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Web Builds with Emscripten

Warning

CF can not currently build for the web, as CF switched to SDL's SDL_GPU API. SDL_GPU has deprecated all OpenGL support, which unfortunately means no access to OpenGLES, which was used to cross-compile for the web via a compiler called Emscripten. The rest of this page details old steps to get emscripten builds going. In the future CF will seek out a replacement technology to enable web builds.

Getting started with Emscripten is a bit challenging, so hopefully this page can help get you started. Once you get your game building for the web it's usually quite a breeze after the initial setup.

Note

Emscripten builds automatically disable CF's HTTPS support, since web builds suffer from very poor support of this feature.

Install Emscripten

Make sure emscripten is installed on your machine, along with Perl.

Tip

Be sure to install any platform-specific dependencies first.

Note

For windows users performing setup with the command prompt you should omit ./ from the Emscripten docs. Instead of typing ./emsdk install latest, try typing emsdk install latest.

  1. Run ./emsdk install latest (or emsdk install latest for Windows users).
  2. Run ./emsdk activate latest (or emsdk activate latest for Windows users).
  3. Windows uers only: Optionally run step 2 with --permanent flag (recommended), e.g. emsdk activate latest --permanent.

You will likely need to call source ./emsdk_env.sh on Linux/MacOS to setup environment variables. For Windows users --permanent may be buggy and not correctly, in this case you must call emsdk_env.bat manually each time you open a new command prompt.

Build CF

If on Windows go ahead and run the emscripten.cmd file. This will build libcute.a. If you're using something like Ninja the commands will be slightly different; consult the emscripten docs if you need help.

Build your Game

Additionally you can add something like the following to your cmake build script for your own project.

if(${CMAKE_SYSTEM_NAME} MATCHES "Emscripten")
    set(CMAKE_EXECUTABLE_SUFFIX ".html")
    target_compile_options(your_game PUBLIC -O1 -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions)
    target_link_options(your_game PRIVATE -o your_game.html --preload-file ${CMAKE_SOURCE_DIR}/content --emrun -O1)
endif()

Also don't forget to call emscripten_set_main_loop from your main function!

Example Game Project

The Cute Snake game project is a good example of how to setup an Emscripten build with CMake.