- Clamp Heights: sets min/max height bounds across entire tile
(DragFloatRange2 slider for min/max, -500 to 2000 range)
- Useful workflow: Generate noise → Smooth → Clamp to desired range
- Prevents terrain from going underground or too high
- All affected chunks marked dirty for mesh regeneration
- "Center on Terrain" (Home key or View menu): resets camera to center
of loaded tile at 300 units altitude with 45-degree downward pitch.
Essential for recovering when camera gets lost in empty space.
- Toast confirmation on center action
- Scroll wheel now zooms camera (moves along look direction) instead
of adjusting speed. Much more intuitive for terrain editing.
- Shift+scroll adjusts camera speed (old behavior preserved)
- Click on minimap to teleport camera to that location on the terrain
- Zoom speed scales with current camera speed for consistent feel
- Loading an existing ADT now imports its MDDF (doodad) and MODF (WMO)
placements into the object placer with correct position/rotation/scale
- Allows editing zones that already have objects placed in them
- Mutable getObjects() accessor for bulk import operations
- Log shows imported doodad + WMO count on load
- Brush mode tooltips: hover over the mode combo to see what each does
(Raise/Lower/Smooth/Flatten/Level/Erode descriptions)
- Chunk texture inspector: Paint panel shows which texture layers are
on the chunk under the cursor (base + blended layers with filenames)
- Helps identify what textures you're painting over before blending
- About dialog: Help > About shows editor version, capabilities, and
supported format (WoW 3.3.5a compatible)
- Info panel now shows texture count, water chunk count, hole chunk count
- Status bar shows object/NPC counts alongside map name
- Better at-a-glance overview of zone composition without opening panels
- Loading an ADT now auto-loads objects.json and creatures.json from
the output directory if they exist (full session persistence)
- Toolbar buttons now highlight active mode in blue (clearer visual)
- Number keys 1-5 switch modes: 1=Sculpt 2=Paint 3=Objects 4=Water 5=NPCs
- Toast shows loaded object/NPC count on zone open
- White crosshair on minimap shows camera position in real-time
- Bulk Operations section in Object panel:
- "Delete All in Radius": removes all objects within brush radius
- "Snap All to Ground": raycasts every object downward to terrain
(fixes all floating objects in one click)
- Minimap legend updated with camera indicator
- Useful for cleaning up scattered objects or fixing placement height
- NPC default scale changed from 1.0 to 3.0 so creatures are visible
from typical editing altitude (WoW creature models are very small at
scale 1.0)
- Properties/Info panel uses ImGuiCond_Always for position so it stays
pinned to the right edge when the window is resized (was getting lost
off-screen before)
- Clear All now actually removes all objects and NPCs (was only clearing
selections before). Uses new ObjectPlacer::clearAll() method.
- New Terrain clears all objects/NPCs and resets viewport before creating
fresh terrain. Fixes stale state from previous session.
- Right-click context menu works on both objects AND NPCs with
appropriate options for each (Move/Rotate/Scale for objects,
Fly To/Duplicate for NPCs)
- Gizmo drag: left-click now confirms the transform (ends drag) instead
of requiring mouse-up. Right-click cancels. Camera no longer steals
mouse events while gizmo is active.
- Right-click on unselected area passes through to camera correctly
- "Fly To" button on selected objects and NPCs: moves camera 30 units
above the selected item for quick navigation on large zones
- Export now generates README.txt with zone summary: map name, tile
coords, object/NPC counts, and file listing
- Complete export package: zone.json + WDT + ADT + objects.json +
creatures.json + README.txt
- Object placer save/load: objects.json persists placed M2/WMO objects
across sessions (path, position, rotation, scale, type)
- Fixed Duplicate button in Object panel: now actually creates a copy
with correct path/type/scale instead of being a no-op stub
- Export Zone now saves objects.json alongside ADT/WDT/creatures/manifest
- Object JSON loader parses all fields for full round-trip
- Minimap now shows placed objects (yellow dots) and NPCs (red=hostile,
green=friendly) at their world positions on the height grid
- NPC Duplicate button: copies selected creature with 10-unit offset
for quick population of similar spawns
- Minimap legend: colored dots showing Object/Hostile/Friendly markers
- All positions correctly mapped from world coords to minimap UV space
- Zone manifest (zone.json): generated on export with map name, map ID,
tile list, biome, creature flag, and file paths. This is what the
wowee client will read to discover and load custom zones.
