Pixel mashup with Wasm-4 logo and retro graphics

WASM-4: Retro Game Dev Right In Your Browser

Have you ever dreamt of developing games that run on practically anything, from a modern browser to a microcontroller? Enter WASM-4, a minimalist fantasy console where constraints spark creativity. Unlike intimidating behemoths like Unity, WASM-4’s stripped-back specs challenge you to craft games within its 160×160 pixel display, four color palette, and 64 KB memory. Yes, you’ll curse at times, but as every tinkerer knows, limitations are the ultimate muse.

Born from the WebAssembly ecosystem, this console accepts “cartridges” in .wasm format. Any language that compiles to WebAssembly—be it Rust, Go, or AssemblyScript—can build games for it. The console’s emphasis on portability, with plans for microcontroller support, positions it as a playground for minimalist game developers. Multiplayer support? Check. Retro vibes? Double-check.

Entries from a 2022’s WASM-4 Game Jam showcase this quirky console’s charm. From pixel-perfect platformers to byte-sized RPGs, the creativity is staggering. One standout, “WasmAsteroids,” demonstrated real-time online multiplayer within these confines—proof that you don’t need sprawling engines to achieve cutting-edge design. This isn’t just about coding—it’s about coding smart. WASM-4 forces you to think like a retro engineer while indulging in modern convenience.

WASM-4 is a playground for anyone craving pure, unadulterated experimentation. Whether you’re a seasoned programmer or curious hobbyist, this console has the tools to spark something great.

The Orb Web Desktop

[Hugo Leisink] is a programmer who contributes to Open Source projects. In their spare time, they have been developing a web-browser-based operating system called Orb. It is available for the princely sum of zero cheeseburgers and doesn’t need a high-spec machine to run smoothly. The project is built using PHP and Javascript, which allows it to run efficiently on most desktop devices. There are a number of apps included, which are again written in a combination of PHP and js, together with a few written using webasm.

A few notable examples include a C64 emulator, minesweeper, and even a js port of Wolfenstein 3D so this isn’t just a toy, but actually useful. Ok, for real use cases, there are also the usual file browsers, and document readers as well as a writing application based on CKeditor. There is a kind of Windows 3.1 look and feel simplicity to the experience which is refreshing in the modern era of complex applications with their learning curves. Orb could be very useful in an educational setting, or just for jotting your own notes as you travel. Who knows, because the possibilities are endless if you’re willing to get your hands dirty with a bit of coding.

We’ve seen a few web desktops before, here’s a collection of them we saw last year. If you want to go in the other direction and turn a webpage into a desktop app, then look no further than Gluon.

The Doom computer game rendered with HTML checkboxes

Play DOOM Using Web Browser Checkboxes (Finally)

If you’ve ever felt the need to render DOOM using nothing but web browser checkboxes, [Andrew Healey] has you covered with his recent port of the first-person shooter. Naturally, this gets our tick of approval.

Yes, you read that right. You can now play DOOM in a 160 x 100 grid of HTML-generated checkboxes, much like this: ☑. The secret sauce for this project is partly derived from the fascinating Checkboxland project by fellow hacker Brian Braun, who uses HTML checkboxes to generate a variety of artistic demos.

[Andrew Healey] also made use of Cornelius Diekmann’s port of DOOM using WebAssembly, which we recently covered here on Hackaday. A smattering of code ties both projects together, and the end result is DOOM at 160×100 resolution, rendered entirely with HTML checkboxes.

The port can be played here using Chrome or Edge (other browsers may have issues if they do not support the zoom property in CSS). The source code is also available over on GitHub.

While the resolution and color palette aren’t what we have come to expect from DOOM, it’s likely that the graphics could be further improved by tinkering with the dithering and threshold settings. Higher resolutions may also be possible with further optimization.

We would be hard pressed to pick our favorite port of DOOM, as the list is becoming quite long. However for something completely different, check out our story on how DOOM was brought to Twitter.

