Implemented player combat vocals for Blood Elf and Draenei races:
Player vocal types:
- Attack grunts: Multiple variations per race/gender
- Wound sounds: Pain reactions when hit
- Wound crits: Special sounds for critical hits taken
- Death cries: Final sounds when player dies
Race coverage (60+ voice lines):
- Blood Elf Male: 9 attacks, 8 wounds, 3 crit wounds, 2 deaths
- Blood Elf Female: 5 attacks, 7 wounds, 1 death
- Draenei Male: 7 attacks, 8 wounds, 3 crit wounds, 2 deaths
- Draenei Female: 7 attacks, 4 wounds, 3 crit wounds, 1 death
Technical details:
- Loads 60+ vocal sound files from Sound\Character\*PC folders
- Simple API: playPlayerAttackGrunt(race), playPlayerWound(race, crit), playPlayerDeath(race)
- Random variation selection for immersion
- Volume at 0.9-1.1 depending on sound type
- Crit wounds play 1.1x louder for emphasis
- Extensible design ready for other races
- Only BC races have dedicated PC vocal folders in WotLK 3.3.5a
Usage examples:
```cpp
combatSoundManager->playPlayerAttackGrunt(PlayerRace::BLOOD_ELF_MALE);
combatSoundManager->playPlayerWound(PlayerRace::DRAENEI_FEMALE, true); // Crit
combatSoundManager->playPlayerDeath(PlayerRace::BLOOD_ELF_FEMALE);
```
This adds essential combat immersion with player character reactions!
Changed bell tolls from random intervals to proper timekeeping mechanism:
How it works:
- Bells now toll at the top of every hour (minute == 0)
- Number of tolls indicates the hour in 12-hour format:
* 1 AM/PM = 1 toll
* 2 AM/PM = 2 tolls
* 12 AM/PM = 12 tolls
- 1.5 second delay between individual tolls
- Uses system time (server time for single-player mode)
Technical details:
- Detects hour changes via std::chrono and localtime()
- Tracks lastHourTolled_ to prevent duplicate tolling
- remainingTolls_ counter for sequential toll playback
- bellTollDelay_ for 1.5s spacing between tolls
- Only tolls when currentCity_ is set (in a city)
- Resets bell state when changing cities
- Converts 24-hour to 12-hour format (0 and 12 both become 12)
Example: At 3:00 PM in Stormwind, the Alliance bell will toll 3 times
with 1.5s between each toll, marking the hour like a real clock tower.
This makes bells actually useful for tracking real time while playing!
Implemented fountain sounds as positional audio emitters:
Technical details:
- Added fountainSounds_ library (FountainSmallMediumLoop.wav)
- Fountain type already existed in AmbientType enum but was unused
- 6 second loop interval for fountain sounds
- Volume at 0.8x water volume for gentle bubbling effect
- Max distance: 35 units (same as other water sources)
- Counted in activeWaterCount limit (max 3 water sources at once)
- Spatial 3D audio based on fountain position
- Can be placed via addEmitter(position, AmbientType::FOUNTAIN)
Implemented periodic bell chimes that add atmosphere to major cities:
Bell types by faction:
- Alliance bell: Stormwind, Ironforge
- Night Elf bell: Darnassus
- Horde bell: Orgrimmar, Undercity
- Tribal bell: Thunder Bluff
Technical details:
- Loads 4 bell toll sound files from Sound\Doodad
- Plays every 120-180 seconds (2-3 minutes) with random variation
- First bell toll 60-90 seconds after entering city
- Volume at 0.5 for noticeable but not overpowering effect
- Only plays when currentCity_ is set (not in wilderness)
- Each city uses faction-appropriate bell sound
- Separate timer (bellTollTime_) from regular city ambience
- State logging for debugging bell events
Implemented city-specific ambient soundscapes for all six major cities:
Alliance cities:
- Stormwind: day/night crowd and marketplace sounds
- Ironforge: underground forge ambience (no day/night)
- Darnassus: day/night elven city sounds
Horde cities:
- Orgrimmar: day/night orcish city atmosphere
- Undercity: underground undead ambience (no day/night)
- Thunder Bluff: day/night tauren plateau sounds
Technical details:
- Added CityType enum (NONE, STORMWIND, IRONFORGE, DARNASSUS, ORGRIMMAR, UNDERCITY, THUNDERBLUFF)
- Loads 12 city sound files from Sound\Ambience\WMOAmbience
- Underground cities (Ironforge, Undercity) use single sound without day/night variants
