Since a couple of days, we started to work on a new game engine, when I say we, I could say mainly I, but lucky me, some good people on the Make Web Games forums seems to jump on the train too.

This game engine will be GNU licensed, which means, it will be free to use and run. However some modules as well as the support may be offered for some fee later on.

What will do this engine? Well basically the engine already does or will do what you may expect from a text game:
- Allows to customize the look & feel, even players will be able to choose which look & feel they want to use if the game offers more than one.
- Allows changing language (and being able to edit the languages file via the web interface).
- Have background events like restoring health or energy, and this without the need of any crons.
- Easy to develop new “locations” or “tools” without the need of modifying each and every file for it.
- Comes with a premade generic game, to demonstrate how things work.
- Unlimited stats.
- Self installing engine (on the database and configuration side).
- Self installing modules (on the database side or any other needs the module may have).

But don’t just believe on my words, go to the website http://www.zapengine.com, and download it to see how it goes by yourself! Of course, currently it’s not a full game, and I cannot promise you will not need to change the database and/or lose data if you upgrades later on. Be prepared also to see code like you never saw while working with other game engines. All is cleanly separated in different directories; each with it’s on function. Modules are within their own directory and defined by a file called “part.def” which the core code will check and use as “hook” to use the module. The current status is more than promising, and I highly encourage everyone here to test it and comment it out.

What I can promise is, that as long as there is some interest in it, I will continue to contribute.

About the author:
Alain Bertrand is a game creator and owner/creator of “Nowhere Else and Beyond” (NEaB) since March 2005. From 2005 until 2009 more than 110,000 players registered, all of this was achieved using most of the strategies mentioned here. It proves that constant work pays off, even in the current hard times.