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SQLite On The Web: Absurd-sql

Love it or hate it, the capabilities of your modern web browser continuously grow in strange and wild ways. The ability for web apps to work offline requires a persistent local storage solution and for many, IndexedDB is the only choice as it works across most browsers and provides a database-like interface. However, as [James Long] found, IndexedDB is painfully slow on chrome and limited in querying ability. He set out to bring a tool he was familiar with, SQLite, and bring it to the web browser as absurd-sql.

Why absurd? Partially because most browsers (not chrome) implement IndexedDB on top of SQLite. So for many browsers, it is just SQLite on top of IndexedDB on top of SQLite. Luckily for [James] there already was a project known as sql.js that uses emscripten to compile the C-based SQLite into WebAssembly. However, sql.js uses an in-memory storage backing and all data is lost when refreshing the page. [James] tweaked SQLite’s method of reading and writing blocks. Instead of being memory backed, he added a layer to read and write blocks from IndexedDB. This means that only sections of the database need to be read in, bringing in huge performance gains.

a graph showing absurd-sql beating IndexDB on every benchmarkThat brings us to the other reason why it’s absurd. On chrome (as well as Firefox), absurd-sql beats IndexedDB on almost every benchmark. A query like SELECT SUM(*) FROM kv led to stunning results.

So what’s the downside? Other than a somewhat large WebAssembly file that needs to get downloaded (409KB) and cached, there really isn’t. Of course, it’s not all roses when it comes to web development. Native SQLite runs 2-3 times faster than absurd-sql, which demonstrates how slow IndexedDB really is.

There are other storage standards on the horizon for web browsers, but locking becomes an issue. SQLite expects synchronous reads and writes because it’s just simple C. IndexedDB and other storage solutions are asynchronous as the event loop of Javascript lends itself well to that model. Absurd-sql gets around that by creating a SharedArrayBuffer that is shared with a worker process. The atomics API is used to communicate with the buffer. In particular, atomics.wait() allows the worker to block main thread execution until the read or write has finished. From the perspective of SQLite, the operations are synchronous. IndexedDB provides transactions so multiple connections can happen (for example multiple tabs open). Multiple readonly transactions can occur in parallel but only one readwrite transaction can be in flight.

Why not pull up your browser and start playing around with it? You’re already doomed to learn WebAssembly anyway.

You Are Doomed To Learn WebAssembly

At first, Web browsers displayed HTML pages. But then people wanted those pages to do something. So we got — among other things — JavaScript. Then people wanted to do super complicated and compute-intensive things. So now we have WebAssembly. If you want to learn it, [diekmann] has a 4-part series that covers everything from getting started to porting Doom into your browser.

Paradoxically, instead of using a browser, he uses the wasm binary toolkit to run code more like a standard assembler. And wasm — what most people call WebAssembly — isn’t like most assemblers you know. Instead of labels, there are blocks that work much more like high-level language constructs such as while loops in C.

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Web Assembly, Music Synthesis, And The Beauty Of Math

The electronics hobby has changed a lot since the advent of the microprocessor. Before that — and with the lack of large-scale integrated circuits — projects in magazines tended to be either super simple or ultra complex. However, one popular type of project dealt with music synthesis. Fairly simple circuits could combine to make a complex synthesizer so it was sort of the best of both worlds. Nowadays, you are more likely to tackle a music synthesizer in software like [Tim] did when he created Abelton in Web Assembly and C++. Along the way, he learned a lot about the relationship between math and music.

[Tim] covers what he learned about the Nyquist theorem and how to keep synthesis data flowing in real time with buffers. However, there are some problems trying to do all this in a cross-browser context. The AudioWorklet class appears to have widespread support, though, and [Tim] managed to get that working.

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C++ Compiler Targets The Web

It is a common problem these days. You have a piece of code in C or C++. Maybe it is older code. Or maybe you prefer prototyping your ideas using C. But, inevitably, someone now wants your code to run in a Web browser. The options for making this happen have expanded quite a bit lately and one possibility is Cheerp, an open-source compiler that handles up to C++ 17 and can output to WebAssembly, JavaScript, or asm.js.

The compiler is free to use for GPLv2 projects. If you aren’t open yourself, it looks like you have to cut a deal to use Cheerp with its maker, Learning Technologies.

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