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
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)
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.
Added NPC voice manager that plays greeting sounds when clicking on NPCs:
Features:
- Voice line library with multiple race/gender voice types (Human, Dwarf,
Night Elf, etc.)
- 3D positional audio - voice comes from NPC location
- Cooldown system prevents spam clicking same NPC
- Randomized pitch/volume for variety
- Loads greeting sounds from character voice files in MPQ
- Generic fallback voices for NPCs without specific voice types
Voice lines trigger automatically when gossip window opens (SMSG_GOSSIP_MESSAGE).
Uses same audio system as other sound effects with ma_sound_set_position.
Implemented dust cloud particles that spawn at mount feet when running
on the ground, similar to the original WoW. Features:
- Brownish/tan dust particles using point sprite rendering
- Spawn rate proportional to movement speed
- Particles rise up, drift backward, and fade out naturally
- Only active when mounted, moving, and on ground (not flying)
- Smooth particle animation with size growth and alpha fade
Uses similar particle system architecture as swim effects with
GL_POINTS rendering and custom shaders for soft circular particles.
Implement framework for playing mount sounds (flapping, galloping) based on mount type and movement state. Actual sound playback to be implemented next.
- 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.
Render mount M2 model under player with seated animation, apply creature
skin textures, server-driven speed via SMSG_FORCE_RUN_SPEED_CHANGE, and
/dismount command. X11 XUngrabPointer on crash/hang to always release mouse.
- Fix white hair: always override M2 type-6 texture with DBC hair texture when available
- Fix vendor sell: add sellPrice to ItemDef/ItemTemplateRow, use directly instead of empty cache
- Fix empty loot: skip loot window when corpse has no items and no gold
- Revamp spellbook (P key): tabbed UI (General/Active/Passive), spell icons from SpellIcon.dbc, rank text
- Clean up action bar: only auto-populate Attack and Hearthstone, rest assigned via spellbook
- Add talent placeholder (N key): 3-tab window with level/talent point display
- Fix ffplay cleanup: non-blocking waitpid with SIGKILL fallback to prevent orphaned audio processes
- Fix pre-existing getQualityColor visibility for loot window rendering
Split inventory into bags-only (B key) and character screen (C key). Vendor window
auto-opens bags with sell prices on hover and right-click to sell. Add camera intro
pan on all login/spawn/teleport/hearthstone events and idle orbit after 2 minutes.
Add quest log UI, SMSG_MONSTER_MOVE handling, deferred creature spawn queue, and
creature fade-in/movement interpolation for online mode.
Implements a full character creation UI integrated into the existing flow.
In single-player mode, auth screen now goes to character creation before
entering the world. In online mode, a "Create Character" button on the
character selection screen sends CMSG_CHAR_CREATE to the server. Includes
WoW 3.3.5a race/class combo validation and appearance range limits.
- 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
Replace POSIX-specific socket and process APIs with portable
abstractions so the project builds on both Windows and Linux.
- Add include/network/net_platform.hpp: Winsock2/POSIX socket
abstraction (socket types, non-blocking, error handling,
WSAStartup lifecycle)
- Add include/platform/process.hpp: CreateProcess/fork+exec
abstraction for spawning ffplay subprocesses
- Update network module (tcp_socket, world_socket) to use
portable socket helpers instead of raw POSIX calls
- Update audio module (music_manager, footstep_manager,
activity_sound_manager) to use portable process helpers
instead of fork/exec/kill/waitpid
- Replace hardcoded /tmp/ paths with std::filesystem::temp_directory_path()
- Link ws2_32 and SDL2main on Windows in CMakeLists.txt
- 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
