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Orin

Web client for Eternal Lands

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Hi, recently I found a small mmorpg demo written by Mozilla developers:

 

http://browserquest.mozilla.org/

 

and thought if we could also have web based client for eternal lands ;).

 

I started some coding few days ago, just to do "proof of concept". It still requires A LOT of work to proof that concept ;P, but I can show you effect of my up to date efforts:

 

 

What do you think about something like that? Do you have any suggestions/ideas/questions?

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That would IMHO be very nice. And if it's only to be "there" and maybe give new players an occasional tip or direction.

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If i could harv and chat with this client .. I am allrd happy :)

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Whole that "visible" application is written in JavaScript, for additional stuff I use Python. Current coding I treat rather like research of what and how can be done. I have no idea how far can this project go - webbrowsers and javascript got lots of limitations ;).

 

Code is crappy as I'm learning a lot of new things about both languages writing that app and usually just want to see quick effect. If anyone wants to look at the code - it's available here:

 

 

https://mega.co.nz/#!dpxkBZAT!N1xayBnvfZwM_nUIQz-1hRFJcHAYVk30KFRbmHcUOto

 

 

To make it work it needs a gateway that translates normal tcp messages to websocket format and performs initial "handshake" with web browser (wsserv.py), but it's just translation layer - there isn't any game logic in it so all the actuall coding goes in JavaScript.

 

And yes - it'll definitely be open source... if it'll ever be done ;).

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With HTML5 and WebGl and stuff you can in theory do almost anything. Of course, it wouldn't be the fastest way of doing things, but it can get the work done. I think it's a very interesting project, please keep us updated on how it goes.

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Looks cool, even if all it would let you do is mix/harv/chat, I'd think alot of people would be fine with that. GL, I hope project goes well!

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Thanks for all your comments. It may take some time to do a playable version of that (if any would be ever made at all ;P). I'll inform you for sure about any notable progress. At the moment I'm experimenting with creating 2d maps from EL original map files.

 

Doing real 3d game seems quite impossible with my current skills. I'm also not sure about JavaScript performance in "real life" 3d application with lots of different models and textures to process on load as well as some JS code that needs to be run each frame (most fancy demos reduce it to the lowest possible extent to get good performance). However later I'm planing to use WebGL as a rendering context for 2d graphics - it gives huge performance boost over normal canvas context.

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I think I found a "basic tools set" I'd use for that project ;). After few attempts of automagick Isla Prima transer to 2d I gave up and decided to look for another way. There is a big GPL licensed 2d tiles and sprites repository for "The Mana World" project - fantasy 2d MMORPG. All those tiles are ready to use with open source maps editor - Tiled. Also there is JavaScript/HTML5 engine, that allows you to render those maps to canvas - melonJS. Here is small example of all this put together:

 

http://manasource.org/tmwjs/

 

At the moment I'm working on export some data (like wlkable/unwalkable tiles) from .elm to Tiled compatible map files. I hope that in few next weeks I'd have something that looks more or less like Isla Prima ;).

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Try http://spriters-resource.com/community/

If you start thread on project over there, you'll get interest, maybe new players + once you post enough, you can request some tile sets to be made ;p If you don't want to do that, i could always request some. Just an idea if you want some original tiles, that might fit the EL world better.

 

Just an idea :) Also GL love the idea of EL webbased

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Yeah, I was thinking along those lines too... why not just base map of Bloodsucker maps, which have the majority of the detail, and just edit bits of it to suit? But I don't know much about this kinda stuff, so... :lurker:

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Looks like a wonderful idea. Much of the reason I don't do much more than mix/harvest in El is the limitations of my computer - walking around mm with details low, shadows off, poor man, I get frame rates of 6-22. If I spend 80% of my time in console harving/mixing anyway, why not use a 2D client? The computer might choke less, and the fun won't change.

 

Good luck and I hope this can get implemented!

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I got stuck a bit with making 2d maps - it takes way more time than I expected and doesn't work that perfect because of tiles/creatures (incl. humans) proportions in that graphic sets. In EL basic tile size is 0.5 m so character is like 3 - 3.5 tiles, graphic sets I found got tile size like 1m, so 1/4'th of that tile can be unwalkable which complicates things a bit and probably would require some modifications in engine I wanted to use but still biggest problem is just huge amount of work required to make new 2d map based on EL map.

 

However I still don't think, using prerendered EL graphics is a good idea. First of all - I'm not sure about "playability" of something like that - I don't remember any game that uses "full top down" graphics. Besides prerendered maps would require huge data transfers from server and most of images won't be reusable.

 

 

Another thing is distributing objects from el maps to few layers - it will be essential for making some of them semi-transparent under certain conditions (to solve problem when something goes eg. under tree), but that's not that difficult to manage.

 

Bigger problem are IMHO players/creatures animations and showing stuff that players wear to make this version playable and quite attractive - I guess in that approach huge amount of work will have to be done here to generate those graphics/strips and final result is still a big question (at least for me).

 

With ready tilesets I kind of know what can We expect. Tiles are also in Medieval Fantasy clima so a lot of stuff is already done and IMHO making it this way will result in something playable... but not sure when it'll happen ;).

 

In the end I wanted to share small screenshot from part of my 2d Isla Prima (still needs a looooooot of work ;)):

 

http://flic.kr/p/dZiJe2

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Hi, I'm still working on that project in my spare time. Recently found a few tilesets from RPGMaker on the internet - making maps with them is way more funny than with those I've been using before so for my current attempts I decided to use them. Maybe I'll try with some scaled ManaWorld tiles later but now my priority is to add moving characters to those maps and make it kind of playable ;). I also decided to write my own engine - it's way less work than i expected and melon.JS would IMHO cause lots of problems in future - especially during integration with EL network stuff.

 

Currently my code can load multilayer maps created in "Tiled" map editor, autoload assets used by those maps and render them (still need to add layers order, fortunatelly for this map it works even without that part). I'm writing and testing all that stuff using google chrome at the moment so it's quite possible that it won't work in any other browser - I'll work on it later ;). As I started with making map again, visually there isn't any progress compared to the screen I shown you last week, however - that one from last week was just a screenshot from Tiled editor, now it's rendering in a browser ;).

 

http://karol.bialowas.ayz.pl/el/test.html

 

Trade and storage menu is a good thing for the beginning. I guess it might be quite nice addition to EL even if that client won't ever be fully functional... "web Shopping Mall" maybe ;)??

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Checked that under firefox - works like a charm, I'll have to check what's going on.

 

Edit:

OK i solved that issue - reading data from image works crappy in Firefox so I added caching that data (actually 4 lines of code ;)). Press ctrl+r after you enter that website again to reload cached Javascript files and thanks for pointing that thing ;).

Edited by Orin

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