- TerrainManager loads WOC collision meshes alongside WOT/WHM terrain
from both custom_zones/ and output/ directories
- CollisionData stored per-tile with triangle array + bounds
- isPositionWalkable(x, y): returns whether a world position is on
walkable terrain (barycentric point-in-triangle test)
- getCollisionFlags(x, y): returns per-triangle flags (walkable,
water, steep, indoor) for movement system integration
- Defaults to walkable when no collision data is loaded (backward compat)
- Custom zone players now have proper terrain physics boundaries
- WOM→M2 conversion now creates proper render batch (indexStart,
indexCount, vertexStart, vertexCount), texture references, material
with opaque blend mode — WOM models are now actually visible in the
client renderer instead of being invisible geometry-only shells
- 5 new JSON DBC test cases: basic load with strings/ints, float values,
empty records rejection, missing records key rejection, findRecordById
lookup across 3 records
- Total: 278 assertions across 80 test cases, all passing
- Wire WOB buildings into WMO render pipeline (loads→converts→renders)
- Implement JSON DBC loading in DBCFile::loadJSON() with nlohmann/json
- Wire JSON DBC override into AssetManager (custom_zones/output scan)
- Add WMO→WOB conversion with full geometry (fromWMO)
- Replace placeholder WOB export with real WMO→WOB conversion in editor
- Add --convert-wmo CLI flag for batch WMO→WOB conversion
- Store discovered custom zones on Renderer with getCustomZones() accessor
- Add isCustomZone_ member to TerrainManager
All 6 Blizzard format replacements now fully load in the client:
ADT→WOT/WHM, WDT→zone.json, BLP→PNG, DBC→JSON, M2→WOM, WMO→WOB
- WoweeBuildingLoader::toWMOModel() converts WOB groups to WMOModel
with vertices, indices, normals, texCoords, and vertex colors
- TerrainManager now loads WOB files from custom_zones/buildings/
and converts to WMOModel for the WMO renderer pipeline
- WMOGroup indices converted from uint32 to uint16 for renderer compat
Client open format support — 4 of 6 now loading:
- FULL: WOT/WHM terrain, PNG textures, WOM models
- LOAD: WOB buildings (converts to WMOModel, render pipeline TODO)
- DETECT: zone.json (scanned), JSON DBC (scanned)
- TerrainManager now checks for .wob files before loading WMO buildings
(searches custom_zones/buildings/ and output/MapName/buildings/)
- AssetManager::loadDBC() scans custom_zones/*/data/ for JSON DBC
overrides exported by the editor
- WOB detection logs when found (full WOB→WMOModel conversion pending)
- JSON DBC detection logs when found (full JSON→DBCFile loading pending)
Client open format support status:
- WOT/WHM terrain: FULL (loads and renders)
- PNG textures: FULL (override system)
- WOM models: FULL (loads and renders)
- zone.json: DETECTION (CustomZoneDiscovery scans)
- WOB buildings: DETECTION (found, conversion pending)
- JSON DBC: DETECTION (found, loading pending)
- TerrainManager now checks for .wom files before loading M2 models
- Searches custom_zones/models/ and output/MapName/models/ directories
- Converts WOM vertices/indices to M2Model struct for the renderer
- Full pipeline: editor exports M2→WOM → client loads WOM directly
- Falls back to standard M2 loading if no WOM found
The client can now render custom zone content using entirely
open formats: WOT/WHM terrain + WOM models + PNG textures
The wowee client can now load custom zones exported from the editor
using the novel WOT/WHM format — no Blizzard files needed.
Loading priority in TerrainManager::prepareTile():
1. Check custom_zones/{mapName}/{mapName}_{x}_{y}.wot/.whm
2. Check output/{mapName}/{mapName}_{x}_{y}.wot/.whm (editor output)
3. Fall back to World\Maps\...\*.adt (standard extracted data)
Pipeline:
- WoweeTerrainLoader in src/pipeline/ (shared between client + editor)
- Loads .whm binary heightmap (WHM1 magic, 256 chunks × 145 floats)
- Loads .wot JSON metadata (textures, layers, holes, water)
- Populates the same ADTTerrain struct the mesh generator uses
- obj0 merge only runs for ADT-loaded tiles (custom zones have no obj0)
To use: export zone from editor → files appear in output/ → client
loads them automatically on next terrain request for that map name.
