I decided to reverse engineer the first NeoQuest game in PHP, and since I wanted the repository to be online somewhere, I've put it here on GitHub. Secretly, I just want an excuse to be playing lots of NeoQuest.

However, Neopets will likely not be very happy with me doing this. I have a few reasons for thinking they just wouldn't care about this though:

• NeoQuest is a very old game now. I can't find an exact date, but I definitely remember playing it in the early 2000's. Neopet's has been around since 1999, so it may have been in existence since then.
• They have NeoQuest 2 out now, but that's also a very, very old game.
• NeoQuest is no longer in the popular games list, and I doubt many people even know about it anymore.
• Since I'm reverse engineering the game, I'll miss a number of the quirks of the game, meaning you should probably go and play the original if you're serious about playing it.
• I've no interest in making money out of this. I just felt like making an open game, and don't have much imagination.
• I doubt they'll even notice.
• I like asparagus too.

Despite all that, the assets, and text, and story line, and names, and pretty much everything that is not code all belong to Neopets. I'm well aware that I'm flagrantly disregarding copyright laws. If someone from Neopets every gets in touch with me ( neoquest AT leafcanvas.com ) to ask, I will immediately switch this repository to a private one.

Just to stress a point I've already made, if you're looking to play NeoQuest, you should definitely play it on the official website. This doesn't even hold a flame to the wonderful, expansive world created in the game.

The code however, since I've written it all myself without ever seeing any of the original code is all public domain. Hopefully over time I'll make this into more of an RPG framework which you can take and build your own games. I'm really interested in how a browser-based Final Fantasy game might work out, for instance. If this codebase is ever in a state for you to find useful to make your own game then please charge for it. Pick a price model you want, but I'd suggest a one off payment to unlock the game.

Of course, you MUST remove all Neopets related assets before you can even run a free game. That means every image and piece of user-facing text that is in this repository.

I want to make the clone be as true to the appearance, and storyline of the game that I can. This is mostly just so that I know I have all the features in this software that make a game. The game mechanics are all the same, the map will be identical, the mobs, and the speech will be the same too.

To make it more modern though, some things have been changed:

• The map is based around AJAX drawing it now, so there's no need for a page reload every move
• Fighting is managed with AJAX too, so no page reloads there either
• Bits of jQuery have made the UI prettier (animated loss of health in fights)
• It's hard for me to work out their algorithms for attack and the like, so I'm making my own up
• A different UI for displaying how items are equipped

Server:

• MySQL (any version)
• PHP 5

Client:

• Same as jQuery's support ( http://docs.jquery.com/Browser_compatibility )

Installing this is pretty simple. Just drop the PHP scripts into a web accessible directory.

It uses a PHP Framework that I've made. You'll have to make a config.php in the includes/ directory, and a config.js in the js/ directory before it will work.

My config.php looks like this:

<?php

/**
* Stores constants specific to this installation.
*/

define ('database_server', 'localhost');
define ('database_user', 'rpg_user');
define ('database_password', 'alfred3329');
define ('database_name', 'unnamedrpg');

define ('tbpfx', '');

//  Define the project relative root, no trailing slash
define ('relroot', '/unnamed-rpg');
define ('url', 'http://localhost/unnamed-rpg/');
define ('sitename', 'NeoQuest Clone');

// What's the status of this server? Live or dev?
define ('status', 'dev');

?>

config.js is much simpler:

relroot = "/unnamed-rpg";

There's an SQL file which I keep updated too, which will have the most up-to-date schema and the data that I'm using for testing. This is the most inelegant part of the installation, since it means your data will be overwritten when I update it. That's the risk you take for using this install, I guess. Maybe fork the project if it's an issue.