- Skybox now uses DBC sky colors (skyTop/skyMiddle/skyBand1/skyBand2) instead
of hardcoded C++ color curves, with 3-band gradient and Rayleigh/Mie scattering
- Clouds receive sun direction for lit edges, self-shadowing, and silver lining
- Fixed sun quad box artifact with proper edge fade in celestial shader
- Lens flare attenuated by fog, cloud density, and weather intensity
- Replaced garish green/purple lens flare ghosts with warm natural palette
- Added zone-based weather system for single-player mode with per-zone rain/snow
configuration, probability-based activation, and smooth intensity transitions
- Server SMSG_WEATHER remains authoritative when connected to a server
Player interaction ripples: vertex shader adds radial damped-sine displacement
centered on player position, fragment shader adds matching normal perturbation
for specular highlights. Player XY packed into shadowParams.zw, ripple strength
into fogParams.w. Separate 1x render pass for water when MSAA is active to
avoid MSAA-induced darkening — water renders after main pass resolves, using
the resolved swapchain image and depth resolve target. Water 1x framebuffers
rebuilt on swapchain recreate (window resize).
Skybox: replace sphere-mesh approach with a fullscreen triangle that
reconstructs the world-space ray direction analytically via inverse
projection/view matrices. Eliminates clip.w=0 degeneracy at the horizon
and correctly maps altitude to dir.z in the Z-up coordinate system.
Clouds: hemisphere mesh was storing altitude in aPos.y (Y-up convention);
the Z-up view matrix projected this sideways, making clouds appear
vertical. Store altitude in aPos.z and update the fragment shader to
read dir.z as altitude and dir.xy as the horizontal UV plane.
- renderWorld() now calls wmoRenderer, characterRenderer, m2Renderer (+smoke,
particles) in the correct opaque→transparent order; water moved after all
opaques; per-subsystem timing active in live path
- Deleted the 310-line #if 0 GL stub block and removed #include <GL/glew.h>
(last GL reference in renderer.cpp)
- Full-screen overlay pipeline (postprocess.vert + overlay.frag, alpha blend,
no depth test/write) for underwater tint; lazily initialized, renders a blue
tint when camera is meaningfully below the water surface; canal vs open-water
tint colours preserved from original design
- overlay.frag.glsl / overlay.frag.spv added
- 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%
- 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.
The binary DBC files for all expansions use the same field ordering
(VariationIndex=4, ColorIndex=5, Texture1=6), but classic/tbc/turtle
dbc_layouts.json had swapped texture and variation/color fields, causing
all skin/face/hair/underwear lookups to fail. Also adds generalized
NxN texture scaling and a second video to README.
11 original tracks in assets/Original Music/ now play on the login
screen and in thematically matched zones across Eastern Kingdoms and
Kalimdor. Added crossfadeToFile to MusicManager for local file
playback during zone transitions. New zones: Tirisfal, Undercity,
Barrens, STV, Duskwood, Burning Steppes, Searing Gorge, Ironforge,
Loch Modan, Orgrimmar, Durotar, Mulgore, Thunder Bluff, Darkshore,
Teldrassil, Darnassus.
Drop specular lighting from terrain shader — ground materials (dirt, grass,
stone) are purely diffuse and specular highlights made them look plastic.
Replace Reinhard tonemapper with a shoulder-only compressor that is identity
below 0.9 and softly rolls off HDR values above, preserving scene contrast.
Replace hardcoded specular multipliers with uLightColor * uSpecularIntensity
uniforms in all 4 world shaders (terrain, WMO, M2, character), set HDR sun
color (1.5, 1.4, 1.3) and specular intensity 0.5 so highlights can exceed
1.0, and switch the post-process pass from passthrough to exposure-compensated
Reinhard (exposure=1.8) for soft highlight roll-off without clipping.
- Add loading screen system with stb_image for JPEG loading
- Two loading screen images (orc and dwarf) randomly selected
- Display loading screen while terrain data loads
- Cache WMO inverse matrices to reduce per-frame computation
- Stub WMO liquid rendering (needs coordinate system fix)
- Update spawn point to Stormwind Trade District
