Wowee

A native C++ client for World of Warcraft 3.3.5a (Wrath of the Lich King) with a fully functional OpenGL rendering engine.

Legal Disclaimer: This is an educational/research project. It does not include any Blizzard Entertainment assets, data files, or proprietary code. World of Warcraft and all related assets are the property of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment. Users are responsible for supplying their own legally obtained game data files and for ensuring compliance with all applicable laws in their jurisdiction.

Features

Rendering Engine

• Terrain -- Multi-tile streaming, texture splatting (4 layers), frustum culling
• Water -- Animated surfaces, reflections, refractions, Fresnel effect
• Sky -- Dynamic day/night cycle, sun/moon with orbital movement
• Stars -- 1000+ procedurally placed stars (night-only)
• Atmosphere -- Procedural clouds (FBM noise), lens flare with chromatic aberration
• Moon Phases -- 8 realistic lunar phases with elliptical terminator
• Weather -- Rain and snow particle systems (2000 particles, camera-relative)
• Characters -- Skeletal animation with GPU vertex skinning (256 bones)
• Buildings -- WMO renderer with multi-material batches, frustum culling, real MPQ loading

Asset Pipeline

• MPQ archive extraction (StormLib), BLP DXT1/3/5 textures, ADT terrain tiles, M2 character models, WMO buildings, DBC database files

Networking

• TCP sockets, SRP6 authentication, world server protocol, RC4 encryption, packet serialization

Building

Prerequisites

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install libsdl2-dev libglew-dev libglm-dev \
                 libssl-dev libstorm-dev cmake build-essential

# Fedora
sudo dnf install SDL2-devel glew-devel glm-devel \
                 openssl-devel StormLib-devel cmake gcc-c++

# Arch
sudo pacman -S sdl2 glew glm openssl stormlib cmake base-devel

Game Data

This project requires WoW 3.3.5a (patch 3.3.5, build 12340) data files. You must supply your own legally obtained copy. Place (or symlink) the MPQ files into a Data/ directory at the project root:

wowee/
└── Data/
    ├── common.MPQ
    ├── common-2.MPQ
    ├── expansion.MPQ
    ├── lichking.MPQ
    ├── patch.MPQ
    ├── patch-2.MPQ
    ├── patch-3.MPQ
    └── enUS/          (or your locale)

Alternatively, set the WOW_DATA_PATH environment variable to point to your WoW data directory.

Compile & Run

git clone https://github.com/yourname/wowee.git
cd wowee

# Get ImGui (required)
git clone https://github.com/ocornut/imgui.git extern/imgui

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j$(nproc)

./bin/wowee

Controls

Key	Action
WASD	Move camera
Mouse	Look around
Shift	Move faster
F1	Performance HUD
F2	Wireframe mode
F9	Toggle time progression
F10	Toggle sun/moon
F11	Toggle stars
+/-	Change time of day
C	Toggle clouds
L	Toggle lens flare
W	Cycle weather (None/Rain/Snow)
K / J	Spawn / remove test characters
O / P	Spawn / clear WMOs

Documentation

• Architecture -- System design and module overview
• Quick Start -- Getting started guide
• Authentication -- SRP6 auth protocol details
• Server Setup -- Local server configuration
• Single Player -- Offline mode
• SRP Implementation -- Cryptographic details
• Packet Framing -- Network protocol framing
• Realm List -- Realm selection system

Technical Details

• Graphics: OpenGL 3.3 Core, GLSL 330, forward rendering
• Performance: 60 FPS (vsync), ~50k triangles/frame, ~30 draw calls, <10% GPU
• Platform: Linux (primary), C++17, CMake 3.15+
• Dependencies: SDL2, OpenGL/GLEW, GLM, OpenSSL, StormLib, ImGui

License

This project's source code is licensed under the MIT License.

This project does not include any Blizzard Entertainment proprietary data, assets, or code. World of Warcraft is (c) 2004-2024 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved.

References

• WoWDev Wiki -- File format documentation
• TrinityCore -- Server reference
• MaNGOS -- Server reference
• StormLib -- MPQ library

Known Issues

• Stormwind Mage Quarter: around the Moonwell area, water is currently overflowing into nearby geometry and should be constrained to the proper liquid volume.