Equipment on Players and NPCs - Rebuilding WoW in Unity #8

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:01]Welcome back to Rebuilding WoW in Unity.

[00:00:04]This is devlog number eight, and this week's efforts have been spent on character and equipment systems. So, now we have actual humanoid characters wearing their armor and weapons and having the animations play and even little things like having their fingers wrap around the weapons correctly. So, I'll do my best to explain how it all works as I go, but let's get into it.

[00:00:35]So, before I go into explaining how the WOW character models all work, uh, I'd like to just show a little demo of the retail client compared to the Unity client. Now, um, I spent a bit of time getting the title screen working a bit more accurately. I think there's still things I'm missing like clouds and uh some of the lighting is not quite there yet, but it's it's progress. Um, so if we look on the Wow client at what the characters are supposed to look like. Um, yeah, you'll have to use your memory on this one. Um, this is what they they all generally look like. And uh we'll we'll go through the same characters on the Unity client next. So, I got the uh characters customizations displaying correctly. now. Um, at least it should be correct. Um, and yeah, there's a lot of a lot of time was spent on the screen in particular. Um, I haven't actually got the death knight background working just yet. So, yeah, not as dramatic. Um but yeah like this is this is the character pro like the character and equipment system sort of in motion. Um now I can remove put that down and expand this. So yeah right away I could say like character system is very complicated. Um the wow character model isn't like one mesh. It's it's a collection of interchangeable meshes as you probably saw in the last video with all the geo sets uh activated at once. It looks interesting but in a way you have to build a system that tames that uh those meshes into displaying what should be displayed at that point in time and that's driven by what equipment that character is currently wearing. So on the character creation screen, you what's driving this is the starter equipment and all of that can be found in the database um for any character and so you know warriors will have this sort of mesh and but then you know if they're female they'll have a different um chest uh texture applied And same thing with the legs. And it's also it varies. And sometimes if that particular race class combo doesn't exist then well you end up naked. So you'll that's like a a little thing. Um but yeah. So overall this character creation screen does work. So you can change like skin color, the face shape, hairstyle, uh hair color, and like accessories or facial hair depending on what that particular race has set up. Um it's pretty pretty cool to see um working. Um, but yeah, I mean it's probably worth mentioning like I think a lot of this is actually just textures being applied to a base mesh.

[00:04:41]Um, so what separates out like robes from uh legs like trousers or whatnot, it's actually just the base mesh itself changing. It's not actually a a robe being applied on top of legs. It's the legs are completely swapped out for a set of robes legs. Um, and it's the same thing that applies to like gloves. Uh, I'm not sure if any of them have actually. Yeah. So, the death knight is interesting because the starter equipment for the death knight has uh a helmet and the shoulders and a cloak as well.

[00:05:25]So, this was my test case for that. And it may be hard to see, but like even the sleeves and the gloves and all that, they're all um it's essentially a base mesh that's been changed and then a texture has been applied. in this. The textures themselves are quite low resolution, but it's a very cheap way of having character customization without lots of storage being spent on mesh data and texture data. So, that's pretty cool. Um, but yeah, I think this is mostly what I wanted to cover. Um, I'll get into the game next and we'll go go from there.

[00:06:18]So, I'd like to talk about how that same system that is driving the player character is now also being applied to entities or NPCs within the game. So, in the last video, we had what are considered like true creatures.

[00:06:40]um like monsters. So, cobalts and whatnot, they all have like their own mesh as it is. Not very many like customization like options. Um if it's if there's any customization with a true creature, it's usually just an entirely different mesh and different texture being applied.

[00:07:04]But when it comes to humanoid uh entities like guards and shopkeepers and whatnot, they have um more customization options available. So yeah, we have like the guard here who has the guard outfits and um what's highlight worth highlighting here is things like the helmet shoulders and the weapons they are they were separate. So um they were put on later. Um, and everything else like the the chest piece, legs, gloves, boots, they were similarly just a baked mesh onto that particular uh character. And it's interesting to see that optimization like that pattern um being played out and it's quite versatile. And I think that's something that gives classic WoW, especially the older versions of WoW, a lot of charm, is that it's quite simple texture swaps, but there's so much variation um that it doesn't really feel dull in a way. But anyway, so yeah, this is this is like with NPCs. So, guards have their weapons, and worth highlighting how much time I spend trying to get their hands to wrap, like their fingers to wrap around the weapon.

[00:08:49]I don't know. Um, but yeah, it's it's pretty cool. So, yeah, they all have their thing and blacksmiths are holding their hammers. And if we go see uh I don't know, some of the Defas Um, NPCs.

[00:09:09]They should be wearing their mask. Um, let's see if we can find any.

[00:09:17]So, yeah, there's some over here. Um, so yeah, there they are. Red mask. And that's also something when it comes to like head uh items, they depending on the type of helmet. So if it's like a face mask, it should still show like the hair at the top, but it may hide the facial hair. Um, and I think I had some bugs where it would say, for instance, put this uh mask on, but then the top of their head would just be missing because I was incorrectly like hiding uh their hair when really it needs to be driven based on the type of helmet uh what should be hidden. Um, so that's that's something. Um, here's a group of them.

[00:10:13]Um, but yeah, it's I think they Yeah, I I suspect they're all dead. There's a guard that likes to go killing endlessly. Um, I I do need to drive the animation system a bit more. Uh, and I think that'll come in future videos. Um, but anyway, yeah, I mean, the characters are looking good. Um, so yeah, I'll I'll I think for the last bit I'll show remote players and how they all work um next. So I'll get into that.

[00:10:51]Last up, we've got remote players. So yeah, within the uh update packet that gets uh sent from the server to the client, there's uh appearance fields and that like drives what the c like what each player looks like, what race, gender, customizations, and equipment they're they're equipped with. So yeah, we've got uh this troll here being somewhat rendered correctly. I I notice he's actually wearing shoes properly and covering his toes, but there's just so many bugs that are bound to be found with how many possibilities exist. Um that's just part of the charm.

[00:11:48]But yeah, uh it's pretty cool to see. Um and uh anyway, I think at this point now I I'm still a bit torn between do I try to continue making this Unity client more like the retail client visually, maybe even like trying to enhance it where possible. Um, or do I get into the fun part which is like the gameplay systems and actually like killing monsters and all that with their hot bar and ability system. I think that's going to be a big milestone to reach with this client. But, uh, if you've got any preference as to which direction I should go, um, I'd be interested to hear. Um, but yeah, I think I'll leave it here now. So, thank you for watching and I'll see you next week.