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)

Autonomous agents versus top-down AI

In 1986, Craig Reynolds created a well-regarded AI program called Boids (a combination of bird and droids). This program created a fascinating bird-like flocking behavior, where little triangles moved around the screen in ways that remind the observer of flocking birds or fish. When the environment had obstacles, the boids broke up to steer around the obstacles and rejoin later. A collision between two flocks will usually end up in the flocks joining up and moving on. The Boids algorithm is an implementation of autonomous agents for AI. Each individual boid makes decisions based on a few simple rules and its immediate environment. That results in what is called emergent behavior, which is behavior that looks as if it was designed from the top down, but is not. The irony is that a top-down-implemented AI frequently looks less intelligent than...