Comic Chat for the Web

A faithful web port of Microsoft Comic Chat (1996–1998), built from the original source release — the comic engine, the art pipeline, and the IRC protocol, running entirely in the browser.

What's faithful

• The original art, extracted from the shipped .avb/.bgb binaries: 31 characters and 9 backgrounds by Jim Woodring, decoded from the zlib-compressed masked-DIB format into PNGs by tools/extract-avb.mjs.
• The comic engine (src/engine/), ported function-by-function from the 1998 C++ (panel.cpp, balloon.cpp, spline.cpp, avatar.cpp):
  • panel composition: clone-and-extend, 5-balloon/5-body limits, speaker re-entry breaks, establishing shots, zoom with head-room protection;
  • greedy character placement with facing penalties and left/right hysteresis; characters flip to face who they talk to;
  • balloon outlines as beta-splines (tension 5, bias 1) around per-line text "filters" with wavy bumps every 300 twips; tails broken into the outline with paired arcs; think-bubble chains; dashed whispers; action boxes — all in the original MM_TWIPS coordinate system;
  • the text-to-emotion expert system with the authentic rule table from the original string resources (ALL CAPS → shout at strength 9, LOL → laugh at 11, :-) → happy at 10, sentence-initial You → point, …);
  • the emotion wheel: 8 emotions at 45° steps, radius = intensity, mapped to the nearest face/torso records exactly like GetBodyFromEmotion.
• The wire protocol (src/irc/protocol.ts): messages carry the original annotation prefix (#G<t><te><ti>E<f><fe><fi>[R]M<m>[T…]) text, characters announce with # Appears as <name>, backgrounds sync with # BDrop2: — interoperable with original Comic Chat clients on the same IRC server.

Running it

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/comicchat/comicchat.git
cd comicchat
npm install
npm run extract-art   # one-time: decode .avb/.bgb art into public/art
npm run dev           # http://localhost:5885

The original Microsoft source release is pinned as the sources/comic-chat Git submodule and supplies the files for art extraction. For a clone made without --recurse-submodules, initialize it with:

git submodule update --init --recursive

tools/extract-ui.mjs converts the res/*.bmp UI resources (emotion faces, toolbar strips).

Connecting

Everything is client-side; there is no backend. Two modes:

• Demo room — offline, scripted characters. Zero network.
• IRC over WebSocket — connects straight from the browser to any IRC server with a WebSocket listener (Ergo, UnrealIRCd 5+, InspIRCd 3+, or a webircgateway in front of anything else).

To run a local Ergo server for testing, enable a websocket listener in its config:

server:
  listeners:
    '127.0.0.1:8067':
      websocket: true
  websockets:
    allowed-origins: ['*']

then point the connect dialog at ws://localhost:8067.

Layout

src/engine/   the comic engine port (twips, splines, balloons, panels, page)
src/irc/      gamja-based IRC core + Comic Chat wire protocol + demo room
src/art/      runtime art store (extracted characters/backgrounds)
src/ui/       98.css chrome: menus, dialogs, wheel, roster
tools/        build-time extractors for the original binary art
docs/         engine notes reverse-engineered from the 1998 sources
sources/      pinned Microsoft Comic Chat source submodule

Licensing

• Port code: MIT.
• src/irc/gamja/ is vendored from gamja (AGPL-3.0-or-later) — the combined web app is effectively AGPL; see src/irc/gamja/LICENSE.
• Original Comic Chat sources and art: MIT, © Microsoft Corporation (the microsoft/comic-chat submodule). Character art by Jim Woodring.