Writing code for multiple platforms can be a lot of work. It can be even more work to have to completely rewrite it for each one, too. What if you wrote an application in C++, but wanted it to be displayed in the browser somehow? Well now, with a tool called Emscripten, that’s possible.

Emscripten is an LLVM based project that compiles C and C++ into highly performant JavaScript in the asm.js format. In short: near native speeds, using C and C++, inside of the browser.  Even better, emscripten converts OpenGL, a desktop graphics API, into WebGL, which is the web variant of that API.

I previously wrote a blog post illustrating what Emscripten is, and how it works in relation to some of my favorite game development tools: Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. Therefore, I won’t go into great detail about how it works here, but instead wanted to focus on creating your own web project which takes advantage of Emscripten, so that you can take C / C++ code and get it running inside of the browser.

I have several other posts in this series:

• A beginner’s guide to WebGL
• Getting started with Emscripten
• Asm and WebGL for the Unreal Engine and Unity

Acknowledgement:

Alon Zakai (@Kripken) at Mozilla has been doing an incredible job of supporting Emscripten over the years. Much of this content came from his talks and presentations that I could find online. I’d suggest following along with his work to learn more about the project.

 

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@DaveVoyles

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