This contains a very slimmed down version of the WoW.tools site (currently modelviewer for M2s only and DBC browsing/exporting) meant for local use without relying on anything from the main WoW.tools website (or the internet in general, after external dependencies have been downloaded, see relevant section at the bottom of this README).
All dependencies should be included with the executable. If you have the included requirements already installed, feel free to compile it yourself for a smaller/cleaner runtime directory. As this loads quite a bit of data, you'll need at least ~6-8GB of free RAM. Please note that some features (e.g. DB2 global search) will take up far more RAM than that.
The latest version can be downloaded here.
If you want to use the File History and File Links features, be sure to download WTL.db from the latest GitHub release that has it to the directory with the wow.tools.local.exe executable before starting WTL for the first time.
- Open
config.jsonin your favorite text editor. - Set
wowFolderto the directory your WoW is installed to using either \ or / slashes. Using \ will break loading. Do NOT point it to a subdirectory like_retail_or anything like that, just the main "World of Warcraft" folder. You can also leave this empty, but this will stream all required files from the internet, which will be rather slow. - Set
wowProductto the product you wish to load. For example, Mainline Retail WoW (the default) would bewow, Mainline PTRwowt, Mainline Betawow_beta, Classic Retail would bewow_classic, etc. You can view a full list of product here. If you have multiple products installed, you can also switch between them on the "Builds" page after starting, but keep in mind the product set here is always loaded first. - (Optional) If you want to have DBCs/DB2s from other versions be available to the table browser/diffs, you can set
dbcFolderto the path where these files can be found. The contents of this directory MUST be structured as follows:<folder set in dbcFolder>/<x.y.z.build>/dbfilesclient/, e.g. achievement.dbc for 3.2.0.10192 needs to be in this location:<folder set in dbcFolder>/3.2.0.10192/dbfilesclient/achievement.dbc. Depending on operating system, the DBC/DB2 names might need to be lowercase. - (Optional) If you left wowFolder empty (online mode), you can set region to the region you are in (e.g. us, eu, tw, cn)
- (Optional) If you want to load a specific locale (e.g. deDE, zhCN, etc), set
localeto the locale you want to load. Supported locales are listed here.
Optionally, you may also start WTL from the command line, providing arguments to override options found in your config.json file. Any arguments that are not provided will be loaded from the config.json file either in the current working directory, or the executable directory as a fallback.
-wowFolder- Path to your WoW installation-product- Product to load-dbcFolder- Path to your DBCs folder-dbdFolder- Path to your WoWDBDefs folder-listFileURL- URL to fetch the Listfile-tactKeyURL- URL to fetch TactKeys-region- Region-locale- Locale
Make sure WoW is updated/closed and Battle.net is idle/closed before starting it and make sure to close it before starting WoW again to make sure you won't run into issues with files being locked and such.
If you want to use the File History and File Links features, be sure to download WTL.db from the latest GitHub release that has it before starting WTL for the first time.
Start the application by opening wow.tools.local.exe (or whatever executable is relevant for your OS). Startup can take some time depending on which product you are loading. Classic will be relatively fast, but Mainline builds will take a bit longer due to the amount of files it has.
After startup is complete, it should show something along the lines of Now listening on: http://localhost:5000, go to whatever URL is mentioned there (including the port) in your favorite web browser to go to the site. The rest should work similarly to how wow.tools does/did.
WTL.db is a SQLite database that contains data for both the "File links" and "File history" features. Getting one from the latest release gives you a lot of data, but if you want to generate your own from your own cached WTL data on disk go to the following URLs (in order):
- Start WTL at least once
- Shut down WTL
- Delete WTL.db in wow.tools.local folder (it should exist after the first start)
- Start it again, then go to these URLs in order (wait until each is done, the console window has progress)
- /casc/generateFileHistory (skip if you only want file links)
- /casc/importAllFileHistory (skip if you only want file links)
- /casc/startLinking (skip if you only want file history)
Keep in mind that it uses cached manifests on disk to generate the file history. If you only have e.g. Dragonflight builds, file history would only show history going as far back as Dragonflight, with all files being added in the first Dragonflight build you have on disk.
