2/6/2026 at 10:19:57 PM
Falcon's Eye was an isometric graphical frontend for NetHack released in 2001. It added 256-color isometric tiles, MIDI music, sound effects, and a mouse-driven interface on top of the original NetHack 3.3.1 gameplay. Weekend vibe coding project - I ported it to the browser using Emscripten with help from Claude.
The main challenges were:
- Adapting SDL2 rendering to work through Emscripten's WebAssembly target
- Converting NetHack's blocking I/O model to async using Emscripten ASYNCIFY
- MIDI playback doesn't work in browser SDL2_mixer, so I converted all tracks to OGG Vorbis
using FluidSynth
- Setting up a virtual filesystem for game data and save files
Works in Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari. ~40MB total download (mostly game assets and music).
Source: https://github.com/rahuljaguste/Nethack_Falcons_Eye
Open to contributions - especially mobile/touch support and IndexedDB save persistence.by rahuljaguste