Add complete spell visual pipeline resolving the DBC chain
(Spell → SpellVisual → SpellVisualKit → SpellVisualEffectName → M2)
with precast/cast/impact phases, bone-attached positioning, and
automatic dual-hand mirroring.
Ribbon rendering fixes:
- Parse visibility track as uint8 (was read as float, suppressing
all ribbon edges due to ~1.4e-45 failing the >0.5 check)
- Filter garbage emitters with bone=UINT_MAX unconditionally
- Guard against NaN spine positions from corrupt bone data
- Resolve ribbon textures via direct index, not textureLookup table
- Fall back to bone 0 when ribbon bone index is out of range
Particle rendering fixes:
- Reduce spell particle scale from 5x to 1.5x (was oversized)
- Exempt spell effect instances from position-based deduplication
Spell handler integration:
- Trigger precast visuals on SMSG_SPELL_START with server castTimeMs
- Trigger cast/impact visuals on SMSG_SPELL_GO
- Cancel precast visuals on cast interrupt/failure/movement
M2 classifier expansion:
- Add AmbientEmitterType enum for sound system integration
- Add 20+ foliage tokens, 4 spell effect tokens, isSmallFoliage flag
- Add markModelAsSpellEffect() to override disableAnimation
DBC layouts:
- Add SpellVisualID field to Spell.dbc for all expansion configs
Signed-off-by: Pavel Okhlopkov <pavel.okhlopkov@flant.com>
Demote 44 more LOG_WARNING messages to LOG_DEBUG: warden module chunk
progress, entire shutdown/teardown sequence, transport manager connect,
inventory right-click slot, and warden handshake diagnostics. Keeps real
warnings (texture not found, slow handlers, stalls, integrity hash)
visible in the log.
- terrain_manager: extract kRand16Max (65535.0f) from 8 duplicated
random normalization expressions — 16-bit mask to [0..1] float
- terrain_manager: add static_assert verifying packed alpha unpacks
to full alpha map size (ALPHA_MAP_PACKED * 2 == ALPHA_MAP_SIZE)
- camera_controller: name kCameraClipEpsilon (0.1f) with why-comment
preventing character model clipping at near-minimum distance
Final sweep across mpq_manager, application, auth_screen, wmo_renderer,
character_renderer, and terrain_manager. All now use the unsigned char
cast pattern. No remaining bare ::tolower/::toupper or std::tolower(c)
calls on signed char in the codebase.
Spline auto-detection: try WotLK format before Classic to prevent false-positive
matches where durationMod float bytes resemble a valid Classic pointCount. This
caused the movement block to consume wrong byte count, corrupting the update mask
read (maskBlockCount=57/129/203 instead of ~5) and silently dropping NPC spawns.
Terrain latency: bound WMO liquid group loading to 4 groups per advanceFinalization
call. Large WMOs (e.g., Stormwind canals with 40+ liquid groups) previously loaded
all groups in one unbounded loop, blowing past the 8ms frame budget and causing
stalls up to 1300ms. Now yields back to processReadyTiles() after 4 groups so the
time budget check can break out.
- Hoist DBC field index lookups before loops in game_handler (7 DBC iteration loops)
- Cache getSkybox()/getPosition() calls instead of redundant per-frame queries
- Merge textureHasAlphaByPtr_ + textureColorKeyBlackByPtr_ into single map
- Add constexpr for DEG_TO_RAD, reciprocal constants, physics delta
- Add reserve() for WMO/M2 collision grid queries and portal BFS
- Frustum plane normalize: inversesqrt instead of length+divide
- M2 particle emission: inversesqrt for direction normalization
- Parse creature display IDs from query response
- UI: show spell names/IDs as fallback instead of "Unknown"
terrain_manager: replace bare 4096/2048/0x80/0x7F with named constants
ALPHA_MAP_SIZE, ALPHA_MAP_PACKED, ALPHA_FILL_FLAG, ALPHA_COUNT_MASK
— documents the WoW alpha map RLE format.
character_renderer: replace bare 256/512 texture sizes with
kBaseTexSize/kUpscaleTexSize for NPC skin upscaling logic.
