Yeah, I split the crates so `renderer-core` deals with the web-sys part, `renderer` is pretty much plain Rust (and wgsl with Askama templates)
I prefer this for 100% browser-only, but that's a niche. I do think wgpu makes more sense when you like the WebGPU headspace but want to target other backends (native, mobile, VR, etc.)
Mostly because I want insight and control at a lower level, which breaks down into two different use-cases:
1. Debugging. The nature of bugs in this space is a lot more of "it doesn't look right on the screen" as opposed to "it breaks compilation", so I want to easily do things like peek into my buffers, use native js logging, etc. It's just a lot easier for me to reason about when I have more manual control.
2. Leaky abstractions. wgpu is a pretty low-level but it can't avoid the pain that comes with different backends, async where it should it shouldn't be, features that aren't available everywhere, etc.
That said, it would probably be pretty straightforward to convert the renderer into wgpu, most of the data structures and concepts should map cleanly
This is the culmination of a long journey — it started in TypeScript, moved through WebGL1 with Rust bindings, then WebGL2, and now finally WebGPU. Woohoo :D
AwsmRenderer is a browser-native WebGPU renderer written in Rust, using web-sys directly (not wgpu). It’s intended to be high quality and ergonomic for typical gamedev use-cases, while keeping the API surface relatively small and explicit.
Fair warning: this is fresh off the push and only lightly tested so far. It requires a WebGPU-capable browser and is currently intended for desktop use.
Longer-term, the goal is to empower AAA-like gamedev in the browser with WASM. Internally, the API centers around keys that can be converted to/from u64, which should make it easier to move data across workers or future WASM component boundaries, and to integrate with physics engines or core game code.
fwiw I'm happy to see this - been trying to tackle a hairy problem (rendering bugs) and both models fail, but:
1. Codex takes longer to fail and with less helpful feedback, but tends to at least not produce as many compiler errors
2. Claude fails faster and with more interesting back-and-forth, though tends to fail a bit harder
Neither of them are fixing the problems I want them to fix, so I prefer the faster iteration and back-and-forth so I can guide it better
So it's a bit surprising to me when so many people are pickign a "clear winner" that I prefer less atm
I wouldn't dismiss personal anecdotes any more than I'd dismiss someone claiming they saw something in a reputable journal but can't remember the citation.
In other words, yeah, don't just believe it at face value- but if you have good reason to trust the source, it's worth considering and checking into further.
In this case it's not just one individual but many people saying that THC and CBD are almost opposites if eachother, for example in how they affect anxiety.
Definitely worth proper research imho, could lead to medication that has more of the pros and less of the cons
I've never delivered a game anyone's really paid for, so take with a grain of salt, but imho the big win when you are writing your own stuff is you get to decide what not to include.
That sounds obvious but it really isn't. One example: maybe you don't need any object culling at all. Nobody tells you this. Anything you look up will talk about octrees, portals, clusters, and so on - but you might be totally fine just throwing everything at the renderer and designing your game with transitions at certain points. When you know your constraints, you're not guessing, you can measure and know for a fact that it's fine.
Another example: shader programming is not like other programming. There's no subclassing or traits. You have to think carefully about what you parameterize. When you know the look you're going for, you can hardcode a bunch of values and, frankly, write a bunch of shit code that looks just right.
The list goes on and on... maybe you don't need fancy animation blending when you can just bake it in an external tool. Maybe you don't need 3d spatial audio because your game world isn't built that way.
Thing is - when you're writing an _engine_ you need all that. You don't get to tell people writing games that you don't really need shadows or that they need to limit the number of game objects to some number etc. But when you're writing a _game_ (and you can call part of that game the engine), suddenly you get to tweak things and exclude things in all these ways that are perfectly fine.
Same idea applies to anything of course.. maybe you don't need a whole SQL database when you know your data format, flat files can be fine. Maybe you don't need a whole web/dom framework when you're just spitting out simple html/css. etc. etc.
I think this headspace is pretty common among gamedevs (iiuc large projects often copy/paste dependencies and tweak between projects rather than import and support a generic api too)
There's also some cool stuff brewing in the AVS space to allow nondeterminism, GPU, storage, and more.. for example, WAVS executes stuff off-chain in WASI components, and brings the result on-chain (secured by re-staking via Eigenlayer etc.)- so there's a roadmap to do things directly in wasi-gfx powered shaders and more low-level access like that
Eh.. lots of projects targeted mobile app stores by authoring in Flash and using the GPU accelerated stuff. Starling was a semi-blessed framework. Worked perfectly well, no battery drain. Lots of "native" apps were authored that way (and still are, you see the same approach with Unity etc.)
Browser plugins could have been fixed to catch up, the VM itself wasn't the problem in terms of drain
While some of this is true, some of it is not (deep links worked fine, there was a brief time where hidden html was encouraged and worked just as well for search engines to pick up, etc.)
More to the point though- Flash didn't shine as a regular website thing (Adobe people used Dreamweaver for that, if anything). It was a game/application development tool. Most of the time you didn't need any of these web-friendly things, same way you'd expect every game to have a different menu system.
It was an awesome time for innovation and creative thinking. Not everything is a flex box. I miss those days
I'd agree it's largely the human factor, but maybe from a different angle. Rust has got the "there's a crate for that" factor, like JavaScript, which helps onboard people who are afraid of getting stuck writing everything from scratch.
For example, serde (and serde_json, toml, etc.) is a gamechanger, as is tracing, reqwest, and many others.
So, maybe less about the language itself for many people, but more about the human factor of overcoming fear of being stuck on an island