- Export workflow now produces a complete loadable zone package:
zone.json + MapName.wdt + MapName_X_Y.adt + creatures.json
- ZoneManifest class with save/load (JSON format)
- Custom map IDs start at 9000+ to avoid conflicting with retail maps
- New Terrain dialog shows helper text for map name format
- Remove markerRenderer_ initialization, shutdown, update, and clear
calls from EditorViewport (markers replaced by actual M2 rendering)
- Remove unused saveAdtRequested_/saveWdtRequested_ fields and their
void casts (replaced by unified exportZone workflow)
- Zero warnings across both wowee and wowee_editor targets
- Smooth Entire Tile: global smoothing pass with configurable iterations
(1-10). Smooths across chunk boundaries for seamless results. Updates
inner vertices from smoothed outer grid. Great after noise generation.
- Snap to Ground checkbox: on by default, objects placed at terrain
surface. Disable for floating/airborne objects.
- Random Rotation + Snap Ground checkboxes side-by-side for fast setup
- Toast notifications on noise apply and smooth operations
- Smooth pass uses cross-chunk neighbor averaging for edge continuity
- Random Rotation checkbox: each placed object gets a random Y rotation
(great for natural-looking tree/rock placement without manual tweaking)
- Placed Object List: collapsible list in Object panel showing all placed
objects with name and position, click to select
- Both features reduce repetitive manual work when building dense zones
- Export Heightmap: File > Export Heightmap saves terrain as 16-bit
RAW grayscale (129x129) for use in external terrain editors or
as a backup. Configurable max height scale.
- Help overlay (F1 or Help menu): lists all keyboard shortcuts
organized by category (navigation, editing, object transform, view)
- Round-trip heightmap workflow: import → edit → export
- Import Heightmap: File > Import Heightmap loads RAW 8/16-bit grayscale
files (129x129 or 257x257) and maps to terrain heights with configurable
scale. Supports standard terrain editor heightmap formats.
- Toast notifications: non-intrusive green popup at bottom center for
user feedback (save confirmations, import results, errors)
- Toasts fade out after 3 seconds with alpha animation
- Auto-save now shows toast on save
- Quick-save (Ctrl+S) shows toast confirmation
- Erode brush mode: simulates water erosion by moving height downhill
based on slope, creating natural drainage patterns and gullies
- NPC JSON loader: File > Load NPCs parses saved creatures.json back
into the spawn list (round-trip save/load now works)
- Auto-save: every 5 minutes when unsaved changes exist, exports the
full zone (ADT + WDT + creatures) to the output directory
- Sculpt mode now has 6 brush types: Raise/Lower/Smooth/Flatten/Level/Erode
- Noise Generator in Sculpt panel: applies procedural value noise
with configurable frequency, amplitude, octaves, and seed
to create hills/valleys across entire tile instantly
- Sky/Lighting presets: View > Sky menu with Day (blue sky, high sun),
Dusk (orange, low sun), Night (dark blue, moonlight)
- Viewport clear color and light direction now configurable at runtime
- Noise uses smoothstep interpolation with octave fractal layering
- Punch Hole / Fill Hole buttons in Sculpt panel: creates terrain
holes (4x4 bitmask) for cave entrances, mine shafts, etc.
Uses brush radius to determine affected area.