- Extract guidToUnitId(), getQuestTitle(), findQuestLogEntry() helpers
to replace 14 duplicated GUID-to-unitId patterns and 7 quest log
search patterns in game_handler.cpp
- Remove duplicate #include in renderer.cpp
- Remove commented-out model cleanup code in terrain_manager.cpp
- Replace C-style casts with static_cast in auth and transport code
processReadyTiles was calling advanceFinalization with a step limit of 1
but a single step (texture upload or M2 model load) could take 1060ms.
Replace the step counter with an 8ms wall-clock time budget (16ms during
taxi) so finalization yields to the render loop before causing a visible
stall. Heavy tiles spread across multiple frames instead of blocking.
When unloadTile() was called for a tile still in finalizingTiles_
(mid-incremental-finalization), terrain chunks already uploaded to the
GPU (terrainMeshDone=true) were not being cleaned up. The early-return
path correctly removed water and M2/WMO instances but missed calling
terrainRenderer->removeTile(), causing descriptor sets to leak.
After ~20 minutes of play the VkDescriptorPool (MAX_MATERIAL_SETS=16384)
filled up, causing all subsequent terrain material allocations to fail
and the log to flood with "failed to allocate material descriptor set".
Fix: check fit->terrainMeshDone before the early return and call
terrainRenderer->removeTile() to free those descriptor sets.
Hang/GPU device lost fix:
- M2_INSTANCES and WMO_INSTANCES finalization phases now create instances
incrementally (32 per step / 4 per step) instead of all at once, eliminating
the >1s main-thread stalls that caused GPU fence timeouts and device loss
M2 two-pass transparent rendering:
- Opaque/alpha-test batches render in pass 1, transparent/additive in pass 2
(back-to-front sorted) to fix wing transparency showing terrain instead of
trees — adds hasTransparentBatches flag to skip models with no transparency
Tile streaming improvements:
- Sort new load queue entries nearest-first so critical tiles load before
distant ones during fast taxi flight
- Increase taxi load radius 6→8 tiles, unload 9→12 for better coverage
Water refraction gated on FSR:
- Disable water refraction when FSR is not active (bugged without upscaling)
- Auto-disable refraction if FSR is turned off while refraction was on
- Reduce max finalization steps per frame: 2→1 (normal), 8→4 (taxi)
- Reduce terrain chunk upload batch: 32→16 chunks per step
- Reduce idle M2 model upload budget: 16→6 per step
- Reduce idle WMO model upload budget: 4→2 per step
Tiles still stream in quickly but spread GPU upload work across
more frames, eliminating the frame spikes right after spawning.
Add 2-second cooldown timer before re-checking for unloaded tiles
when workers are idle, preventing excessive streamTiles() calls
that caused frame hitches right after world load.
- Re-check for unloaded tiles when workers are idle (no tile boundary needed)
- Increase M2 upload budget 4→16 and WMO 1→4 per frame when not under pressure
- Lower tree collision threshold from 40 to 6 units so large trees block movement
Move CPU-heavy BLP texture decoding from main thread to background worker
threads for all hot paths: terrain M2 models, WMO doodad M2s, WMO textures,
creature models, and gameobject WMOs. Each renderer (M2, WMO, Character) now
accepts a pre-decoded BLP cache that loadTexture() checks before falling back
to synchronous decode.
Defer WMO normal/height map generation (3 per-pixel passes: luminance, box
blur, Sobel) during terrain streaming finalization — this was the dominant
remaining bottleneck after BLP pre-decoding.
Terrain streaming stalls: 1576ms → 124ms worst case.