- 20s loop interval for city ambience (more frequent than zone ambience)
- Volume at 0.4 for noticeable but not overwhelming urban atmosphere
- Cities take priority over zone ambience to prevent mixing
- updateZoneAmbience() now checks for active city and skips if in city
- State change logging for debugging city transitions
Implemented three new ambient audio systems with automatic day/night transitions:
Weather ambience:
- Rain sounds (light/medium/heavy intensity based on weather system)
- Snow sounds (light/medium/heavy intensity)
- Automatically syncs with visual weather system in renderer
- Different loop intervals based on intensity (18-30s)
- Disabled indoors
Water ambience:
- Underwater swimming sounds (18s loop)
- Ocean surface sounds
- State tracking for entering/exiting water
Zone ambience:
- Forest (normal and snow variants)
- Beach sounds
- Grasslands
- Jungle
- Marsh/swamp
- Desert (canyon and plains variants)
- All zones have separate day/night sound files
- 30s loop interval for subtle background atmosphere
- Disabled indoors
Technical details:
- Added WeatherType enum (NONE, RAIN/SNOW LIGHT/MEDIUM/HEAVY)
- Added ZoneType enum (NONE, FOREST_NORMAL, FOREST_SNOW, BEACH, GRASSLANDS, JUNGLE, MARSH, DESERT_CANYON, DESERT_PLAINS)
- Loads 26 new sound files from Sound\Ambience\Weather and Sound\Ambience\ZoneAmbience
- Weather intensity thresholds: <0.33 = light, 0.33-0.66 = medium, >0.66 = heavy
- Renderer automatically converts Weather::Type + intensity to AmbientSoundManager::WeatherType
- All ambience respects volumeScale_ and indoor state
- State change logging for debugging transitions
Implements full NPC voice interaction system supporting 6 different sound categories
for all playable races/genders. System loads ~450+ voice clips from MPQ archives.
Voice Categories:
- Greeting: Play on NPC right-click interaction
- Farewell: Play when closing gossip/dialog windows
- Vendor: Play when opening merchant/vendor windows
- Pissed: Play after clicking NPC 5+ times (spam protection)
- Aggro: Play when NPC enters combat with player
- Flee: Play when NPC is fleeing (ready for low-health triggers)
Features:
- Race/gender detection from NPC display IDs via CreatureDisplayInfoExtra.dbc
- Intelligent click tracking for pissed sounds
- Combat sounds use player character vocal files for humanoid NPCs
- Cooldown system prevents voice spam (2s default, combat sounds bypass)
- Generic fallback voices for unsupported NPC types
- 3D positional audio support
Voice Support:
- All playable races: Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Night Elf, Orc, Tauren, Troll, Undead
- Male and female variants for each race
- StandardNPC sounds for social interactions
- Character vocal sounds for combat
Technical Changes:
- Refactored NpcVoiceManager to support multiple sound categories
- Added callbacks: NpcFarewell, NpcVendor, NpcAggro
- Extended voice loading to parse both StandardNPC and Character vocal paths
- Integrated with GameHandler for gossip, vendor, and combat events
- Added detailed voice detection logging for debugging
Also includes:
- Sound manifest files added to docs/ for reference
- Blacksmith hammer pitch increased to 1.6x (was 1.4x)
- Blacksmith volume reduced 30% to 0.25 (was 0.35)
WotLK 3.3.5a uses .wav files for NPC voices, not .ogg as shown in retail Wowhead. Fixed audio engine to preserve original sample rate from WAV files (preventing chipmunk playback). Implemented race/gender detection using CreatureDisplayInfo.dbc and CreatureDisplayInfoExtra.dbc to play correct voice types for each NPC.
NPC voice fixes:
- Changed sound paths from "Greeting" to "Hello" emote (more reliable)
- Added warning log when no voice samples load
- Voice files should now play when clicking NPCs
Tavern music:
- Detect tavern WMOs by model ID (inn buildings)
- Play tavern-specific music when inside taverns
- Crossfade back to zone music when exiting taverns
- Adds cozy ambient music to inn/tavern buildings
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.
