After some cleanups and improvements, I’ve put online a new downloadable ProtoRPG bundle that includes proper source code. A few comments :

• The game can run locally, but you still need to download Prototype and Script.aculo.us separately and save them in the /javascripts/ directory.
• I’ve included a functional, if somewhat crude, map editor.
• There’s also a sample PHP script to handle server-side savegames.

As usual : software is provided “as is” with no warranty, use at your own risks

Development has been somewhat stalling for personal reasons but I’ve more time available now and am back at it again. I’ve gotten several request to release the source and I’m currently dolling up the code so that it is “edible”. While the source will be open, the license will remain something similar to the current “free for non-commercial use”.

I’ve come to realize that it’s actually easier to release a software than it is to release some source code. Knowing that professional programmers might look at what I’ve written and form an opinion on my skill is somewhat intimidating. Debug code has to me removed, comments edited or added when necessary, etc. It’s (almost) easy to make a decent program, it’s something else to have elegant and efficient code under the hood.

I’m also taking the opportunity to tune and perfect a few things, most notably the combat and player stats system which I’m not very satisfied with.

I’ve been busy redoing another web site of mine – as well as traveling a bit – but I finally got around to add loading/saving to ProtoRPG, which marks another release. Each map can be marked to save items and/or population, so that when the player comes back again items that have been picked or moved are preserved, as well as the position of NPC.

On the server side there’s a PHP script with a simple login/password system (if a new user name is entered, a user account is automatically created at the time of saving).

On another note I’ve been experimenting with the <audio> tag and its simple Javascript interface (this is a HTML 5 feature). It seems that as of now only Opera 9.5 supports it on Windows. Firefox is likely to support it in the next 3.1 release, and Safari 3 doesn’t seem to have it despite claiming to (well maybe it does in MacOS, but I had no luck with the Windows version). Internet Explorer ? Ahahah, good one…

To help anyone who might want to get a peak at how the game files are put together, and possibly write his or her own games, I’ve released the Prologue mini-demo as a standalone ZIP file that can be run locally. This will be a lot more comfortable to check out what is going on, get started on a new game and debug.

You’ll need to put Prototype and Script.aculo.us into the javascripts subdirectory for the whole thing to work.

To answer Rufex’s previous comment, I haven’t had much time to think about how to license ProtoRPG. I’m all in favor of open-source (and Javascript nature makes it a natural fit for such distribution), and wanted to go that way. As most people, I’ve bills to pay, but unlike most people, no income stream provided by a daily job… So I’d love to see other people use and/or improve the code, but if anyone makes money off my work I find it fair to have a slice of it. Hence the “free for non-commercial” approach. I know there’s a bunch of properly written open license out there that can fit this model, so I’ll switch to one of those when I find the right one (suggestions welcome).

What about the source code ? It’s coming, I just need to pretty-up everything so that it looks more than just shredded spaghettis and is meaningful to people. Stay tuned (or use your RSS feed reader!).

I’m releasing the first version of ProtoRPG today. I’ve always had a fondness for classic RPG games (starting with Ultima V running on a 8086 PC) and thought that running something like this should be doable in a modern browser. So what is ProtoRPG exactly ?

• It’s a RPG game that runs in a browser.
• It’s written in Javascript and built with the Prototype and Script.aculo.us frameworks. No plugin, no Flash, no download, no installation required.
• It runs in all the modern browsers out there (tested on Firefox, IE 7.0, Opera 9, Safari 3, etc.).
• It makes it easy to write your own games without doing any coding : all the content is in plain text and standard graphic files.

It’s free for non-commercial uses (provided you give proper credits and link back). I wrote a mini-adventure as a demo, but due to my lack of any artistic skill it looks “somewhat average” (cough cough).
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