Newsletter โ Issue 009
๐ฅ Headlines
Solar Games (opens in a new tab) released their Uranus Tools (opens in a new tab) for PlayCanvas (opens in a new tab), a collection of drag-and-drop scripts that extend the PlayCanvas editor with features such as automatic GPU instancing, open-world terrains, advanced material effects, a cross-platform multiplayer-enabled player controller, 3D spatial audio chat, video and screen sharing, and a lot more. They use Uranus Tools in the updated demo of Aritelia (opens in a new tab), which looks better than ever!
Roman Liutikov (opens in a new tab) open-sourced ThreeGN (opens in a new tab) (repo (opens in a new tab)), a port of Blender's geometry nodes system for the browser using React Flow (opens in a new tab) and Three.js (opens in a new tab). Read his devlog article (opens in a new tab) for more details. Note that Roman doesn't intend to evolve the project. It is a proof of concept that others may use as a foundation to build upon.
Felix Zhang (opens in a new tab) published LogXR (opens in a new tab), a WebXR console for Three.js (support for Babylon.js coming soon). Felix also developed the Immersive Web Emulator (opens in a new tab) mentioned in last week's issue.
In the native world, Godot 4.0 RC 1 (opens in a new tab) got released, and the Godot Editor is now available on Google Play (opens in a new tab).
๐ Tools & Updates
- R3F v8.11.0 (opens in a new tab) โ Allow
raycast without user
interaction (opens in a new tab)
via
update()
by 0xca0a (opens in a new tab). - r3f-form 2.0 (opens in a new tab) by John Beresford (opens in a new tab). Create inputs and forms in R3F. It relies on the Troika 3D Text (opens in a new tab) library.
- PlayCanvas v1.61.0 (opens in a new tab) โ Last week, I didn't mention that v1.61.0 brings UI scroll views in XR (opens in a new tab), faster clustered lighting shader compile time, and WebGPU support for texture-based morphing and light cookies (opens in a new tab).
- Phaser Editor 2D v3.60 Beta 1 (opens in a new tab) by Arian Fornaris (opens in a new tab) with Nine Slice Game Object support.
- Babylon.js v5.46.0 (opens in a new tab) โ TypeScript version update (4.6.2 to 4.9.4).
โ๏ธ Content
- ๐ฌ Three.js reflective grid with energy wave (opens in a new tab) (live stream) by Yuri Artiukh (opens in a new tab)
- ๐ฌ Getting started with TresJS (opens in a new tab) and Basic animations with TresJS (opens in a new tab) by Alvaro Sabu (opens in a new tab)
- ๐ฌ React.js: The Documentary (opens in a new tab) by Honeypot (opens in a new tab) (there is also a Vue documentary (opens in a new tab))
- ๐ฆ Use Bloom Pass to make some objects act as lights (opens in a new tab) by Anderson Mancini (opens in a new tab)
- ๐ฆ Using custom properties on meshes in Blender (opens in a new tab) by Hugo Wiledal (opens in a new tab)
- ๐ฆ Mini tutorial on making WebGL look good (opens in a new tab) by 0xca0a (opens in a new tab)
- โ๏ธ Camera Fly-through on Scroll Using Theatre.js (opens in a new tab) by Andrew Prifer (opens in a new tab)
- โ๏ธ The Gooey Effects With Shader (opens in a new tab) by Misaki Nakano (opens in a new tab)
- โ๏ธ ECMAScript Embedded Bitmap Encoding proposal (opens in a new tab) (follow-up (opens in a new tab)) by Mark Vasilkov (opens in a new tab)
- โ๏ธ Fundamental Math for Game Developers (opens in a new tab) by Gustavo Pezzi (opens in a new tab).
I also added a ๐ Fundamental Math (opens in a new tab) page referencing Gustavo's article and other video resources.
โจ Games & Demos
- ๐ฎ Ducklings (opens in a new tab) by Pelican Party (opens in a new tab). Swim around to find your lost ducklings! ๐ฆ
- ๐ฎ Double Dodgers (opens in a new tab) by Pelican Party (opens in a new tab). Do not play this game while walking on the street. ๐ถ
- ๐ฎ Rago (opens in a new tab) by mjurczyk (opens in a new tab). The forklift-certified cat is urgently needed! ๐บ
- ๐ฎ T5C (opens in a new tab) โ Work-in-progress multiplayer 3D top-down RPG (progress (opens in a new tab), article (opens in a new tab), source (opens in a new tab)). Uses Colyseus (opens in a new tab). ๐ฆ
- โจ Forest (opens in a new tab) (demo (opens in a new tab)), a React Three Fiber reproduction of this scene (opens in a new tab), by Hugo Wiledal (opens in a new tab). ๐ณ
See more on the โจ Games & Demos (opens in a new tab) page or ๐ฎ WebGamer.io (opens in a new tab).
Liked this issue? ๐ฆ Retweet it, join our Discord, and Subscribe below!