_CREATURE_QUERY_SINGLE_RESPONSE
- Nameplates: player names always rendered regardless of V-key toggle;
separate cull distance 40u (players/target) vs 20u (NPCs); cyan name
color for other players; fade alpha scales with cull distance
- Level-up: add expanding golden ring burst (3 staggered waves, 420u
max radius) + full-screen flash to renderDingEffect(); M2 LevelUp.m2
is still attempted as a bonus on top
- Vanilla tile loading: add AssetManager::setBaseFallbackPath() so that
when the primary manifest is an expansion-specific DBC-only subset
(e.g. Data/expansions/vanilla/), world terrain files fall back to
the base Data/ extraction; wired in Application::initialize()
- Warden: map a null guard page at address 0x0 in the Unicorn emulator
so NULL-pointer reads in the module don't crash with UC_ERR_MAP;
execution continues past the NULL read for better diagnostics
- game: clear pendingNameQueries on player out-of-range and DESTROY_OBJECT so
re-entering players get a fresh name query instead of being silently skipped
- game: add 5s periodic name resync scan that re-queries players with empty names
and no pending query, recovering from dropped CMSG_NAME_QUERY responses
- warden: fix UC_ERR_MAP by moving HEAP_BASE from 0x200000 to 0x20000000; the old
heap [0x200000, 0x1200000) overlapped the module at 0x400000, causing Unicorn to
reject the heap mapping and abort emulator initialisation
- warden: add early overlap check between module and heap regions to catch future
layout bugs at init time
- assets: add loadDBCOptional() which logs at DEBUG level when a DBC is absent,
for files that are not distributed on all expansions
- assets: use loadDBCOptional for Item.dbc (absent on Vanilla 1.12 clients) and
fall back to server-sent itemInfoCache displayInfoId for NPC weapon resolution
Remove HDPackManager, expansion overlay manifests, and BLP size-comparison
logic. Assets now resolve through a single manifest with a simple override
directory (Data/override/) for future HD upgrades.
- Vanilla M2 bone struct (108 bytes) with 28-byte animation tracks
- Version-aware bone parsing (vanilla vs WotLK format detection)
- Fix CharSections.dbc field layout for vanilla (variation/color at 4-5)
- Remove broken CharSections.csv files (all fields marked as strings)
- Expansion data reload on profile switch (DBC cache clear, layout reload)
- Vanilla packet encryption (VanillaCrypt XOR-based header crypt)
- Extended character preview geoset range (0-99) for vanilla models
- DBC cache clear support in AssetManager
Replace hardcoded WotLK protocol constants with a data-driven architecture
supporting Classic 1.12.1, TBC 2.4.3, and WotLK 3.3.5a. Each expansion
has JSON profiles for opcodes, update fields, and DBC layouts, plus C++
polymorphic packet parsers for binary format differences (movement flags,
speed fields, transport data, spline format, char enum layout).
Key components:
- ExpansionRegistry: scans Data/expansions/*/expansion.json at startup
- OpcodeTable: logical enum <-> wire values loaded from JSON
- UpdateFieldTable: field indices loaded from JSON per expansion
- DBCLayout: schema-driven DBC field lookups replacing magic numbers
- PacketParsers: WotLK/TBC/Classic parsers with correct flag positions
- Multi-manifest AssetManager: layered manifests with priority ordering
- HDPackManager: overlay texture packs with expansion compatibility
- Auth screen expansion picker replacing hardcoded version dropdown
- Add MemoryMonitor class for dynamic cache sizing based on available RAM
- Increase terrain load radius to 8 tiles (17x17 grid, 289 tiles)
- Scale worker threads to 75% of logical cores (no cap)
- Increase cache budget to 80% of available RAM, max file size to 50%
- Increase M2 render distance: 1200 units during taxi, 800 when >2000 instances
- Fix camera positioning during taxi flights (external follow mode)
- Add 2-second landing cooldown to prevent re-entering taxi mode on lag
- Update interval reduced to 33ms for faster streaming responsiveness
Optimized for high-memory systems while scaling gracefully to lower-end hardware.
Cache and render distances now fully utilize available VRAM on minimum spec GPUs.
