iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

will @wretched.computer · 05/06/2026

part 3 of my Reverse Engineering Crazy Taxi series just dropped, check it out: wretched.computer/post/crazyta... in this post, we learn about mipmaps, vintage texture compression techniques, and the nitty gritty of how every GameCube draw call is made. and we do it all in service of one thing:

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will @wretched.computer · 01/04/2026

lmao yes, the ct debug symbols are so good

Ghidra readout of the Crazy Taxi Android port's debug symbols with functions like LetsPlayTennis() and HesLate()

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

sadly that's about all the archival footage i've got from the dev period -- at some point, whenever i ran into an issue, i'd just hop on a discord call w/ Jasper and screenshare rather than sending screenshots. here's an early version of the particle system in action, though

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

once i'd rounded out most of the major graphics systems for vanilla WoW, i thought i'd try and load up some levels from the 2 subsequent expansions, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. to my amazement, they kinda just worked! here's some screenshots of what they looked like then vs. now

an early scene showing the Dark Portal in Outland. much is incorrect about this scene: the skybox is wrong, the world lighting is wrong, the green portal texture has a weird oval that shouldn't be there, and none of the particles are implemented (the braziers and statue eyes are empty)

the same scene, but from the current version of the WoW viewer. note that the skybox is now correct, the green portal looks more portal-y, and there are fires in the braziers and statue eyes

an early scene of Wyrmrest Temple. again, much is incorrect here: wrong skybox, the transparent ribbon effect at the top is wrong, and no particles

a scene of Wyrmrest Temple from the current version of the viewer: we now have the skybox's aurora and the torches have fire

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

speaking of bugs, one of my favorite things about Jasper's noclip framework is the bevy of debug tools he's written into it. it's hard to overstate how useful it is to display debug information in-place when working on 3D scenes, or to use a debug shader to track down incorrect model normals

a scene from the Deeprun Tram showing the doorway to Stormwind. pink debug lines illustrate where the WMO's triangles are, with pink text denoting their position in 3D space. this was from a debug tool i wrote to visualize how Blizzard partitioned their levels into smaller chunks, allowing for efficient culling of level geometry that's not visible to the camera

a fully zoomed out view of the Deeprun Tram, so the entire tunnel and underwater scene are visible. a pink rectangular box is drawn perpendicular to the level. the box is supposed to represent the "axis-aligned bounding box", or AABB, of the level, but it's clearly rotated 90 degrees from where it should be due to an incorrect 3D transform

a zoomed out view of Warsong Gulch, with more pink boxes denoting axis-aligned bounding boxes for different WMOs in the scene. this was from one of many attempts to reduce the number of draw calls in the scene by culling more geometry.

the Forsaken base in the battleground Arathi Basin, but all of the colors look wrong. instead of rendering actual textures, this scene is using a debug shader that displays the "normal vector" (i.e. the vector pointing directly away from a surface) as a color by mapping its X, Y, and Z values to red, green, and blue. this is a very common technique to visualize normals, and is insanely helpful for tracking down when they're incorrect -- note that just based on color, you can identify which surfaces are pointing up, which are pointing towards the camera, etc

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

and sometimes fixing one thing breaks another

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

you wouldn't believe the shit i've seen while debugging my broken model animation system

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

but i'd be remiss in my retelling of this story if i didn't share some of the many, many bugs and failures along the way.

a screenshot of terrain from the desert region of Tanaris, but the terrain color looks totally wrong. while some patches look ok, large portions are black & white, and there are abrupt seams where the color changes. this happened because terrains have up to 4 separate textures, which are combined differently depending on certain flags on the terrain. the problem here was i was rendering the textures as-is, rather than combining them per the flag's instructions.

a scene from the battleground Arathi Basin. but there's a problem: a building which is far away at the end of a valley is rendering in front of a tree that's right in front of the camera. this was due to me failing to set "depth write" flag which informs the graphics card which items it should draw first. as such, the graphics card was drawing the tree, and then afterwards drawing the building on top of it.

