About
I'm working on porting the Ren'Py framework to the HTML5 web browser - so you can publish Visual Novel games online :)
Donate and help the development go faster!
Test the current version (7.2.2.491 / 2019-04-16)
(start-up may be long, let it load for half a minute)
(Shitf+O for dev console, F3 for perfs)
Or test your own local game: provide a game.zip as explained below.
(this is purely local to your browser, nothing is sent to us)
Download
To publish your game:
(note: will be easier in the future, when Renpytom is done with Ren'Py launcher integration)
- Get renpyweb-7.2.2.491-20190416.zip and extract it somewhere in your disk
- Take the game/ directory from a game Distribution generated by Ren'Py 7.2.2 and prepare it: remove unnecessary files, customize game/presplash.png, see the Size section below.
- Take the renpy/common/ directory from the same game Distribution (optionally only keep the .rpyc and .rpymc files). This is necessary to optimize the game start-up.
- Zip the game/ and renpy/common/ directories in a game.zip archive (only game/ and renpy/common/, not lib/, renpy.exe, etc.). Your game.zip should contain 2 top-level directories game/ and renpy/. Example game.zip.
- Add this game.zip (without extracting it) in the RenPyWeb directory.
- Optional: if your web host supports gzip compression, compress all the large individual files, e.g. compress pyapp.data to pyadd.data.gz (but dont compress .zip and .gz files).
- Publish the RenPyWeb directory to your favorite web host (can be a plain HTTP directory, like this website, or gaming hosts such as itch.io, newgrounds...).
- Give feedback!
Examples:
beuc.itch.io/the-question-web
newgrounds.com/portal/view/729314
You can also include more than one game and select them using ?game=xxx.zip
renpy.beuc.net/play/?game=the_question.zip
renpy.beuc.net/play/?game=tutorial.zip
(renpy.beuc.net/play/?game=https://somewhere-else.net/game.zip is blocked so a user cannot be tricked into running a malicious game)
Testing locally: with Firefox, just double-click on index.html. With Chromium, you need a local webserver; python3 -m http.server 8080 in the RenPyWeb directory, or install XAMPP.
Development: contributions welcome! Check the official Ren'Py
repository at
github.com/renpy/renpyweb
Caveats
RenPyWeb's goal is to run your game without additional work. However the web is a very different environment so here are a couple things to know.
Size: RenPyWeb currently needs to download the full game
before playing, so you'll need to optimize your game if you want
your players to be patient enough to play it (100-150MB tops)!
I'm thinking of download and cache strategies that will help with
that (see roadmap). But even then this is
the web, things need to be lighter.
Solutions include: using layered images, making a lower-res or
lossy/jpg version, use the .webp image format, dropping (some)
audio, drop videos (not supported yet), splitting in chapters, etc.
Savegame: user savegames are linked to the webpage
domain.
Ideally, provide a stable (sub)domain - like this page.
Some hosts may change your domain on new upload, causing previous
savegames to become unreachable.
In addition, a game can read/modify savegames from other games
hosted at the same domain. Ren'Py will ignore them, but a malicous
game developer could do bad things.
For itch.io (hosts at XXX.ssl.hwcdn.net) it's not clear how often
the domain may change:
see How to save
data?
and HTML5
game : Save data locally.
For newgrounds all games are hosted at uploads.ungrounded.net so
other games could read your player's data.
In doubt, remind players to export their savegames from RenPyWeb's
top-left menu.
Network: browser outgoing connections are secured
by Same-origin
policy. In addition, the browser can only
perform XHR
and WebSocket
(i.e. no direct TCP/IP or UDP/IP connections).
WebSockets are initially transparently when you make a TCP/IP
connection from Python, but you need a specific server, or a service
proxy
(cf. Introduction
to Emscripten Sockets) on the developer's server side.
The game may use XHR through Emscripten-specific functions such as
emscripten_async_wget
(which I didn't expose yet in RenPyWeb/python-emscripten) but it is
asynchronous. emscripten_wget is synchronous but
requires -s ASYNCIFY=1 which is
deprecated/broken. emscripten_fetch
has similar features & restrictions.
Feedback
Feedback welcome!
