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Spell resource costs, UnitRace/UnitClass and the character-name field were still using English-only paths after enabling ruRU. Costs now fill the selected GlobalStrings templates, the player record and live unit feeds use ChrRaces/ChrClasses display names while retaining file tokens, and typed/pasted Unicode letters reach the UTF-8 create packet. CharacterCreateNameEdit now initializes its reference limit of 12 letters; a 12-letter Cyrillic name retains all 24 UTF-8 bytes. Roster selection also matches the server's recased Cyrillic name. Reference: 1.12 PaperDollFrame_SetLevel reads UnitRace/UnitClass; ruRU GlobalStrings supplies MANA_COST/RAGE_COST/ENERGY_COST and their PER_TIME forms; the selected ChrRaces/ChrClasses DBCs supply display names. vmangos normalizePlayerName decodes UTF-8 and recases letters: https://github.com/vmangos/core/blob/development/src/game/ObjectMgr.cpp#L60. Original symptoms reproduced by instruments with real client data: 30 Mana, Human/Warrior in CharacterLevelText, and Cyrillic keyboard text rejected. The same instruments check Russian and adjacent English text, Human/Warrior and Tauren/Druid, Unicode typing/paste/backspace and the 12-letter cap. The create packet and normalized roster spelling have separate checks. Validation: the original three symptoms reproduced, then the same three instruments passed with real ruRU and adjacent enUS data. Full land gates passed on the final source tree (816 s): fmt, workspace clippy, workspace tests with data and without an install, doc links, render-pass lint, player tests without dev, and engine boot with/without data. Only the 31 absent addon-corpus tests skipped on each real-data test rung. The strengthened create-packet check verifies the actual reset field, its 12-letter cap and unmodified UTF-8. Built on Windows. No live character creation or player-account login (no declared probe account).
benilla plays the whole game: character creation, questing and professions, dungeons and raids, battlegrounds and honor, groups, guilds, trade, mail and the auction house, on the stock 1.12 interface and with your addons. It connects to a 1.12.1 server over the original protocol and reads the game's data from your own 1.12.1 install. Every file format, the network protocol and the interface engine are written from scratch, with no original client code, no third-party WoW crates and no bundled game assets.
What's inside
- Formats: readers for the whole asset stack (the MPQ patch chain, BLP, DBC, ADT, WDT, WDL, M2 and WMO), wired into Bevy as an asset source.
- World: terrain streamed out to the horizon, portal-culled buildings with interior lighting, doodads and ground clutter, swimmable water, sky and weather, and the client's own day/night lighting, fog and gamma.
- Models: GPU-skinned M2s with the full animation controller, particles, ribbons and the spell visuals, and characters end to end: customization, the armor composite, weapons with their enchant glows, forms, stealth and mounts.
- Movement: networked movement in both directions, the server-granted modes from slow fall to roots, a follow camera with collision, boats, zeppelins and taxi flights.
- Networking: SRP6 auth through world-session crypto and the object mirror into the ECS, covering the game from movement and chat through combat, spells, groups and raids, quests, trade, mail, the auction house and battlegrounds.
- Interface: a FrameXML and Lua engine that runs the stock 1.12 interface off your install's patch chain, and third-party 1.12 addons: Questie, pfUI, Bagnon, Bartender2 and most others run. By choice, the options window and the ESC menu follow the Classic Era client's rather than 1.12's.
- Audio: music, ambience and effects under the client's own selection and crossfade rules, with interior and underwater transitions and zone reverb.
The format readers and the UI engine core are plain Rust with no Bevy in them, and the world
renderer runs with no game attached. docs/MAP.md maps every crate and subsystem,
generated from the code.
Status
Complete and fully playable. What is left:
- The long tail of small features that separates a working client from a finished one, tracked as issues.
- Addons, options and performance, ongoing.
benilla is a faithful 1.12.1 client and the foundation people build on. There are no prebuilt downloads: a packaged build, a particular server's changes or anything 1.12.1 never had belongs in a fork, and forks are welcome. GitHub lists every public fork.
Not planned: other expansions or client versions, Warden (anticheat).
Running it
benilla builds and runs on macOS, Linux and Windows. You need:
- An English 1.12.1 client (build 5875) for the game data. benilla only reads it.
- A 1.12.1 server with Warden off. vmangos is what development runs against, and it ships with Warden off; cMaNGOS and the other 1.12.1 cores speak the same protocol.
- Stable Rust and a C compiler, because the client's Lua is built from source: on macOS the Xcode command line tools, on Linux the ALSA and udev development packages and pkg-config, on Windows the MSVC build tools that the Rust installer sets up.
This fork also reads community ruRU language packs for 1.12.1 from Data/ruRU.
Keep the base MPQs in Data and the Russian patch-*.MPQ files in that subfolder;
WOW_DATA points to Data, not to ruRU. An installed pack selects Russian automatically.
WOW_LOCALE=ruRU requires the pack, WOW_LOCALE=enUS selects the English base chain, and
WOW_LOCALE=auto restores automatic selection. Restart the client after changing the language.
The selected chain supplies DBC names, interface strings, fonts, textures and audio; missing
localized files fall back to the base chain. Benilla's own settings and menu captions also have
Russian translations. The login sends the selected locale to the server; server-supplied quest,
NPC and item text requires translations on that server. Packs for later expansions are unsupported.
moonwell-deploy stage preserves an installed ruRU archive folder in the distribution.
WOW_DATA=/path/to/WoW/Data cargo run --release -p benilla
On Windows, in PowerShell:
$env:WOW_DATA="C:\path\to\WoW\Data"; cargo run --release -p benilla
Each release is a tag on the Releases page:
git checkout <tag> first runs that release, and main is the development tip.
WOW_DATA names the install's Data folder; a link to the install named WoW at the repo root
does the same (ln -s /path/to/WoW WoW, or on Windows a junction, which needs no admin rights:
New-Item -ItemType Junction -Path WoW -Target C:\path\to\WoW). The server defaults to
localhost:3724, the stock auth port. Point WOW_HOST at another (WOW_HOST=play.example.com, or
play.example.com:5000 for a remapped port), or set it from the Realmlist button on the login
screen, which remembers it. Credentials go in at the login screen, or set WOW_USER and WOW_PASS
to skip it.
Settings, screenshots and addons live in benilla-config/ at the repo root: a 1.12 addon goes in
benilla-config/AddOns/. docs/CONTRIBUTING.md has the rest, from the
player build to the tests.
Contributing
Issues and pull requests are open. docs/CONTRIBUTING.md says where to
start, what gets in, how a change is judged and what happens to a pull request once it is open.
Bugs, questions and ideas are welcome on the Discord too.
Early inspiration and file format guidance came from the wowemulation-dev community, and warcraft-rs in particular.
benilla is an independent fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment.
It ships no Blizzard content: no art, models, sounds, maps, MPQ contents or FrameXML. You
provide your own legally obtained 1.12.1 client, and the stock interface runs off its FrameXML at
runtime. The few files under crates/benilla-app/assets/ui/ are our own, not copies of it:
adapters over stock files, and the settings windows and script error log benilla draws itself.
World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. Our own code is licensed under
MIT or Apache 2.0, at your option. The two vendored components
under third_party/, the kira audio engine and a Lua 5.1 patched to the 1.12 client's dialect,
keep their own upstream licenses, alongside each.