Very rudimentary build diffing is available through the builds page. Only builds that have been previously loaded (or are currently loaded) can be diffed from/to. No file comparisons are available yet (with the exception of DB2 diffs, text formats and BLP textures, which are available, see below paragraph for notes) and previews for added files on the diff page will show previews of the files in the currently loaded build, so make sure the build you want to diff TO is the currently active build. New files will not be available for preview until "Analyze unknown files" on the files page has been done (first time will take a while, progress can be checked in the console window). Files that remain unknown either have a unpreviewable/unknown type, are empty or are encrypted.
DB2 diffs are available between DB2s that are either extracted on disk (see step 4 of configuration) or from the currently loaded build. Extracting DB2s for the current build to the directory mentioned in step 4 is available through a button on the builds page, which will also tell you if DB2s for a certain build are missing. Make sure to do this if you want to be able to diff DB2s with this build in the future.
Hotfixes are loaded from DBCache files that exist in the WoW directory (for all products) or manually placed *.bin files in the caches directory in the wow.tools.local directory. Hotfix diffs are available on the Hotfixes page but keep in mind the "First detected" column will only be updated upon requesting that page. After updating the DBCache files (either manually or by logging into/then quitting the game), a restart of WTL is currently required. The hotfixes page only shows hotfixes from the currently loaded build.
File links (e.g. textures in M2 files, M2 doodads in WMO files, etc) are parsed (and then saved) when the "More Information" screen is loaded and will be available for that file from that point on. For a pre-compiled database with most file links (for retail WoW) already present, download "WTL.db" from the latest release that has one and replace the file on disk.
To update all file links, manually browse to /casc/startLinking and keep an eye on the console window for progress. After the page loads, it is done.
File history for a build is only processed and saved when a build is loaded for the first time. For a pre-compiled database with a mostly complete history all the way back to 6.0.1, download "WTL.db" from the latest release that has one and replace the file on disk. When new builds are loaded for the first time (and the manifest is first generated) it should import file history for that build.
WTL relies on updated database definitions from the WoWDBDefs repo. While definitions are included in releases, these are likely to go out of date quickly leading to errors such as "No definition found for this file" while attempting to load DB2s with recently changed structures. Updating definitions can be done by pressing the "Update WoWDBDefs" button on the DBC browsing page. If you instead want to do this manually, go here and download the ZIP by click Code -> Download ZIP, then overwrite the WoWDBDefs/definitions folder with the definitions folder from the ZIP.
To have named files throughout the WTL, it downloads the latest community-listfile.csv listfile on first start but this can go out of date in time as new files are added/named in future content, to prevent this the listfile is automatically updated if it has not been updated for over a day. If you want to force an update, click "Update listfile" on the files page. If you want to manually do this, remove listfile.csv to force a redownload on next startup or update it manually by placing your own listfile there. The listfile URL can also be changed in the config.
WTL relies on updated TACT keys from the TACTKeys repo to be able to load encrypted files. This can go out of date in time as new things are encrypted and new keys become available, to prevent this the list of keys is automatically updated if it has not been updated for over a day. If you want to force an update, click "Update TACTKeys" on the files page.
For downloading files from builds that are not currently loaded, WTL relies on downloads from wago.tools.
Outside of some glue and all the parts pretty much taken directly from WoW.tools projects, this project uses a few other projects to do the heavy lifting in the hopes that maintaining it in the future (if there need to be changes) should be relatively simple*, if the below projects are still being maintained. Many thanks to their authors!
*(compared to maintaining the main wow.tools site)
- Deamon's WebWowViewerCpp (Emscripten version) which also powers the WoW.tools modelviewer. Does the actual model rendering.
- DBCD used to read WoW's DB2 tables.
- CascLib used to retrieve files from WoW's file storage.
- WoWDBDefs definitions required to read WoW's DB2 tables.
- SereniaBLPLib used to read convert WoW's BLP textures to PNGs.
- WoWFormatLib used to parse WoW files with WoW-specific formats.