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

but with these 4 ingredients (BLPs, models, ADTs, and WMOs), we can finally start rendering proper levels! well, again, not really proper due to the total lack of lighting, but at this point in the project i was seriously ecstatic just to see Ironforge nestled in its mountain here

an early screenshot of the WoW viewer, showing the mountains of Dun Morogh and exterior of Ironforge nestled within them. again, game lighting isn't implemented yet, so the scene looks unnaturally bright and flat

an early screenshot of the WoW viewer, showing Elwynn Forest and the exterior of Stormwind. again, game lighting isn't implemented yet, so the scene looks unnaturally bright and flat

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

"but wait, if each point of terrain can only have one height value, how do caves and stuff exist??" what an astute question, hypothetical reader! and it brings us to the last major renderable object in WoW, the "world map object", or WMO. WMOs are how caves, buildings, and entire cities are stored

An early screenshot of the WoW viewer showing the entirety of Blackrock Depths, zoomed out to a sort of "dollhouse" view. There's no game lighting, so the level looks unnaturally bright and flat

An early screenshot of the WoW viewer showing the entrance hall of Ironforge, with the bank, auction house, and lava trench visible. There's no game lighting, so the level looks unnaturally bright and flat

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

after models, i moved on to rendering WoW's terrain. terrain in WoW is stored in chunks called ADTs, which are fixed mesh grids that're 1024 points wide and 1024 points long. each point in the grid can have an arbitrary height value, thus giving us a sort of mesh blanket that forms the terrain

an early screenshot from the WoW viewer, showing a greyscale model of the terrain around the desert area Tanaris. rolling dunes give way to a steep mountain range, after which the terrain is completely flat, as the player is never meant to reach that part of the map

an early screenshot of the WoW viewer, showing a massive portion of textured terrain surrounding Blackrock Mountain. On the right side, all of Dun Morogh is shown. Below that, Loch Modan and the Badlands are visible

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

after textures, i moved on to models. these are pretty straightforward: they're mostly just triangle meshes which reference one or more BLPs as textures

an early screenshot from the WoW viewer showing a 3D model of an Arathi farmhouse. the model is tilted 90 degrees counterclockwise

an early screenshot from the WoW viewer showing a 3D model of a throne shaped like a gravestone. the model is tilted 90 degrees counterclockwise

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

as such, my WoW viewer needed to understand the file formats as they shipped w/ vanilla WoW. or, to be precise, as they shipped with WoW Classic. and to get things started, i began with the game's texture format, BLP in all of the following posts, check image alt text for more dev details

an early screenshot of the WoW viewer, showing the texture for the Threshadon corpse in Darkshore. the image is distorted and details are arranged oddly, but this is typical for game textures since their 3D meshes specify how the image is mapped to the 3D object

an early screenshot from the WoW viewer, showing the texture of a throne shaped and styled after a gravestone. the image is distorted and details are arranged oddly, but this is typical for game textures since their 3D meshes specify how the image is mapped to the 3D object

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

one nice thing about noclip is it'll save your current camera position in the URL, so to share a specific location, just share the URL: noclip.website#WorldOfWarcr... you'll want a decent computer and internet connection to use it. also, these flythrough videos are all from noclip's builtin tooling

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

first off: noclip.website is an incredible project by @jasperrlz.bsky.social that's chock full of other games which have been lovingly reverse engineered & recreated in the browser. while most of the games on there are due to Jasper, the open source community has contributed quite a few as well

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will @wretched.computer · 16/05/2025

i recently finished v2.0 of my browser-based World of Warcraft level viewer! so here's a thread on what it is, how it works, and a visual history of its development check it out at noclip.website by searching "World of Warcraft", finding a zone you wanna explore, and fly around w/ WASD + mouse

A scene from the video game World of Warcraft of the gates of Ironforge, a dwarven city embedded in the mountains

A scene from the video game World of Warcraft of Orgrimmar, the orc capital city

A scene from the video game World of Warcraft of the Dark Portal, a portal between the realm of Azeroth and Outland

A scene from the video game World of Warcraft of Icecrown Citadel, the seat of the Lich King

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will @wretched.computer · 03/01/2025

horizontal and vertical lines only #genuary #genuary2025 #genuary1 (better late than never)

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