Abusing DuckDB-WASM by making SQL draw 3D graphics (Sort Of) (via) Brilliant hack by Patrick Trainer who got an ASCII-art Doom clone running in the browser using convoluted SQL queries running against the WebAssembly build of DuckDB. Here’s the live demo, and the code on GitHub.

The SQL is so much fun. Here’s a snippet that implements ray tracing as part of a SQL view:
CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW render_3d_frame AS WITH RECURSIVE -- ... rays AS ( SELECT c.col, (p.dir - s.fov/2.0 + s.fov * (c.col*1.0 / (s.view_w - 1))) AS angle FROM cols c, s, p ), raytrace(col, step_count, fx, fy, angle) AS ( SELECT r.col, 1, p.x + COS(r.angle)*s.step, p.y + SIN(r.angle)*s.step, r.angle FROM rays r, p, s UNION ALL SELECT rt.col, rt.step_count + 1, rt.fx + COS(rt.angle)*s.step, rt.fy + SIN(rt.angle)*s.step, rt.angle FROM raytrace rt, s WHERE rt.step_count < s.max_steps AND NOT EXISTS ( SELECT 1 FROM map m WHERE m.x = CAST(rt.fx AS INT) AND m.y = CAST(rt.fy AS INT) AND m.tile = '#' ) ), -- ...
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