- Recent Textures: paint panel shows last 6 used textures as quick-
select buttons (no need to re-search the full list)
- Holes saved in ADT format (MCNK holes field) and respected by
the mesh generator (triangles skipped at hole positions)
- Minimap window: 16x16 chunk grid colored by average height
(blue=low, green=mid, brown=high, blue overlay=water)
- NPC patrol path UI: add waypoints at cursor, view path list,
delete individual points or clear entire path
- Sculpt flatten "Pick" button: click to set target height from
cursor position instead of typing manually
- Height range displayed in minimap footer
- Terrain normals recalculated after height changes (smooth lighting
on sculpted terrain instead of flat-shaded appearance)
- Ghost preview and brush indicator cleared when switching modes
(prevents stale model instances or circles persisting)
- File > Clear All resets undo history and selections
- Normal computation uses finite differences from neighbor heights,
handles both outer (9x9) and inner (8x8) vertex grid positions
- Object scatter tool: place N copies of selected M2/WMO in a radius
with random rotation and scale range (Min/Max Scale slider)
- Camera bookmarks: F5 saves current position, View > Load Bookmark
to jump back — useful for working on different parts of a large zone
- Shortcut hints shown at bottom of Object panel
(G=move, R=rotate, T=scale, Del=remove)
- DragFloatRange2 for min/max scale in scatter UI
- Scatter tool: place N creatures in a radius around cursor position
with random rotation and uniform disk distribution
- File > Add Adjacent Tile: creates and exports a blank tile N/S/E/W
of current (foundation for multi-tile zone editing)
- Scatter UI: count slider (1-30), radius slider (10-200)
- Scatter places all copies with same stats/behavior as template
- Yellow circle renders at cursor position showing brush radius
- Visible in Sculpt, Paint, and Water modes
- Built from 48-segment quad strip slightly above terrain surface
- Renders through the water pipeline (alpha-blended, depth-tested)
- Disappears when cursor leaves terrain or in Object/NPC modes
- Brush VB cleaned up properly on shutdown
- Ctrl+S quick-saves entire zone (ADT + WDT + creatures.json) to output/
- File > Export Zone dialog saves all data to chosen directory
- exportZone() bundles ADT, WDT, and NPC spawns in one operation
- Info panel shows cursor world coordinates for placement debugging
- Info panel shows NPC count alongside object count
- Save state indicator: "Saved" (green) vs "* Unsaved (Ctrl+S)" (yellow)
- File menu reorganized: Quick Save + Export Zone replaces separate ADT/WDT
- Ctrl+Z in Object/NPC mode undoes last placement (50-deep stack)
- "Snap Ground" button raycasts straight down to place object on terrain
- Useful for objects placed too high or moved off terrain surface
- Undo stack adjusts indices when objects are removed mid-stack
- Raycast AABB now uses actual min/max vertex heights per chunk
instead of fixed ±200 padding (fixes misses on sculpted terrain)
- Right-click context menu opens correctly (deferred popup via flag
since ImGui::OpenPopup must be called within ImGui frame)
- Keyboard shortcuts: G=Move, R=Rotate, T=Scale, X/Y=axis lock,
Escape=deselect, Delete works in any mode for objects/NPCs
- Delete key now removes selected NPC in NPC mode too
- Ghost preview now shows in NPC mode (follows cursor with creature model)
- Added scale field to CreatureSpawn (default 1.0, slider 0.5-10x)
- NPC instances render at their configured scale
- Scale included in JSON save format
- M2Renderer::update() now runs AFTER beginFrame() so getCurrentFrame()
returns the correct frame index — fixes instance SSBO mismatch that
caused draws=0 despite loaded models
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
- VkTexture::isValid() now checks both image AND sampler handles. Previously
it only checked the image, so a texture with a valid image but NULL sampler
would pass validation and get bound to a descriptor set. On MoltenVK (macOS)
this renders as pink/magenta boxes; the fallback white texture is now
correctly used instead.
- Fix fs::path to std::string implicit conversion in asset extractor that
broke the Windows (MSYS2/clang) CI build.
