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)

The Particle class

The Particle class is the class we will use to represent the individual particles that are emitted by our particle system. The Particles class will need to be created with a constructor and later updated with an Update function used to modify the defining attributes of the particle. There will be a Spawn function used to activate the Particle, a Move function to move the particle through its life cycle eventually deactivating it, and a Render function that will perform the SDL rendering tasks required to draw the particle to the canvas. Here is what the Particle class looks like in our game.hpp file:

class Particle {
public:
bool m_active;
bool m_alpha_fade;
SDL_Texture *m_sprite_texture;
int m_ttl;
Uint32 m_life_time;
float m_acceleration;
float m_alpha;
Point m_position;
Point m_velocity;
...