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).
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
Fountain water at (-9048, -44, 93.7) was 2 units too large in diameter,
causing fall detection to trigger and respawn players. Lower water by 2
units within 15-unit radius of fountain center.
PROBLEM:
Canal water surfaces in Stormwind extend spatially beyond their intended
boundaries, causing water to appear in tunnels and buildings where it
shouldn't be visible. This is likely due to oversized water mesh extents
in the original WoW data.
SOLUTION:
Lower Stormwind canal water by 1 unit to hide it below tunnel/building floors
while keeping boats at reasonable floating height:
- Only affects water in Stormwind area (tiles 28-50, 28-52)
- Only affects water above 94 height (canal level)
- Moonwell exclusion: 20-unit radius around (-8755.9, 1108.9, 96.1)
to preserve functional moonwell water
HARDCODED VALUES:
- Stormwind area bounds: tiles (28-50, 28-52)
- Height threshold: >94 units (canal level)
- Moonwell position: (-8755.9, 1108.9, 96.1) with 20-unit exclusion
- Lowering amount: 1 unit
WHY THIS IS HACKY:
- Zone-specific logic hardcoded for Stormwind coordinates
- Position-based moonwell exclusion uses hardcoded world coordinates
- Height threshold is a magic number tuned by trial
- Doesn't fix root cause (oversized water surface meshes)
- Some park water may still be visible
PROPER FIX WOULD BE:
- Trim water surface meshes to actual canal boundaries in ADT/WMO data
- Or implement spatial clipping of water surfaces at render time
This is a pragmatic workaround that improves the situation.
- Filter terrain water in Stormwind area (tiles 28-35, 46-52) to 85-110 height range
- Conservative global WMO water filter (only removes water above 300 or below -100)
- Increase canal water opacity and add distance-based opacity
- Prevents floating/underground water in Stormwind without affecting other zones
- 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
Each water tile generates waves independently using local coordinates,
causing height mismatches at tile boundaries. Reduced amplitude minimizes
visible seams.
Problem:
- Waves calculated per-tile using local vertex positions (aPos)
- Adjacent tiles have different local coords at shared boundary
- Wave height discontinuity creates visible gaps between tiles
Solution:
- Reduced ocean wave amplitude: 0.25 → 0.06 (75% reduction)
- Reduced canal wave amplitude: 0.10 → 0.04
- Kept frequency and speed for subtle animation
- Waves still visible but gaps minimized
Technical note: Proper fix would be world-space wave calculation, but
requires passing tile offset to shader. This amplitude reduction is
simpler and effective for smooth ocean appearance.
Eliminates visible grid symmetry when viewing ocean from altitude by adding
pseudo-random phase offsets and multiple wave frequencies.
Changes:
- Added position-based hash functions for pseudo-random phase offsets
- Phase-shifted primary waves (w1, w2) by hash * 2π
- Added 2 higher-frequency detail waves (w3, w4) at lower amplitudes
- Detail waves: 1.7x-2.1x frequency, 0.28-0.35x amplitude
- Different speeds and directions for each octave
Result: Natural-looking ocean with broken symmetry visible from altitude.
No more obvious grid pattern or repetitive crests.
The hash function creates consistent randomness per vertex position,
breaking the regular sine/cosine pattern without performance impact.
Fixes visible square gaps in ocean near coastlines by rendering masked tiles
if they have any water neighbors. Creates smoother, more natural coastlines.
Implementation:
- Check 8 neighboring tiles when a tile is masked out
- If any neighbor is water, render the edge tile anyway
- Creates 1-tile overlap at coastline boundaries
- Fills square gaps between water tiles
Before: Hard square edges with missing ocean tiles at coast
After: Continuous water coverage with smooth blended coastlines
The straight-line grid artifacts are reduced by ensuring adjacent water
tiles connect properly instead of leaving rectangular voids.
Removed complex noise-based foam that created visible grid pattern.
Replaced with simple subtle highlight on highest wave peaks only.
Kept the increased wave strength (bigger, more visible ocean waves).
Ocean waves are now much more pronounced, and foam appears on shorelines
in addition to wave crests.
Wave strength increases:
- Amplitude: 0.12 → 0.25 (ocean), 0.07 → 0.10 (canals)
- Frequency: 0.18 → 0.22 (ocean) - more waves per distance
- Speed: 1.60 → 2.00 (ocean) - faster wave motion
Shoreline foam:
- Appears on shallow/near-camera water (20-80 unit range)
- Uses upward-facing surface detection (horizontal = shore)
- Combined with wave crest foam for realistic effect
- Animated with same noise pattern as wave foam
Wave crest foam improvements:
- Lower threshold (0.15 vs 0.25) - more visible
- Increased intensity (0.85 vs 0.65)
- Faster animation (time * 0.8)
- Higher frequency noise (50.0 vs 40.0)
Result: Ocean now has visible motion from distance and foam on beaches.
Makes distant water more opaque to hide underwater objects and improve
visual quality during flight. Also adds animated foam on wave crests.
Distance-based opacity:
- Water becomes more opaque from 80-400 units distance
- Smoothstep fade adds up to 50% opacity at far distances
- Hides underwater M2 models and terrain from aerial view
- Max alpha increased from 0.82 to 0.95 for distant water
Procedural foam:
- Generated on wave peaks (positive WaveOffset values)
- Uses noise function for natural foam texture
- Animated with time and texture coordinates
- Adds white highlights to wave crests for ocean realism
This improves taxi flight visuals by making oceans look more solid
and realistic from altitude, similar to authentic WoW.
- Add spellbook screen (P key) with Spell.dbc name lookup and action bar assignment
- Default Attack and Hearthstone spells available in single player
- Fix WMO floor clipping (gryphon roost) by tightening ceiling rejection threshold
- Darken ocean water, increase wave motion and opacity
- Add M2 model distance fade-in to prevent pop-in
- Reposition chat window, add slash/enter key focus
- Remove debug key commands (keep only F1 perf HUD, N minimap)
- Performance: return chat history by const ref, use deque for O(1) pop_front
- 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
