Why only retro games?

[evbo]

Total noob, barely just learned about wasm4 but I'm jumping out of my seat seeing you guys got a libretro core already!!

So what's holding this back from being slightly more advanced graphically, such as on par with something like pygame, etc? I understand full 3D game engines like Unity/Unreal would be explosive scope (as stated in your docs), but why not enable optional features so that the aesthetic can broaden outside of retro style as well? Or is there a road map to slowly add more advanced features?

And I completely respect if this is purely a style preference. I get it that retro gaming has it's intrigue, it just seems like a great platform you're building so I thought it could include a tad bit more variety is all.

[svc-user]

I don't know if it will completely answer your question, but in this video aduros explains a little about the history of why WASM4 is so limited.

[IFcoltransG]

Good to hear you're excited about this.
I don't think WASM-4 needs to compete with the likes of pygame to succeed. Pygame's goal is to make things as simple as possible to make games, but right from the beginning WASM-4 intentionally limited developers, e.g. with the four colour palette.
There's no technical reason WASM-4 needs to, but constraints make the dev think "how can I overcome this limitation?" which leads to unique games.
On the other side of the coin, WASM-4 has no problem updating (for instance) the sound system of WASM-4 to give easier control over the channels. Leaving sound unpolished might encourage people to get more creative with their sound, but it would also make it harder to create a nice-sounding game.
So WASM-4 is trying to balance making things simple and making them constrained. Pygame users are happy with pygame, and it might be pointless to imitate it. More fruitful to focus on preserving and showcasing the constraints that make WASM-4 unique.

[evbo]

I tried googling "wasm game library" and came up pretty empty handed: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/cog7xz/which_game_engine_for_a_cwebassembly_2d_game/

So I guess I could take any game engine I like (pygame) and use a wasm compiler, but I didn't think anyone had made it as convenient to do as you have, plus having a libretro core (I am an avid lakka/retroarch gamer)!

[aduros]

Welcome!

You might be interested in TIC-80, which recently added wasm support inspired by WASM-4. There are also game engines like raylib that seem to have good wasm and web support.

I think WASM-4 hits a good niche as a cozy and fun game programming environment. The simplified architecture removes the need to worry about annoying things like asset loading, variable screen sizes, different input devices, etc. The limited screen size and colors also makes it really accessible to make game art, even for programmers like me with no art skills 😄

There are also some philosophical reasons around software preservation. I think it's interesting how old games for retro consoles are still played today, thanks to emulators and easily distributable ROMs. More recent games can be more difficult to preserve, due to a mix of hardware obsoletion, servers going offline, DRM, and just good old technical complexity.

One of the goals with WASM-4 is that games should live "forever". The architecture is simple enough to be easily portable to different systems. Carts are small, and easy to disassemble and reverse engineer, containing obvious symbols like "update" and "blit". It's feasible that someone 100 years from now can discover a cart.wasm and reverse engineer WASM-4 long after the project has disappeared. Do I think that's actually going to happen? No, but the idea is appealing, as someone who has written a lot of dead games. If Lime Volleyball is the only game of mine I can someday play with my grandkids, that's good enough for me 😄

[evbo]

Thanks, I like your guy's style. If you haven't seen this it will probably bring you a lot of joy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM