Run your favorite games everywhere with WASM: the BlazorDoom use case by Yassine Benabbas

WebAssembly enables porting existing games to run directly in web browsers while maintaining good performance (60 FPS possible)

The Doom engine was successfully ported from C# to WebAssembly with minimal code changes, as 70% of the code was immediately compatible

Game porting can be done through either complete reimplementation or adapting existing source code for the target platform

Key technical challenges included:

• Converting the game’s color palette system to RGB values for browser canvas
• Implementing proper audio playback using Web Audio API
• Replacing native platform loops with requestAnimationFrame
• Handling interop between C# and JavaScript

WebAssembly and JavaScript need to work together since not all browser APIs are directly available to WASM code

The game loop pattern needs adaptation when porting to browser:

• Replace infinite loops with recursive requestAnimationFrame calls
• Handle frame pacing appropriately
• Manage state updates between WASM and JavaScript

Modern web standards like Canvas API and Audio Context make it possible to implement complex game features

.NET 7+ provides improved JavaScript interop capabilities when targeting WebAssembly

Game porting is an effective way to learn programming concepts while working with familiar content

WAD file support allows running different Doom game content without changing the engine code