Patreon -
e-mail -
Lemma Soft Forums -
itch.io -
newgrounds
Roadmap
(in no definite order)
- Python port for the browser, with Cython support
- Size-optimized minimal Python environment
- Pygame_SDL2 basic port for the browser
- Reconcile asynchronous browser execution with Ren'Py synchronous model (lower perfs / threadless for now)
- Run unmodified Ren'Py games
- WebAssembly support for Firefox (+fall-back to asm.js for other/older browsers)
- WebAssembly support for Chrome/Chromium
- Download resources in background / on-demand (e.g. images and musics; currently RenPyWeb requires downloading the whole game on startup)
- Alternate port with
experimental browser features (SharedArrayBuffer and threading) so
as to get greater performances, and to be ready when those feature
become default in browsers.
This is the only fix I currently know to sound performances. This requires improving emscriptem too. - Sound support
- Sound support without jitter
- Video/movie support
- renpy.movie_cutscene hardware support (i.e. handled by the browser; fullscreen probably tricky)
- WebP image support
- Fix image prediction
- Fix auto-save
- Fix opening web links
- Test and improve compatibility with popular game hosts (on-going)
- Fallback HTTP compression when gzip is broken (e.g. itch.io) (not LZ4 for file packages, but gzip fallback for .wasm/.js)
- More responsive game loading
- Splash screen
- Don't unnecessarily recompile/rebuild cache on start-up (very long)
- Optimize memory usage if possible (in particular for mobile) (on-going)
- Load game from an URL
- Load your own game locally
- Deal with preferred/max screen size (e.g. 1080p game running in smaller browser window)
- Define Screen variants (phone, small/medium/large...); add "web" variant?
- Design full-window game area with overlays for status/errors (rather than top/side bars)
- Fix full-screen toggle which goes wrong sometimes + handle config.default_fullscreen=True on start-up
- Fix 1 touch = 2 clicks on mobile
- Fix Chromium crash with large (>= 108MB) files
- Quit game cleanly (no error; kill sound)
- Clearer error messages (in particular for mobile where there's no JavaScript console)
- Clearer error when loading a full ren'py game
- Import/export savegames, log.txt
- Test and document networking
- Upgrade Ren'Py -> 7.1.4
- Report and fix Emscripten bugs (ongoing)
- Make all changes generic (clean-up) and merge them to Pygame_SDL2 and Ren'Py (ongoing)
Status reports
2019 week 16 (2018-04-16)
- Fixed problem with recent compression changes - please use today's new version. More info with next week-end's report.
2019 week 15 (2018-04-14)
- Improved sound at last! Sound jitter should be mostly fixed, feedback welcome.
- Work-around chromium's (controversed) autoplay policy, as Newgrounds users reported sound was sometimes muted #6511
- Freshen-up zee.js, laying ground for index.wasm compression (15MB->4MB) on Itch & Newgrounds. Spammed the project tracker ;)
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
Kuddos to kripken for starting this project and staying such a responsive maintainer.
2019 week 14 (2018-04-07)
- Add playable test on Newgrounds: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/729314
- Start-up time optimization by adding more download compression methods
- Add web server configuration for compressed JavaScript/Python code assets
- Alternate compression (LZ4) of Python assets for hosts that don't support it (itch.io, newgrounds...)
- Complain that zee.js (gzip in JavaScript) doesn't run anymore #1
- Document the current sound jitter, comments welcome: README.md
- Panic when Renpytom started moving things around in the renpyweb repo ;)
2019 week 13 (2018-03-31)
- Ren'Py 7.2.1 and 7.2.2 support
- New Caveats section on game size
2019 week 12 (2018-03-25)
- Discussion with Renpytom on RenPyWeb integration
- Emscripten build script by Renpytom
- Build system fixes
2019 week 9 (2018-03-03)
- Ren'Py 7.2 support
- Keep investigating pesky random crashes - found a bug in the debugger instead #8229 ;) (see also cf. #6724)
- Document network/socket caveats
- Next steps: Renpytom plans to work on integrating RenPyWeb in the Ren'Py launcher during March; keep RenPyWeb stable meanwhile
2019 week 8 (2018-02-24)
- Upgrade Ren'Py to current 7.1.4.0 pre-release (including my first direct commit)
- Upgrade Emscripten to 1.38.28 (merged #8054 and #8056)
- python-webbrowser: escape URLs to avoid potential JavaScript error/execution
- Improve build system and documentation
- Renpytom plans to work on official integration as soon as the 7.1.4 is ready!
