Developing a browser-based RPG: Loading user data

Question

I'm writing a browser-based RPG in JavaScript, HTML5 with Canvas, EaselJS, etc... I'd like to develop the back end data saving/user profile aspect now.

This is a single player RPG where the player will interact with NPCs to solve quests. It is not online.

I've developed a website in PHP before where I saved my own data in a database, and loaded the images to the page via MySQL and PHP.

For a RPG, how would this process be? In my mind... I will try:

• At the RPG menu, have a user login screen. Handle this with a traditional PHP session.
• Once the user logs in, load their stats from the database.

What I'm confused about is:

• Loading text data is okay I suppose... but how can I load objects that were on the screen in the correct locations at the time of the save? Can this be handled through the database?

• I have generated the Players, Objects, and NPCs as Javascript objects using EaselJS. To save the state of these objects, do I have to load the character as a PHP object?

Kind of like:

/**
 * Load a character and all related items and skills.
 * Do this when the user logs in. You can save the data in a session or
 * reload it every time the user makes a new request
 */
$Character = Character::model()->with('items, skills')->find(
    'username:=username', 
    array('username' => 'demo')
); 

Any tips for loading appropriate data per user profile?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You could save the objects data structure serialized into a JSON structure and then save that blob of data as a database entry. Then on level load, deserialize the JSON and populate your game objects with the data pulled from the JSON.