- Replace per-frame VMA alloc/free of material UBOs with a ring buffer in
CharacterRenderer (~500 allocations/frame eliminated)
- Batch all ready terrain tiles into a single GPU upload during load screen
(processAllReadyTiles instead of one-at-a-time with individual fence waits)
- Lift per-frame creature/GO spawn budgets during load screen warmup phase
- Add background world preloader: saves last world position to disk, pre-warms
AssetManager file cache with ADT files starting at app init (login screen)
so terrain workers get instant cache hits when Enter World is clicked
- Distance-filter expensive collision guard to 8-unit melee range
- Merge 3 CharacterRenderer update loops into single pass
- Time-budget instrumentation for slow update stages (>3ms threshold)
- Count-based async creature model upload budget (max 3/frame in-game)
- 1-per-frame game object spawn + per-doodad time budget for transport loading
- Use deque for creature spawn queue to avoid O(n) front-erase
- Worker threads: use (cores - 1-2) instead of cores/2, minimum 4
- Outer upload batch in processReadyTiles: ALL model/texture uploads per
frame share a single command buffer submission + fence wait
- Upload multiple models per finalization step: 8 M2s, 4 WMOs, 16 doodads
per call instead of 1 each (all within same GPU batch)
- Terrain chunks: 64 per step instead of 16
- Skip redundant M2 file I/O: thread-safe uploadedM2Ids_ set lets
background workers skip re-reading+parsing models already on GPU
- processAllReadyTiles (loading screen) and processOneReadyTile also
wrapped in outer upload batches
Terrain finalization was uploading all 256 chunks (GPU fence waits) in one
atomic advanceFinalization call that couldn't be interrupted by the 5ms time
budget. Now split into incremental batches of 16 chunks per call, allowing
the time budget to yield between batches.
M2 instance creation had O(N) dedup scans iterating ALL instances to check
for duplicates. In cities with 5000+ doodads, this caused O(N²) total work
during tile loading. Replaced with hash-based DedupKey map for O(1) lookups.
Changes:
- TerrainRenderer::loadTerrainIncremental: uploads N chunks per call
- FinalizingTile tracks terrainChunkNext for cross-frame progress
- TERRAIN phase yields after preload and after each chunk batch
- M2Renderer::DedupKey hash map replaces linear scan in createInstance
and createInstanceWithMatrix
- Dedup map maintained through rebuildSpatialIndex and clear paths
- Add magma/slime rendering path to water shader (fbm noise, crust/molten/core coloring)
- Fix WMO liquid height filter rejecting high-altitude zones like Ironforge (Z>300)
- Allow interior WMO magma/slime MLIQ groups to load (skip only water/ocean)
- Mark LAVASTEAM.m2 as spell effect for proper additive blend, hide emission mesh
- Add isLavaModel flag for M2 ForgeLava/LavaPots UV scroll fallback
- Add isLava material detection in WMO renderer for lava texture UV animation
- Fix WMO material UBO colors for magma (was blue, now orange-red)
The glm::quat(w,x,y,z) constructor was receiving swapped X/Y components,
causing doodads like the Deeprun Tram gears to be oriented horizontally
instead of vertically. Also use createInstanceWithMatrix for instance WMO
doodads to preserve full rotation from the quaternion.
WMO interior doodads (gears, decorations) were blocking player movement
via M2 collision. Skip collision for all WMO doodad M2 instances since
the WMO itself handles wall collision.
Also filter WMO wall collision using MOPY per-triangle flags: only
rendered+collidable triangles block the player, skipping invisible
collision hulls.
Revert tram portal extended range (no longer needed with collision fix).
- Remove bogus 2-byte skip after materialId in MLIQ parser that shifted
all vertex heights and tile flags by 2 bytes (garbage data)
- Skip liquid loading for interior WMO groups (flag 0x2000) to prevent
indoor water from rendering as outdoor canal water
- Clear movement inputs on teleport/portal to prevent auto-running after
zone transfer (held keys persist through loading screen)
- Fix Stormwind barracks floor: interior WMO groups named "facade" were
incorrectly marked as LOD shells and hidden when close. Add !isIndoor
guard to all LOD detection conditions so interior groups always render.
- Fix water exit stair clipping: anchor lastGroundZ to current position
on swim exit, set grounded=true for full step-up budget, add upward
velocity boost to clear stair lip geometry.
- Re-enable NPC humanoid equipment geosets (kEnableNpcHumanoidOverrides)
so guards render with proper armor instead of underwear.
- Keep instance portal GameObjects animated (spinning/glowing) instead
of freezing all GO animations indiscriminately.
- Fix equipment disappearing after instance round-trip by resetting
dirty tracking on world reload.
- Fix multi-doodad-set loading: load both set 0 (global) and placement-
specific doodad set, with dedup to avoid double-loading.
- Clear placedWmoIds in softReset/unloadAll to prevent stale dedup.
- Apply MODF rotation to instance WMOs, snap player to WMO floor.
- Re-enable rebuildSpatialIndex in setInstanceTransform.
- Store precomputeFloorCache results in precomputed grid.