- Update default splash screen :) What do you think?
2019 week 6 (2018-02-10)
- Upgrade Ren'Py to new 7.1.4 official pre-release
- Upgrade Emscripten to 1.38.27
- Disable downloading game.zip from another website for security (XSS-like)
2019 week 5 (2018-02-03)
- Publish consolidated source at the official Ren'Py GitHub: github.com/renpy/renpyweb
- Clean-up build system
- Bundle multiple pygame-example variants to quickly experiment
- python-emscripten fixes beuc.net/python-emscripten/python
- Emscripten:
2019 week 4 (2018-01-27)
- Difficult upgrade to Emscripten 1.38.25:
- Fix Chrome crash with large files, improve .zip extraction speed and memory usage #7630
- Push for Emterpreter (async) support in SDL2 #70 discussion
- Investigate video support:
- Document (roadmap) the need for 2 levels of video support: fullscreen w/ hardware acceleration, displayable w/o hardware acceleration
- Failed experiments, in the current Ren'Py, hard to sync the separate audio and video processing without threading
- Hardware video detection slight inconsistency #1698
- Doc improvement for videos #1697
2019 week 3 (2018-01-20)
2018 week 52 (2018-12-30)
- Start cleaning-up the
chaosbuild system, especially the Python port - Discuss how to use asynchronous features more cleanly (no patch) at emscripten-discuss
- Fix browser detection #1675
- With more such clean-up I hope to properly include this in Ren'Py
2018 week 50 (2018-12-16)
- New context (pop-up) menu:
- Saves import/export using ZIP format
- Access to Ren'Py log (useful for debugging and performance analysis)
- Bugs reports and follow-ups:
- Chromium: crash with large files #7630 / #913861
- Emscripten: investigate random crashes: emterpreter+fpcast discussion + made more Python functions asynchronous
- Emscripten: root-cause of the itch.io/iframe focus issue #7631
- Ren'Py screen size constraints #1661
- Ren'Py: suggest full-screen toggle rather than destroy/recreate window #1665
- Ren'Py: persistent data sync #1631
2018 week 49 (2018-12-09)
- Bug reporting fest:
- Ren'Py: suggest alleviating screen size constraints esp. for mobile platforms #1661
- Ren'Py: fix for static modules #1660
- Ren'Py: minor lint #1662
- SDL2: fix for duplicate touch events accepted at last #64
- Emscripten: investigated and reproduced Chromium crash report with large (>110MB) files #7630
- Emscripten: suggest fix for the itch.io keyword bug #7631
- Upgrade to Emscripten 1.38.21
2018 week 48 (2018-12-02)
- Improved design:
- The game now adapts to the screen size
(from large desktops to medium laptops to tiny mobile phones) - Cleaner status messages that auto-hide
All screen space for the game :)
I plan to add a square drop-down menu at the top-left to import/export savegames and logs in the future, let me know if you've got other design ideas.
- The game now adapts to the screen size
- Screenshots: typing 's' now automatically prompts a screenshot download!
- Fixed "The_Question" demo whose latest updates uses fonts from the Ren'Py launcher #1656
- Technology (SDL2) bug fixes:
2018 week 47 (2018-11-25)
- Bug fixes and clean-ups:
- Fix duplicate click events on touch devices; SDL2 bug #64
- Fix fatal error when attempting to open a local URL (such as Help/README.html in old-style VNs)
- Disable memory growth on asmjs target to avoid performance drop
- Non-RenPyWeb: better error handling in RAPT #20
- Separate and rename Python/Ren'Py archives for clarity; further optimize (trim) them
- Upgrade to Ren'Py 7.1.3.1092
- (Unconclusive) experiments with taming the popup blocker and with the Chrome audio stutter :/
- Experiment with faster, threads-based, alternate port: new browsers are becoming ready for it, but a lot of work is still needed in the lower-level Emscripten project.
