So you came here to know a little bit about this project…

Mmmm.. ok, I’ll try to write some content…

What’s Primera?
Primera is a sort of DHTML ‘experiment’ trying to bring some old 8-bit RPG fashion directly onto your Firefox browser. It aims to become a full role playing game experience when your character can interact with others, combat monsters, gain experience, raise levels, buy weapons and stuff, etc.
Primera runs entirely onto your browser, it does not use any third party plug in and does not require you to install strange stuff.
When you log into Primera you can interact with other people using your tiny avatar, chatting, listen to what they are saying or just seeing they moving around.

What’s the current status?
The Project is still on early development (alpha version) but it’s already enjoyable.
Actually you are able to:

• move around into a nice-looking isometric map with smooth isometric scroll just like on your old favorite Super-Nes game.
• chat with other people
• interact with some objects (pictures, doors, books)

How many people are involved?
Just one people.. that is actually me, g4toloc0, even if my brothers has beeing of great help giving me ideas and helping me with some glitches about the dhtml iso-engine.

Why ‘Primera’?
Well… the name is a sort of tribute to the Ultima PC-RPG series.

What’s Ultima?
From Wikipedia:

Ultima is a series of fantasy computer role-playing games from Origin Systems, Inc.. Ultima was created by Richard Garriott, a.k.a. Lord British. Several games of the series are considered seminal games of their genre. Today, Electronic Arts holds the brand. It is considered the longest running RPG game franchise, as well as being one of the longest running, if not the longest, video game series.

As a little joke I’ve used the Spanish word ‘Primera’ (that means ‘first’) as the contrary of ‘Ultima’. Ah, ah.. you can stop laughing now..

What about the code?
Well… Primera could be anything but NOT an example of good programming techniques, even if the isometric engine (the paint routine) could be considered as a good point to learn something about javascript speed optimization.
Primera will be released under some open source license and all the code and graphics will be accessible. I will work on this after taking it online again Primera 0.2 (with a brand new RPG engine) is released.

What about graphics?
As you can notice (if you have a little knowledge about the Ultima series) Primera graphics (map tiles) are ripped directly from Ultima VIII - Pagan.
It has been a lot of work to categorize all Pagan Graphics..
My gfx-ripping work has been mainly based on Ultima VIII viewer by Mike Angus, a very useful utility that is able to extract all sprites from Pagan into bmp files.
With a lot of patience (Pagan has LOTS of sprites) I’ve achieved to build four main sprite files. You can check this files directly. They are used as background images in Primera to build the world we all love.

iso_natura.png
iso_objects.png
iso_world.png
iso_pavimento_old.gif

Actually I am not using gif files anymore (png files are smaller) and the main file with tiles for the terrain has been divided into several parts to increase the scrolling speed (this is why the one you are seeing here is called iso_pavimento_old.gif).

For the avatars I’ve used this excellent website:
Toolkizone.com
which it’s full of sprites and map tiles from various RPG games.
I’ve worked hard to put all sprites together (I’ve corrected some of them) and find a style (those cute super deformed characters) that could be used in conjunction with U8 realistic graphics.

In addition here goes some other tools that has been of great help:
DOSBox
Pentagram

What are the requirements?
Firefox (tested on FF v1.5, FF v2.0 and FF v2.0.0.2 with cache size going from 50MB to 300MB)
S.O. Windows XP, Mac OS X (i think it can run on others Operating Systems too)

To be continued…