Book Image

Hands-On Game Development with WebAssembly

By : Rick Battagline
Book Image

Hands-On Game Development with WebAssembly

By: Rick Battagline

Overview of this book

Within the next few years, WebAssembly will change the web as we know it. It promises a world where you can write an application for the web in any language, and compile it for native platforms as well as the web. This book is designed to introduce web developers and game developers to the world of WebAssembly by walking through the development of a retro arcade game. You will learn how to build a WebAssembly application using C++, Emscripten, JavaScript, WebGL, SDL, and HTML5. This book covers a lot of ground in both game development and web application development. When creating a game or application that targets WebAssembly, developers need to learn a plethora of skills and tools. This book is a sample platter of those tools and skills. It covers topics including Emscripten, C/C++, WebGL, OpenGL, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS. The reader will also learn basic techniques for game development, including 2D sprite animation, particle systems, 2D camera design, sound effects, 2D game physics, user interface design, shaders, debugging, and optimization. By the end of the book, you will be able to create simple web games and web applications targeting WebAssembly.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)

Projected focus and camera attractors

A locked-on camera is not a terrible thing, but a better camera shows more of what the player needs to see. In our game, the player is more likely to be interested in what lies ahead in the direction they are moving. A camera that looks ahead in the direction of movement is sometimes called a projected focus camera. We can look at the velocity at which our ship is currently moving, and offset our camera accordingly.

Another camera technique that we will employ is called camera attractors. Sometimes in games, there are objects of interest that can be used to pull/attract the focus of the camera. These create an attractive force that will pull our camera in that direction. One attractive force for our camera is the enemy ship. Another attractive force is projectiles. The enemy ship represents potential action, and projectiles represent a potential...