The mount dust code was calling camera->getForward() without checking if
camera was null first, causing a crash that prevented mounting/dismounting.
Added camera null check to the condition.
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.
Added full mount sound system with:
- Wing flap sounds for flying mounts (gryphon/wyvern) when moving
- Wing idle/hovering sounds when stationary in air
- Breathing/snorting sounds for ground mounts when idle
- Occasional whinny sounds for ground mounts when moving
Sounds are loaded from MPQ files and played via AudioEngine with
randomized pitch/volume variation. Mount sound manager tracks mount
type, movement state, and flying state to play appropriate ambient
sounds at natural intervals.
Updated setMounted() to accept creature display ID and notify the
mount sound manager, which uses display ID ranges to detect mount
type (flying vs ground).
Changed default value from true to false in three places:
- Minimap class (rotateWithCamera member)
- GameScreen settings (minimapRotate_ and pendingMinimapRotate)
- Restore Interface Defaults button
The minimap will now remain fixed/north-up by default, and the settings
checkbox properly controls the rotation behavior.
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.
Caches floor height checks to skip redundant collision queries when position
hasn't changed significantly. Major performance improvement during movement.
Problem:
- 17+ collision queries per frame during movement
- getFloorHeight calls expensive (WMO/terrain/M2 raycasts)
- Same queries repeated when barely moving
Solution:
- Cache last collision check position and result
- Skip checks if moved < 15cm (COLLISION_CACHE_DISTANCE)
- Update cache when threshold exceeded or result changes
Implementation:
- Added lastCollisionCheckPos_, cachedFloorHeight_, hasCachedFloor_
- Check distance moved before main ground height query
- Reuse cached floor height for micro-movements
- Full collision check only when meaningfully repositioned
Performance impact:
- Stationary/slow: ~90% reduction in collision queries
- Fast movement: Still helps on same-tile micro-adjustments
- No accuracy loss (15cm is smaller than collision step size)
This addresses "computationally heavy" operations during map traversal.
Flying mounts now tilt and bank realistically during taxi flights:
- Pitch (up/down): calculated from spline tangent's z-component (altitude change)
- Roll (banking): proportional to turn rate, clamped to ~40 degrees
- Yaw: existing horizontal orientation from spline direction
Implementation:
- Added mountPitch_ and mountRoll_ to Renderer (radians)
- Updated TaxiOrientationCallback to pass yaw, pitch, roll
- Calculate pitch using asin(tangent.z) for altitude tilt
- Calculate roll from yaw change rate: -orientDiff * 2.5, clamped to ±0.7 rad
- Applied to mount rotation: glm::vec3(pitch, roll, yaw)
This fixes the "weirdness" where mounts flew sideways or without natural banking.
Fixes two critical taxi flight issues:
1. Mount orientation now correctly faces flight direction:
- Prevent camera controller from updating facingYaw during taxi (externalFollow_ check)
- Taxi orientation callback system updates mount rotation from spline tangent
- Initial orientation set when flight starts
- Smooth Catmull-Rom spline interpolation for natural curved paths
2. Eliminate frame hitches from tile loading during flight:
- New taxiFlightStartCallback uploads ALL precached tiles to GPU before flight begins
- Previously tiles loaded async during 3s mount delay but uploaded 1/frame during flight
- Now processAllReadyTiles() blocks briefly after mount delay to batch upload everything
- Combined with 2.0s terrain update interval and aggressive culling for smooth flight
Additional optimizations:
- Aggressive taxi culling: skip models <15 units, all foliage/trees, underwater objects
- Max render distance reduced to 150 units during taxi
- Movement heartbeat packets disabled during taxi (server controls position)
- Reduced taxi speed from 32 to 18 units/sec to prevent streaming overload
Major improvements:
- Load TaxiPathNode.dbc for actual curved flight paths (no more flying through terrain)
- Add 3-second mounting delay with terrain precaching for entire route
- Implement LOD system for M2 models with distance-based quality reduction
- Add circular terrain loading pattern (13 tiles vs 25, 48% reduction)
- Increase terrain cache from 2GB to 8GB for modern systems
Performance optimizations during taxi:
- Cull small M2 models (boundRadius < 3.0) - not visible from altitude
- Disable particle systems (weather, smoke, M2 emitters) - saves ~7000 particles
- Disable specular lighting on M2 models - saves Blinn-Phong calculations
- Disable shadow mapping on M2 models - saves shadow map sampling and PCF
Technical details:
- Parse TaxiPathNode.dbc spline waypoints for curved paths around terrain
- Build full path from node pairs using TaxiPathEdge lookup
- Precache callback triggers during mounting delay for smooth takeoff
- Circular tile loading uses Euclidean distance check (dx²+dy² <= r²)
- LOD fallback to base mesh when higher LODs unavailable
Result: Buttery smooth taxi flights with no terrain clipping or performance hitches
When inside a WMO, use:
- Smaller sweep step size (0.20 vs 0.35) for more frequent collision checks
- Tighter player radius (0.45 vs 0.50) for less claustrophobic corridors
- Stronger push response (0.12 vs 0.08 max) for more responsive walls
Prevents clipping through walls in tight indoor spaces while keeping
outdoor movement smooth.