- mpq and locale finding is now case insensitive
- improve extraction order and support more patches
- unified much of the mpq logic for all expansions
- return a list of ordered paths for loading
M2 GPU instancing
- M2InstanceGPU SSBO (96 B/entry, double-buffered, 16384 max)
- Group opaque instances by (modelId, LOD); single vkCmdDrawIndexed per group
- boneBase field indexes into mega bone SSBO via gl_InstanceIndex
Indirect terrain drawing
- 24 MB mega index buffer (6M uint32) + 64 MB mega vertex buffer
- CPU builds VkDrawIndexedIndirectCommand per visible chunk
- Single VB/IB bind per frame; shadow pass reuses mega buffers
- Replaced vkCmdDrawIndexedIndirect with direct vkCmdDrawIndexed to fix
host-mapped buffer race condition that caused terrain flickering
GPU frustum culling (compute shader)
- m2_cull.comp.glsl: 64-thread workgroups, sphere-vs-6-planes + distance cull
- CullInstanceGPU SSBO input, uint visibility[] output, double-buffered
- dispatchCullCompute() runs before main pass via render graph node
Consolidated bone matrix SSBOs
- 16 MB double-buffered mega bone SSBO (2048 instances × 128 bones)
- Eliminated per-instance descriptor sets; one megaBoneSet_ per frame
- prepareRender() packs bone matrices consecutively into current frame slot
Render graph / frame graph
- RenderGraph: RGResource handles, RGPass nodes, Kahn topological sort
- Automatic VkImageMemoryBarrier/VkBufferMemoryBarrier between passes
- Passes: minimap_composite, worldmap_composite, preview_composite,
shadow_pass, reflection_pass, compute_cull
- beginFrame() uses buildFrameGraph() + renderGraph_->execute(cmd)
Pipeline derivatives
- PipelineBuilder::setFlags/setBasePipeline for VK_PIPELINE_CREATE_DERIVATIVE_BIT
- M2 opaque = base; alphaTest/alpha/additive are derivatives
- Applied to terrain (wireframe) and WMO (alpha-test) renderers
Rendering bug fixes:
- fix(shadow): compute lightSpaceMatrix before updatePerFrameUBO to eliminate
one-frame lag that caused shadow trails and flicker on moving objects
- fix(shadow): scale depth bias with shadowDistance_ instead of hardcoded 0.8f
to prevent acne at close range and gaps at far range
- fix(visibility): WMO group distance threshold 500u → 1200u to match terrain
view distance; buildings were disappearing on the horizon
- fix(precision): camera near plane 0.05 → 0.5 (ratio 600K:1 → 60K:1),
eliminating Z-fighting and improving frustum plane extraction stability
- fix(streaming): terrain load radius 4 → 6 tiles (~2133u → ~3200u) to exceed
M2 render distance (2800u) and eliminate pop-in when camera turns;
unload radius 7 → 9; spawn radius 3 → 4
- fix(visibility): ground-detail M2 distance multiplier 0.75 → 0.9 to reduce
early pop of grass and debris
Drop PROT_EXEC from warden module mmap when using Unicorn emulation
(not needed — module image is copied into emulator address space). Use
MAP_JIT on macOS for the native fallback path.
Add --listfile option to asset_extract and SFileAddListFileEntries
support for resolving unnamed MPQ hash table entries from external
listfiles.
Drop PROT_EXEC from warden module mmap when using Unicorn emulation
(not needed — module image is copied into emulator address space). Use
MAP_JIT on macOS for the native fallback path.
Add --listfile option to asset_extract and SFileAddListFileEntries
support for resolving unnamed MPQ hash table entries from external
listfiles.
WoW archives contain mixed-case variants of the same path (e.g.,
ARMLOWERTEXTURE vs ArmLowerTexture) which created duplicate directories
on case-sensitive Linux filesystems. Now mapPath() lowercases the entire
output. Also keeps TextureComponents and ObjectComponents directory
names instead of abbreviating them (item/texturecomponents/ instead of
item/texture/) so filesystem paths match the WoW virtual paths used in
manifest lookups.
The string-column auto-detector in both tools had two gaps that caused small
integer fields (RaceID=1, SexID=0/1, BaseSection, ColorIndex) to be falsely
classified as string columns, corrupting the generated CSVs:
1. No boundary check: a value of N was accepted as a valid string offset even
when N landed inside a longer string (e.g. offset 3 inside "Character\...").
Fix: precompute valid string-start boundaries (offset 0 plus every position
immediately after a null byte); reject offsets that are not boundaries.
2. No diversity check: a column whose only non-zero value is 1 would pass the
boundary test because offset 1 is always a valid boundary (it follows the
mandatory null at offset 0). Fix: require at least 2 distinct non-empty
string values before marking a column as a string column. Columns like
SexID (all values are 0 or 1, resolving to "" and the same path fragment)
are integer fields, not string fields.
Both dbc_to_csv and asset_extract now produce correct column metadata,
e.g. CharSections.dbc yields "strings=6,7,8" instead of "strings=0,1,...,9".
