v1.8.0

Faster frames where it is crowded

This release is all performance. In a busy city the game thread does roughly eight percent less work per frame than 1.7.0, and the gain grows with how much is happening on screen: crowds of players, packs of creatures, heavy spell effects. Quiet zones will feel about the same, because there was less there to save.

What changed

Model animation no longer waits for all of it to finish before the frame carries on. The frame now picks up each model the moment that model is ready, so the work overlaps with everything that comes after it instead of blocking on the slowest one.

The draw list, which decides what order the world is drawn in, is sorted with a faster algorithm and a cheaper layout. Sorting a busy scene now costs a little over half what it used to.

Collision, the part that works out where things can move and what the mouse is pointing at, had one arithmetic operation in its innermost loop that cost more than everything around it. Removing it cut that routine's cost by about forty percent, and it runs a million times a second in a crowded street.

Diagnostics

Setting RUST_LOG=wow::perf=debug prints a per-minute breakdown of where frame time goes. It is off unless you ask for it and costs nothing when off. You do not need it; it exists so numbers in bug reports can be checked.

Compatibility

Nothing to change. Install over 1.7.0 the same way, keep your existing settings, and no other mods are affected.