Hi folks!
I've been busy compiling Tilengine with Emscripten, a clang-like compiler suite that outputs javascript and WebAssembly instead of traditional native machine code. What does this mean? The ability to run Tilengine programs inside the browser, instead of having to download and build a specific OS version.
Progress is almost complete, I'll soon release the end library. In the meantime, some insights:
Here you can see two screenshots from the samples "platformer" and "forest" running inside Firefox:
A screenshot of "benchmark" tool for obtaining performance
A screenshot of the same benchmark tool running natively on the same computer, to compare performance.
As you can see, performance inside the browser is between 40% - 50% relative to native speed, that matches expected results for Emscripten ported programs.
I have to solve two caveats before releasing it, both related to SDL2 (the underlying windowing framework):
I've been busy compiling Tilengine with Emscripten, a clang-like compiler suite that outputs javascript and WebAssembly instead of traditional native machine code. What does this mean? The ability to run Tilengine programs inside the browser, instead of having to download and build a specific OS version.
Progress is almost complete, I'll soon release the end library. In the meantime, some insights:
Here you can see two screenshots from the samples "platformer" and "forest" running inside Firefox:
A screenshot of "benchmark" tool for obtaining performance
A screenshot of the same benchmark tool running natively on the same computer, to compare performance.
As you can see, performance inside the browser is between 40% - 50% relative to native speed, that matches expected results for Emscripten ported programs.
I have to solve two caveats before releasing it, both related to SDL2 (the underlying windowing framework):
- despite benchmark results, actual animations run slower while they shouldn't
- pressed keys are not passed to the window manager