Porting Quake to Three.js with Claude Code: Workflow and Limitations

Project Overview

A developer successfully ported Quake's source code to JavaScript and Three.js using Claude Code. The result is a web-based version of the classic first-person shooter game.

Key Details from the Source

The developer described this as "quite a lot of prompting work" but found a good workflow for porting projects like this. The working implementation is available at https://mrdoob.github.io/three-quake/ with source code on GitHub at https://github.com/mrdoob/three-quake.

During the porting process, Claude struggled specifically with porting the multiplayer server code (QuakeWorld) to Deno+WebTransport. The developer noted that "Codex figured it out somehow," suggesting that different AI coding assistants may have varying capabilities for specific technical challenges.

The developer recommends others try similar porting projects, indicating that despite the challenges, the approach yielded useful results and workflow insights.

Technical Context

Porting a complex C-based game engine like Quake to JavaScript and Three.js involves translating low-level graphics, physics, and networking code to web technologies. Three.js is a popular JavaScript 3D library that runs in browsers using WebGL. Deno is a JavaScript/TypeScript runtime alternative to Node.js, and WebTransport is a modern web API for low-latency, bidirectional communication.