Solo Developer Releases Playable ASCII Cyberpunk City in Browser Using Rust WebAssembly

Browser-Based ASCII City Launch

Grow Now! Games, a solo developer, has made a playable browser build of its ASCII cyberpunk city available online. This release follows a YouTube video update showcasing interiors, elevation, and skyscrapers, building on an earlier video that garnered over a million views.

Technical Implementation

The project runs on a 283KB Rust WebAssembly engine, which feeds data to a WebGL renderer. The WebAssembly module, named ascii-city-engine_bg-DqjAhqbp.wasm, reserves 1,152KB of linear memory at startup and reports an engine version of 0.1.0. Its exports include functions like initialise_native_game and step_native_game, with Rust source modules such as city.rs and world.rs handling the logic.

Rendering Process

World generation occurs in Rust, which then transmits base64-packed byte arrays to JavaScript. These arrays contain data for building heights, tile types, surfaces, hues, saturations, window styles, lit flags, and floor plan IDs. The WebGL renderer compiles vertex and fragment shaders, with the fragment stage performing a single texture2D lookup. Characters are drawn into an atlas canvas, cached, uploaded to the GPU, and then rendered as textured quads.

Display and Performance

Desktop sessions display 180 columns by 80 rows, totaling 14,400 character cells, using 10px Consolas font. Touch devices adjust to 48 rows and between 96 and 168 columns, while the Rust engine uses a 160 by 112 profile. The vertex buffer preallocates 2.76MB and dynamically doubles if a frame exceeds this capacity. The developer emphasized that the project avoids traditional game engines and 3D assets.