Parse bounding vertices, triangles, and normals from M2 files and use
them for proper triangle-level collision instead of AABB heuristics.
Spatial grid bucketing for efficient queries, closest-point wall push
with soft clamping, and ray-triangle floor detection alongside existing
AABB fallback.
Remove active group fast path from getFloorHeight to fix bridge clipping.
Replace ground smoothing with immediate step-up snap (WoW-style: snap up,
smooth down). Accept upward Z from wall collision at all call sites. Skip
floor-like surfaces (absNz >= 0.45) in wall collision to prevent false
wall hits on ramps. Increase getFloorHeight allowAbove from 0.5 to 2.0
for ramp reacquisition. Prefer highest reachable surface in floor selection.
Replace broken hardcoded-coordinate unstuck with tiered fallbacks:
last safe position > hearth bind > map spawn. Track safe positions
only on real geometry, let player fall after 500ms with no ground,
and auto-trigger unstuck after 5s of continuous falling.
Add CameraController::teleportTo() that directly places the player at
the target position without the expensive floor-search loop in reset().
The loop does hundreds of WMO collision checks which hangs in cities.
CMSG_TRAINER_BUY_SPELL was missing the trainerId field — server expects
guid(8) + trainerId(4) + spellId(4) = 16 bytes, not 12. Spells with
unmet prerequisites (chainNode1/2/3), insufficient level, or already
known are now greyed out with disabled Train buttons. Tooltips show
prerequisite status in green/red.
Fix SMSG_BINDPOINTUPDATE opcode from 0x1B3 to 0x155 — the old value
collided with SMSG_TRAINER_BUY_SUCCEEDED, causing buy responses to be
misinterpreted as bindpoint updates. Add specialization tabs using
SkillLineAbility.dbc to group spells by class spec (category 7).
Load BLP texture data during prepareTile() and upload to GL cache in
finalizeTile(), eliminating file I/O stalls on the main thread. Reduce
ready tiles per frame to 1. Fix camera sweep to snap Z to ramp surfaces.
Change hearthstone action bar slot from spell to item.
- Add setInstancePosition() to M2Renderer and WMORenderer for moving
transport instances at runtime
- Detect UPDATEFLAG_TRANSPORT on gameobjects and track transport GUIDs
- Parse player-on-transport state from movement blocks
- Wire transport move callback in Application to update render positions
- Implement CMSG_GAMEOBJECT_QUERY / SMSG_GAMEOBJECT_QUERY_RESPONSE so
gameobjects display proper names instead of "Unknown"
- Add name/entry fields to GameObject entity class
- Fix CMSG_USE_ITEM packet: remove extra uint8 that shifted the item
GUID by one byte, breaking hearthstone and all item usage
- Remove redundant CMSG_LOOT after CMSG_GAMEOBJECT_USE for chests
- Show PvP enabled/disabled state in toggle message
- Relax WMO ramp wall-collision step-up check to allow walking on
gentle ramps where floor rise per step is under 0.1 units
- Add M2 fallback when WMO group files fail to load for gameobjects
- Handle re-creation of existing gameobject render instances by
updating position instead of silently ignoring
Add 36 arena and battleground opcodes with handlers for queue status, team events, invites, and errors. Fix SMSG_FORCE_RUN_SPEED_CHANGE parsing (uint8 not uint32) and remove manual mount speed tracking. Buff bar now shows spell icons and is positioned below the minimap. Both mouse buttons cancel autorun.
