Newsletter – Issue 013

📆 2023-03-30

🔥 Headlines

We are doing an open-source game jam! Head to 🍓 Web Game Dev Open Jam – April 2023 to learn about the event, join the itch.io jam, spread the word, and get ready to make some cool browser games in April! 🚀

Here are some highlights from GDC 2023: Epic Games announced Fab.com, a new multi-engine marketplace for digital assets that unifies Quixel, Sketchfab, Unreal Engine Marketplace and ArtStation Marketplace, and the Unreal Editor for Fortnite, a version of Unreal that can create and publish experiences directly to Fortnite. It uses Verse, Epic’s new programming language. Unity teased some AI integration, and here is a Unity Roadmap video by Code Monkey. Sonniss released 44GB of free samples for game audio (video explanation).

On the web front, a live WebGL + WebGPU Meetup (event page) took place at GDC! It included presentations of ShaderFrog (timestamp) by Andy Ray, Cocos Creator (timestamp) by Huabin Ling, WebGL Shader Pixel Local Storage (timestamp) by Chris Dalton, and Unity + WebGPU (timestamp) by Mark Watson.

Safari 16.4 is out! The most relevant features for us are:

• Third-party web browsers Add to Home Screen for 🌐 PWAs (called Home Screen web apps by Apple).
• Web Push on iOS and iPadOS – Installed PWAs can send notifications.
• Badging API – Set a badge on the installed PWA icon to act as a notification.
• Offscreen Canvas – 2D-only for now.
• Fullscreen API on iPadOS – Reportedly unsuitable for games because swiping down exits fullscreen.
• Screen Orientation API – Preliminary support, can’t trigger a rotation yet.
• Screen Wake Lock API – Keep your game open without the screen turning off.
• Compression Streams API – Compress and decompress gzip directly from JavaScript.
• Growable SharedArrayBuffer and resizable ArrayBuffer.
• Media Queries Level 4 Syntax Improvements – For example: @media (400px <= width < 900px)
• Import Maps – Useful to map ES module URLs to names if you don’t use a bundler.

📐 A mathematical breakthrough happened: the first ever aperiodic monotile called the hat has been discovered. It is a single shape that tiles a plane, but never periodically – meaning it cannot be translated to align with itself. This pattern might have interesting applications in game development, who knows! Here is a Veritasium video about infinite patterns covering the Penrose tiling (which is made of 2 shapes combined).

🛠 Tools & Updates

Three.js r151 – Includes new bounding volumes and an updated NodeEditor (changelog, migration guide).
Drei v9.59 – Adds MeshDiscardMaterial – a material that renders nothing but can be used to show shadows and children – and a <Shape> component to create a THREE.Shape geometry with auto UV. Drei Shapes are helpers to create meshes with buffer geometries.
TresJS v2.0.0-alpha – Uses a Vue custom renderer, adds TS and Intellisense support, by Alvaro Sabu.
Threlte v6 – Early release with a new documentation (live playground).
PlayCanvas – New WebXR AR Starter Kit (video, blog post)
Motion.js (video) is a plugin for PlayCanvas to create simple animations with timelines by Cem Demir.
Phaser v3.60.0 Beta 21 – Adds ESM Support. Read the March 2023 Dev Log for more details on v3.60.
Phaser Editor 2D v3.60 Beta 2 – Adds support for Script Nodes.
Babylon.js v5.53.0 – BabylonJS v6 is delayed until April 20th.
Needle v2.67.0-pre – Adds Editor Live Sync, more postprocessing effects, WebAR camera background.
AUXL v0.2 – A-Frame UX Library: WebXR Scenario, Object Generator and Controller System by Minty Crisp.