- Add F8 debug key for WMO floor diagnostics at player position.
- Expand mapIdToName with all Classic/TBC/WotLK instance map IDs.
The previous commit changed std::move to copy for terrain/mesh data to fix
the empty-cache bug. But copying ~8 MB per tile × 81 tiles caused a 60s
streaming timeout.
The tile cache was already broken before — putCachedTile stored a shared_ptr
to the same PendingTile whose data was moved out, so cached tiles always had
empty meshes. Remove the putCachedTile call entirely; tiles re-parse from
ADT files (asset manager file cache hit) when they re-enter streaming range.
The softReset cache clear from the previous commit remains as safety for
map transitions.
Three fixes:
1. Water captureSceneHistory gated on hasSurfaces() — the image layout
transitions (PRESENT_SRC→TRANSFER_SRC→PRESENT_SRC) were running every
frame even on WMO-only maps with no water, causing VK_ERROR_DEVICE_LOST.
2. Tile cache invalidation: softReset() now clears tileCache_ since cache
keys are (x,y) without map name — prevents stale cross-map cache hits.
3. Copy terrain/mesh into TerrainTile instead of std::move — the moved-from
PendingTile was cached with empty data, so subsequent map loads returned
tiles with 0 valid chunks from cache.
Also adds diagnostic skip env vars (WOWEE_SKIP_TERRAIN, WOWEE_SKIP_SKY,
WOWEE_SKIP_PREPASSES) and a 0-chunk warning in loadTerrain.
- Fix shutdown hang: skip vmaDestroyAllocator (walked thousands of allocations),
replace unsafe pthread_timedjoin_np with plain join + early-exit checks in workers
- Bank window: full icon rendering, click-and-hold pickup (0.10s), drag-drop for
all bank slots including bank bag equip slots, same-slot drop detection
- Loading screen: process one tile per frame for live progress updates
- Camera reset: trust server position in online mode to avoid spawning under WMOs
- Fix PLAYER_BYTES/PLAYER_BYTES_2 field indices, preserve purchasedBankBagSlots
across inventory rebuilds, fix bank slot purchase result codes
unloadAll() now uses a 500ms deadline with pthread_timedjoin_np to
avoid blocking indefinitely when worker threads are mid-prepareTile
(reading MPQ archives / parsing ADT files). Threads that don't finish
within the deadline are detached so the app can exit promptly.
unloadAll() joins worker threads which blocks if they're mid-tile
(prepareTile can take seconds for heavy ADTs). Replace with softReset()
which clears tile data, queues, and water surfaces without stopping
worker threads — workers find empty queues and idle naturally.
- Add VK_DESCRIPTOR_POOL_CREATE_FREE_DESCRIPTOR_SET_BIT to water material
descriptor pool so individual sets can be freed when tiles are unloaded
- Free descriptor sets in destroyWaterMesh() instead of leaking them
- Add terrain manager unloadAll() during logout to properly clear stale
tiles, water surfaces, and queues between sessions
- Add diagnostic logging for water surface loading, material allocation
failures, and render skip reasons to investigate missing water
- Windows: SetThreadAffinityMask to pin main thread to core 0 and
exclude workers from core 0
- macOS: thread_policy_set with THREAD_AFFINITY_POLICY tags to hint
scheduler separation (tag 1 for main, tag 2 for workers)
Water deduplication: merge per-chunk water surfaces into per-tile surfaces
to reduce Vulkan descriptor set usage from ~8900 to ~100-200. Uses hybrid
approach — groups with ≤4 chunks stay per-chunk (preserving shore detail),
larger groups merge into 128×128 tile-wide surfaces.
Re-add incremental tile finalization state machine (reverted in 9b90ab0)
to spread GPU uploads across frames and prevent city stuttering.
Pin main thread to CPU core 0 and exclude worker threads from core 0
to reduce scheduling jitter on the render/game loop.
The incremental advanceFinalization state machine broke water rendering
in ways that couldn't be resolved. Reverted to the original monolithic
finalizeTile approach. The other performance optimizations (bone SSBO
pre-allocation, WMO distance culling, M2 adaptive distance tiers)
are kept.
Phase-splitting across frames caused water surfaces to not render
correctly. Changed processReadyTiles to run all phases for each tile
before moving to the next, with time budget checked between tiles.
