AliceADV

aliceADV is a web-based ADV (visual novel) game engine that follows the design language of Ren'Py. Scenes, dialogue, characters, and branching are described in JSON, and the engine compiles them into a static web game that runs in any browser with no server or runtime dependency — you can open index.html directly over file:// or host it as a static site.

The engine ships as a Python package providing a create / build command-line tool, plus the engine template (HTML/CSS/JS) that is assembled into each project at build time.

中文说明见仓库根目录 README_zh-CN.md。

Installation

Requires Python >= 3.9.

pip install aliceadv          # from PyPI
# or, from a local checkout of this package directory:
pip install ./aliceadv

Verify:

aliceadv --version
# aliceADV 0.1.0 (engine v0.1)

Quick start

# 1. Create a project (copies the engine template into a new directory)
aliceadv create my_game --name "My Game"

# 2. Edit theme.json (styling) and story/*.json (script)

# 3. Build → <project>/dist/web/
aliceadv build my_game

# 4. Play: open my_game/dist/web/index.html, or serve it
python3 -m http.server -d my_game/dist/web 8000

Game version & engine version

The game version comes from your project's info.json (version field, authored by you). The engine version is stamped by the packaged engine itself at build time (aliceadv/__init__.py → ENGINE_NAME / ENGINE_VERSION) and injected into the built index.html as window.__ENGINE__. Both are shown on the title page and the About page after a build — so you no longer maintain the engine version by hand.

Command-line reference

The build command refuses to run against the engine template directory itself (it contains the .aliceadv_engine marker). The engine runtime (index.html, style/) is not stored in your project — it is assembled from the engine template on every build, so upgrading the engine takes effect by simply rebuilding.

License

Released under the MIT License.