WebStory Engine - A Visual Novel Engine for the Web
Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 2:42 pm
Hi!
As I've already mentioned previously, I'v been working on a visual novel engine for the web for about a year and I think that now is the time to finally release it. It may still be rather buggy, it is still a beta version, but that is exactly why I'm releasing it because I need your feedback, so bear with me.
The engine uses it's own XML-based language for writing the novels. The first version used JavaScript as the game's language and I decided that was much too complicated for non-programmers and it also lead to some nasty bugs, so I rewrote the whole thing from scratch and thought up a small language that is specifically made for visual novel stuff.
Notable features include:
- Textboxes support both ADV and NVL style, with separate name box or without
- Everything's stylable using CSS
- Variables and conditionals (applyable to any command)
- Sub routines
- Basic UI dialogs like yes-no-questions and text input
- A savegame system
- Support for some simple animations
- It's possible to control the flow of the game using wait and break commands
- The engine can easily be extended to include completely new commands
- Effects support customizations such as changing the duration and the easing type used
What's still missing:
A whole lot really. The documentation is only in the infant stages right now. I'm working on that. The engine needs A LOT of testing. Since it has so many features, I'm sure there are many bugs lurking anywhere you look.
If you happen to find any bugs, please help out by telling me here or writing a bug report here on the GitHub page for the project.
Also, if someone of you would like to do that, I'd love to have better character sprites for the example novel in the Beginner's Guide on the site. I kind of rushed the thing and so I used some lego-like smily as the character sprite and that's just ridiculous. ^^"
The engine is licensed under the BSD license, that means you are allowed to do pretty much anything with it, including developing commercial games with it and building other software on top of it.
On the technical side of things, you will need a web server to share your creations, but the server does not need to support any scripting languages, so any web server will do. The engine uses only free web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS and XML, so players do not need to have flash installed.
So, yeah, I hope some of you might find it useful!
If you have any ideas for future improvements and features, please let me know.
The engine and it's documentation can be found here: http://webstoryengine.org/
P.S.: The engine should work with IE9+, Firefox and Chrome. I did not test Opera, but I think that might work, too.
As I've already mentioned previously, I'v been working on a visual novel engine for the web for about a year and I think that now is the time to finally release it. It may still be rather buggy, it is still a beta version, but that is exactly why I'm releasing it because I need your feedback, so bear with me.
The engine uses it's own XML-based language for writing the novels. The first version used JavaScript as the game's language and I decided that was much too complicated for non-programmers and it also lead to some nasty bugs, so I rewrote the whole thing from scratch and thought up a small language that is specifically made for visual novel stuff.
Notable features include:
- Textboxes support both ADV and NVL style, with separate name box or without
- Everything's stylable using CSS
- Variables and conditionals (applyable to any command)
- Sub routines
- Basic UI dialogs like yes-no-questions and text input
- A savegame system
- Support for some simple animations
- It's possible to control the flow of the game using wait and break commands
- The engine can easily be extended to include completely new commands
- Effects support customizations such as changing the duration and the easing type used
What's still missing:
A whole lot really. The documentation is only in the infant stages right now. I'm working on that. The engine needs A LOT of testing. Since it has so many features, I'm sure there are many bugs lurking anywhere you look.
If you happen to find any bugs, please help out by telling me here or writing a bug report here on the GitHub page for the project.
Also, if someone of you would like to do that, I'd love to have better character sprites for the example novel in the Beginner's Guide on the site. I kind of rushed the thing and so I used some lego-like smily as the character sprite and that's just ridiculous. ^^"
The engine is licensed under the BSD license, that means you are allowed to do pretty much anything with it, including developing commercial games with it and building other software on top of it.
On the technical side of things, you will need a web server to share your creations, but the server does not need to support any scripting languages, so any web server will do. The engine uses only free web technologies like HTML, JavaScript, CSS and XML, so players do not need to have flash installed.
So, yeah, I hope some of you might find it useful!
If you have any ideas for future improvements and features, please let me know.
The engine and it's documentation can be found here: http://webstoryengine.org/
P.S.: The engine should work with IE9+, Firefox and Chrome. I did not test Opera, but I think that might work, too.