I would need your support to progress on this faster port.
2018 week 46 (2018-11-18)
- Optimized start-up time by avoiding recompiling Python snippets from .rpyc files; you need to ship renpy/common/ in your game.zip file to leverage this (discussion at #1647). RenPyWeb now can run unmodified renpy/common/ files. Also the browser is more responsive during game loading.
- Better mobile support by optimizing memory on start-up (Firefox 63 runs reasonably well).
- Quit the game cleanly: no crash, and stop audio #1639; also found a bug in Ren'Py in the process #1642
- More code clean-up; optimized out unnecessary libraries SDL2_mixer and SDL2_ttf.
- SDL2: patch audio issue #4176 #63
- Emscripten: clarified cryptic error message in Emscripten and improved documentation #7516 #7523 #7524 #7526; reported bug when using pristine SDL2 #7525; upgraded to 1.38.17.
- Investigated how to optimize downloads with unfriendly CDNs (discuss)
- Clarified Roadmap - feedback welcome.
2018 week 45 (2018-11-11)
- Downloadable version for game developers with instructions
- Fixed itch.io integration issues:
- fix issues with lost keyboard focus
- automatically download and play game.zip if no game is given in URL (instead of displaying the "Open local Game" button)
- only one index.html file otherwise itch.io selects the slower asmjs fallback by default
- smaller uploads: the asmjs/ fallback now can use the same game files (instead of requiring duplicates or .zip-unfriendly symlinks)
- updated https://beuc.itch.io/the-question-web accordingly
- Pushed 2 more patches to standard Ren'Py (#1631, #1632)
- Not web-related but I made a couple fixes to the French translation (#11624, #1625, #1630) and reported a minor info-leak (#1628)
2018 week 44 (2018-11-04)
- WebP image support
- More detailed/clearer error messages
- Autosave fixed
- More testing (resulting in more entries in the roadmap ;))
- More Python-Emscripten integration (technically: emscripten.async_call with argument)
- Upgraded Emscripten to 1.38.16
2018 week 43 (2018-10-29)
- Updated RenPyWeb logo to mention RenPyWeb works on MS Edge
- Updated to Ren'Py 7.1.1
- Started structuring patch sets
- Sent a few patches for consideration to Ren'Py and Pygame_SDL2 (1 2 3)
- Started separating Python-related effort to python-emscripten
2018 week 42 (2018-10-21)
- Presplash image (doc)
- Image prediction now working
- Open web links in a new tab (you'll get a popup warning though, I don't think that can be bypassed)
- emscripten: now can query current WebGL attributes (notably alpha/transparency): #7243, commit
- Audio optimization tests. My current opinion is we'll need multithreading support to get better perfs; this requires me to contribute more with the Emscripten project (see multithreading label) as well as incoming support in the browsers (more precisely "SharedArrayBuffer" - Chrome starts enabling it but it doesn't work for me yet, and in Firefox you can enable it with a few clicks).
- SharedArrayBuffer experiments
2018 week 41 (2018-10-14)
- Improve performances (WASM support) for Chrome/Chromium
- Contribute transparency (alpha) fix in official Emscripten #7227/#7242
- Start structuring the compilation process to test multiple emscripten versions/patches
2018 week 40 (2018-10-07)
- Better performance for Firefox (not Chrome due to WebAssembly size limitations)
- Initial sound support
- Load your own game locally! (provide a .zip containing a game/ folder)
- Load game from an URL: The Question Tutorial
2018 week 39 (2018-09-30)
- The base engine works with Firefox; it works with Chromium too though it required some performances compromise
- Sound is currently disabled (working on it)
- Game was not modified, just repacked. Ren'Py however was butchered a little bit ;)
- Game must be entirely downloaded first
- Game performances were improved enough for playability. Better performances are possible but require more work
- itch.io downloads are way larger than here due to long-standing compression issues (#394); work-arounds could be implemented with some work
- Official Python 2.7 ported for the web, but without threads
- Some fixes were included in Emscripten though not all yet
Before
- A hell lot of experiments :)