Crown of Conquest

A web based game in Perl

crownofconquest.com

History

• Began development in 2008
• Worked on it until about 2013
• Browser-based games popular around this time
• "Persistent world"
• Peak popularity was around 50 active players
• On GitHub

The Game

• Party-based RPG
• 2D Map, Wilderness / Dungeons / Sewers
• Garrisons
• Mayors
• Kings & Queens
• Buildings

Technical Overview

• Perl
• Catalyst Framework
• DBIx::Class
• Template Toolkit
• mysql (sadly)
• Have run on mod_perl, fast CGI, now on Plack
• Dojo toolkit (was popular about 2006)
• Also some jQuery

MVC

• Model, View, Controller
• Structure can be context dependent
• Model (DBIx::Class)
• View (Template Toolkit)
• Controller (Catalyst Framework)
• Moose

What I'll cover

• Catalyst Framework
• Model (DBIx::Class & Moose)
• Tests (Test::Class)
• Other bits & pieces

Lessons

• Making games is hard!
• Test, test, test
• Think about scope
• Think about audience
• Re-use Algorithms