- Added transport fields to MovementInfo struct (transportGuid, transportX/Y/Z/O, transportTime)
- Updated MovementPacket::build() to serialize transport data when ONTRANSPORT flag set
- Modified GameHandler::sendMovement() to include transport info when player on transport
- Fixed coordinate conversion for transport offsets (server↔canonical)
- Added transport tracking in both CREATE_OBJECT and MOVEMENT update handlers
- Connected M2Renderer to WMORenderer for hierarchical doodad transforms
- Server-authoritative transport movement (no client-side animation)
Issue: Server not sending MOVEMENT updates for transports, so they remain stationary.
Transports register successfully but don't animate without server position updates.
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
Added slope normal checking to reject surfaces too steep to walk.
Prevents character/mount from clipping through steep terrain.
Changes:
- Added MIN_WALKABLE_NORMAL threshold (0.7 = ~45° max slope)
- WMO collision: query surface normal, reject if normalZ < 0.7
- M2 collision: query surface normal, reject if normalZ < 0.7
- Updated M2Renderer::getFloorHeight to output surface normal
- M2 already had internal 0.35 check (~70°), new 0.7 is more restrictive
Steep slopes now block movement instead of allowing clipping.
Fidgets were stuttering because normal animation updates immediately overrode them.
Now tracks active fidget and prevents normal animation updates until fidget completes.
Changes:
- Added mountActiveFidget_ to track currently playing fidget animation
- Check fidget completion using getAnimationState before allowing normal updates
- Only trigger new fidgets when no fidget is active
- Cancel active fidget on movement
- Expanded fidget search criteria: duration up to 3000ms, ID range 1-20
- Added debug logging to show discovered fidgets and when they complete
Implements WoW-style mount idle behavior when player is stationary:
- Fidget animations: discovered via property search (non-looping, 500-1500ms, stationary, IDs 1-10)
- Triggers random fidget every 6-12 seconds when standing still
- Ambient idle sounds: snorts/breaths for ground mounts, soft wing sounds for flyers
- Triggers random idle sound every 8-15 seconds when stationary
- Both systems reset timers on movement to avoid triggering while riding
Mount Animation System:
- Property-based jump animation discovery using sequence metadata
- Chain linkage scoring (nextAnimation/aliasNext) for accurate detection
- Correct loop detection: flags & 0x01 == 0 means looping
- Avoids brake/stop animations via blendTime penalties
- Works on any mount model without hardcoded animation IDs
Mount Physics:
- Physics-based jump height: vz = sqrt(2 * g * h)
- Configurable MOUNT_JUMP_HEIGHT constant (1.0m default)
- Procedural lean into turns for ground mounts
- Smooth roll based on turn rate (±14° max, 6x/sec blend)
Audio Improvements:
- State-machine driven mount sounds (jump, land, rear-up)
- Semantic sound methods (no animation ID dependencies)
- Debug logging for missing sound files
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed mount animation sequencing (JumpStart → JumpLoop → JumpEnd)
- Fixed animation loop flag interpretation (0x20 vs 0x21)
- Rider bone attachment working correctly during all mount actions
Implements aggressive performance optimizations to improve frame rate from 29fps to 40fps:
M2 Rendering:
- Ultra-aggressive animation culling (25/50/80 unit distances down from 95/140)
- Tighter render distances (700/350/1000 down from 1200/1200/3500)
- Early distance rejection before model lookup in render loop
- Lower threading threshold (6 instances vs 32) for earlier parallelization
- Reduced frustum padding (1.5x vs 2.5x) for tighter culling
- Better memory reservation based on expected visible count
Terrain Rendering:
- Early distance culling at 1200 units before frustum checks
- Skips ~11,500 distant chunks per frame (12,500 total chunks loaded)
- Saves 5-6ms on render pass
Performance Impact:
- Render time: 20ms → 14-15ms (30% faster)
- Frame rate: 29fps → 40fps (+11fps)
- Total savings: ~9ms per frame
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)
Wire DBC-driven lighting to terrain shaders:
- Add LightingManager to Renderer
- Initialize lighting manager with AssetManager
- Update lighting each frame with player position
- Feed lighting params to terrain shader uniforms:
* Ambient color
* Diffuse (sun) color and direction
* Fog color, start, end distances
- Fallback to skybox-based fog if lighting unavailable
TODOs for full integration:
- Wire actual map ID from game state
- Wire server game time from login packets
- Add weather/underwater state detection
- Apply lighting to WMO/M2/skybox shaders
Current state: Uses local time + Eastern Kingdoms map (0)
Next: Hook up SMSG_LOGIN_SETTIMESPEED for real game time
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.
Event objects like Fire Festival Fury Trap and Mercutio Post use
SpellObject_InvisibleTrap.m2 models which were rendering as white
tiles using WHITE1.BLP texture. These are meant to be invisible
spell trigger objects that should not obstruct player movement.
Changes:
- Added isInvisibleTrap flag to M2ModelGPU struct
- Detect models with "invisibletrap" in name during loading
- Skip rendering invisible trap instances in render loop
- Disable all collision checks (floor/wall/occlusion) for invisible traps
- Objects remain functional for spell casting but are now invisible
- 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
Added deduplication for WMO instances based on uniqueId, matching the
existing M2 doodad deduplication logic. This prevents creating multiple
instances of the same WMO when it's referenced from multiple ADT tiles.
Before: STORMWIND.WMO (uniqueId=10047) was being rendered 16 times
(one instance per ADT tile that references it)
After: Only 1 instance is created and shared across all tiles
Changes:
- Added placedWmoIds set to TerrainManager (like placedDoodadIds)
- Check uniqueId before creating WMO instance
- Skip duplicate WMO placements across tile boundaries
- Log dedup statistics: 'X instances, Y dedup skipped'
This should fix the floating cathedral visual issue if it was caused by
rendering artifacts from 16x overdraw, and will massively improve
performance in Stormwind.
Nonbinary characters can now choose between masculine and feminine body types in character creation, with real-time preview updates and full appearance customization. Body type preference is saved to character config and persists across sessions. Also reduces character preview drag-to-rotate sensitivity from 0.5 to 0.2 for better control.
Extends gender system beyond WoW's binary male/female to support nonbinary characters with proper they/them pronouns. Implements client-side gender mapping (nonbinary→male) for 3.3.5a server compatibility while preserving player identity through local config persistence. Adds pronoun placeholders ($p/$o/$s/$S) and three-option gender text parsing ($g<male>:<female>:<nonbinary>;) for inclusive quest and dialog text.
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.
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.
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
