Emberfire

Emberfire is a modern C++ monorepo for a retro-style MMO: a rebuilt game client, a shared wire protocol library, a placeholder server (future, from-scratch), plus a LAN auth server and protocol-capture tooling.

Personal, LAN-only project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the original developers, and not for redistribution. The bundled game runtime (binaries, content, maps, DB) is not in this repo.

Lua-driven UI & addons

The biggest quality-of-life change over the vanilla Dreadmyst client: the user interface has been migrated from hardcoded C++ to Lua. The default UI (HUD, unit frames, login/character screens, minimap chrome, dialogs) ships as plain Lua scripts in client/ui/, and the client exposes a World of Warcraft-style addon API — CreateFrame, SetPoint, SetScript, RegisterEvent, SavedVariables, .toc files, /reload — so the user experience can be customized or extended with WoW-syntax-like addons dropped into an addons/ folder, no recompile needed.

Addon code runs in a sandboxed Lua 5.5 environment (whitelisted libraries, no io/os/file access, instruction-count watchdog), so a misbehaving addon can't hang or escape the client.

shared/   reconstructed wire protocol + game defines (header-only, emberfire::shared)
client/   the rebuilt client: src/ (C++), support layer + deps/, Shared = junction -> ../shared
server/   FUTURE from-scratch server (placeholder target today; spec in docs/SERVER_BACKEND.md)
tools/    capture/ : the TCP proxy + frame decoder used to reverse the protocol
auth/     fake LAN auth server (node) + MySQL schema; secrets via .env (see .env.example)
docs/     reverse-engineering findings (PROTOCOL, OPCODES, GHIDRA_*, SERVER_BACKEND, ...)
cmake/    dependency + junction helpers

Build (Windows, x86)

The client static_asserts 32-bit and links SFML 2.6.1 (x86). Requirements: Visual Studio 2022, CMake ≥ 3.21.

One-time setup — capture your local setup in .env, then apply it (this is also how you resume the project later):

copy .env.example .env          # then edit .env: your deps/game paths + DB creds
powershell scripts/setup.ps1    # setx EMBERFIRE_* + (re)writes auth/.env  (open a NEW shell after)

.env is gitignored and is the single place that holds your machine's setup (see Environment variables).

cmake --preset x86-release          # configure (creates the client/Shared junction)
cmake --build --preset x86-release  # build client + server + tests
ctest  --preset x86-release         # run the unit tests

Dependencies:

• SFML 2.6.1 (x86) and the zip.dll runtime are referenced from EMBERFIRE_DEPS_DIR (override with -D EMBERFIRE_DEPS_DIR=<dir-with x86/SFML-2.6.1>). A vcpkg.json is provided as an opt-in alternate.
• sqlite amalgamation, the zip header + import lib, and the steam/nvapi/NTSTATUS stubs are vendored in client/deps/.
• GoogleTest is fetched at configure time (FetchContent).

Run

The client needs the game runtime (content/maps/scripts/game.db + DLLs), which is not committed. Point a gitignored run/ (or a junction) at your local game build and launch the exe from there.

Auth + DB

auth/ runs the fake login server against MySQL. Copy auth/.env.example to auth/.env, fill in real values (the .env is gitignored), then cd auth && bun install && bun start. Schema: auth/db_init.sql. (The JS tooling runs on Bun — bun <script>.js, not node.)

Environment variables

All machine-specific paths and credentials come from environment variables — none are committed.

Build / run (CMake, scripts/run.ps1, tools/capture/*). Set persistently with setx NAME value (open a new shell to take effect):

var	purpose	default
EMBERFIRE_DEPS_DIR	prebuilt deps root — expects x86/SFML-2.6.1 + zip/zip.dll	(required)
EMBERFIRE_GAME_DIR	game runtime — content/maps/scripts/game.db; used to build run/ and by the capture DB scripts	(required)

Auth + MySQL — live in auth/.env (copy from auth/.env.example), read by auth_server.js and docker-compose.yml:

var	purpose	default
AUTH_PORT	auth server listen port (the patched client hardcodes 80)	80
DB_HOST	MySQL host	127.0.0.1
DB_PORT	MySQL port	3306
DB_USER	MySQL user	root
DB_PASSWORD	MySQL password	(set it)
DB_NAME	database name	dreadmyst
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD	docker container root password (match DB_PASSWORD)	(set it)

Capture proxy (tools/capture/proxy.js):

var	purpose	default
PROXY_PORT	proxy listen port (point the client's [Tcp] Port here)	16500
SERVER_HOST	real game-server host to forward to	127.0.0.1
SERVER_PORT	real game-server port	16383

Secrets

No real secrets are committed. All credentials live in a gitignored .env; only .env.example (placeholders) is tracked.