Newsletter โ Issue 010
๐ We're already at the 10th issue of the Web Game Dev newsletter! I hope you find it useful and interesting. Let me know via Discord (opens in a new tab) or Twitter (opens in a new tab) if you have any feedback. Please consider โค๏ธ sponsoring my work (opens in a new tab) if this newsletter is valuable to you!
๐ฅ Headlines
Web Push (opens in a new tab) for Home Screen web apps and third-party browser support for Add to Home Screen are (finally) supported on iOS and iPadOS (opens in a new tab). This is a big win for PWA games! Learn more about ๐ Progressive Web Apps (opens in a new tab).
PixiJS (opens in a new tab), the 2D WebGL library by Goodboy (now
Playco (opens in a new tab)), has big plans for
2023 (opens in a new tab). They assembled a full-time team to work on
releasing a new website (opens in a new tab) (โ
done), an updated PixiJS
React (opens in a new tab) (โ
done), open-source games, a UI library, the
framework-agnostic AssetPack library, a CLI bootstrapping tool, dev tools, the Comet editor, PixiJS
v8, PixiJS 3D, and a game engine. ๐คฏ That's one hell of a roadmap!
Last month, Kaboom (opens in a new tab) by Replit (opens in a new tab)
released their v3000 beta (opens in a new tab). See this
thread (opens in a new tab) for video examples of the new
features, which include a scene graph, more font formats, tweening, rotated areas, up to 50x
performance improvement (opens in a new tab), custom loading screens, post
effects, gamepad support, and pathfinding.
Tangle (opens in a new tab) is a new
experimental library by Ian Kettlewell (opens in a new tab) that syncs WebAssembly apps
and games between multiple users in peer-to-peer via WebRTC connections (initialized by a central
server). Try the demo (opens in a new tab)!
Don McCurdy (opens in a new tab) released glTF Transform
3.0 (opens in a new tab). New additions include flattening
the scene graph, joining meshes to reduce draw calls, AVIF image compression, sparse data
compression, and an all-in-one
optimize
command.
One of the most demanded CSS features, Container
Queries (opens in a new tab), is now supported
in all three major browser engines (opens in a new tab) (Can I
Use (opens in a new tab) Global support: 80%). Container Queries allow you to
style a container based on its content instead of the viewport. This will change how we approach
responsive design, including CSS-based game UI!
๐ Tools & Updates
progressive-shadows (opens in a new tab), a vanilla Three.js port of React Three Fiber's AccumulativeShadows (opens in a new tab) by V_Prime (opens in a new tab).
R3F v8.11.2 (opens in a new tab) โ Improved hot reload (opens in a new tab) by 0xca0a (opens in a new tab).
TresJS 1.7.0 (opens in a new tab) โ The Vue (opens in a new tab) wrapper for Three.js got a big upgrade! New features include a realistic preset for the renderer, better HMR disposal, better state management with
useTres
, and an environment abstraction.PlayCanvas Editor v1.24.9 (opens in a new tab) โ Adds support for Draco (opens in a new tab) mesh compression imports.
Phaser 3.60 Beta 19 (opens in a new tab) โ Adds a built-in Special Effects system, Plane Game Objects, Spatial Audio, and more. The documentation (opens in a new tab) has been updated to reflect the latest beta.
Pixi React v7.0.0 (opens in a new tab) โ Adds support for React 18, PixiJS v7, and tree-shaking. New up-to-date docs (opens in a new tab).
Babylon.js v5.47.0 (opens in a new tab)
โ๏ธ Content
- ๐ฌ
How to create Ghibli-style trees with Three.js (opens in a new tab) by Takuya (opens in a new tab). This one is quite an experience!
- ๐ฌ
R3F tutorial: 3D Table Configurator (opens in a new tab) by Wawa Sensei (opens in a new tab)
- ๐ฌ
Introduction to WebGPU lecture (opens in a new tab) (October 2022) by Brandon Jones (opens in a new tab)
- ๐ฆ
Car paint material with Blender and Three.js (opens in a new tab) by V_Prime (opens in a new tab)
- โ๏ธ
How to Take Control of Color Space in Babylon.js (opens in a new tab) by Patrick Ryan (opens in a new tab)
โจ Games & Demos
- ๐ฎ
Wheat Farming (opens in a new tab) by Volkan and Emre (opens in a new tab) is now officially launched. ๐งโ๐พ
- ๐ฎ
Bubbly Tim's Time Bubble Trouble (opens in a new tab) by fdkubba (opens in a new tab) and Hamza Kubba (opens in a new tab) ๐ซง
- ๐ฎ
Cocaine Bear (opens in a new tab), a game made for the movie (opens in a new tab) that comes out next week ๐ป
- ๐ฎ
Train Bandit (opens in a new tab) by BlackMoon Design (opens in a new tab) (they have many other 2D games!) ๐ค
- โจ
Three.js Monthly Talk (opens in a new tab) website by Anderson Mancini (opens in a new tab) ๐
See more on the โจ Games & Demos (opens in a new tab) page or ๐ฎ WebGamer.io (opens in a new tab).
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