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)

WebAssembly interface functions

We need to define the functions that will interact with our JavaScript. We also need to define some global variables that will be used by several of our classes. Here is the code from the new basic_particle.cpp file:

#include "game.hpp"
#include <emscripten/bind.h>
SDL_Window *window;
SDL_Renderer *renderer;
char* fileName;
Emitter* emitter = NULL;
Uint32 last_time = 0;
Uint32 current_time = 0;
Uint32 diff_time = 0;
float delta_time = 0.0f;
extern "C"
EMSCRIPTEN_KEEPALIVE
void add_emitter(char* file_name, int max_particles, float
min_angle, float max_angle, Uint32 particle_lifetime, float
acceleration, bool alpha_fade, float min_starting_velocity, float
kmax_starting_velocity, Uint32 emission_rate, float x_pos, float
y_pos, float radius) {
if( emitter != NULL ) {
delete emitter;
}
...