Hands-On Game Development with WebAssembly: Learn WebAssembly C++ programming by building a retro space game

Make your WebAssembly journey fun while making a game with it

Key Features

• Create a WebAssembly game that implements sprites, animations, physics, particle systems, and other game development fundamentals
• Get to grips with advanced game mechanics in WebAssembly
• Learn to use WebAssembly and WebGL to render to the HTML5 canvas element

Book Description

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.

What you will learn

• Build web applications with near-native performance using WebAssembly
• Become familiar with how web applications can be used to create games using HTML5 Canvas, WebGL, and SDL
• Become well versed with game development concepts such as sprites, animation, particle systems, AI, physics, camera design, sound effects, and shaders
• Deploy C/C++ applications to the browser using WebAssembly and Emscripten
• Understand how Emscripten HTML shell templates, JavaScript glue code, and a WebAssembly module interact
• Debug and performance tune your WebAssembly application

Who this book is for

Web developers and game developers interested in creating applications for the web using WebAssembly.

Game developers interested in deploying their games to the web

Web developers interested in creating applications that are potentially orders of magnitude faster than their existing JavaScript web apps

C/C++ developers interested in using their existing skills to deploy applications to the web

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to WebAssembly and Emscripten
2. HTML5 and WebAssembly
3. Introduction to WebGL
4. Sprite Animations in WebAssembly with SDL
5. Keyboard Input
6. Game Objects and the Game Loop
7. Collision Detection
8. Basic Particle System
9. Improved Particle Systems
10. AI and Steering Behaviors
11. Designing a 2D Camera
12. Sound FX
13. Game Physics
14. UI and Mouse Input
15. Shaders and 2D Lighting
16. Debugging and Optimization

Rick Battagline is a game developer who has been working with web- and browser-based technologies since 1997. He wrote his first computer game in 1996 and, in 2006, he founded BattleLine Games LLC., an independent game studio where he works to this day. That same year, his game, Epoch Star, was nominated for an award at the Slamdance Guerrilla Games Competition, and was listed in Game Informer Magazine issue 156 as one of ""The top ten games you've never heard of.

Since then, Rick has written hundreds of games for platforms including the web, Windows PC, iOS, Android, Wii U, and Nintendo Entertainment System emulators. He has developed games in web technologies including WebAssembly, HTML5, WebGL, JavaScript, TypeScript, Flash, and PHP.