Newsletter – Issue 017

🔥 Headlines

A few game jams are coming up soon:

The first React Jam (organized by Rune) is starting tomorrow. It’s a 10-day event, with $2500 of cash prizes, and I will be judging submissions! You can make DOM-based games with divs and CSS, 2D canvas games with libraries like Pixi React, or 3D games with React Three Fiber, for example.

Multiplayer Madness (organized by Hathora) is a 10-day game jam starting on August 11th with $2500+ in prizes and focused on online multiplayer games. Use any engine, web or native. Steven Yau is part of the jury!

js13kGames, the competition with a file size limit of 13kb running yearly since 2012, will start on August 13th. You might want to look into Kontra.js for that one.

🏎 Engines & Libraries

• Three.js r154 – alphaHash, WebGPU clearcoat, and sheen support. (changelog, migration guide).
• THREE-CustomShaderMaterial by Faraz – Extend Three.js materials with custom shaders.
• Threed Studio by lifercode – An open-source Three.js editor.
• three-perf by Bohdan Horpynchuk – Vanilla Three.js port of r3f-perf.
• Drei v9.79 – stats-gl integration, MeshPortalMaterial, FaceControls, radial variation for GradientTexture.
• r3f-effekseer by Brian Breiholz – R3F wrapper for Effekseer, a particle effects library and editor.
• TresJS 2.3.0 – Nuxt Module (video), ScrollControls, KeyboardControls, useProgress.
• PlayCanvas Engine v1.64.0 – MRT, PCSS shadows, AO Detail Map, PCF1 for directional/spot lights.
• PlayCanvas Editor – Sketchfab Integration
• Earthatile (repo) – Google Maps 3D tiles for PlayCanvas by Will Eastcott.
• Phaser Editor 2D v3.62.0 – New Event and KeyCode user property types, user components overhaul.
• spine-phaser (docs) was released. Spine is an animation tool for 2D games.
• PixiJS v8.0.0-alpha (highly experimental) – WebGPU Renderer and overhaul of WebGL renderer (up to 2.5x faster), reactive renderer, Advanced Blend Modes.
• Babylon.js v6.12.0

🛠 Tools

• 3e VS Code Extension by De-Great – Visualize 3D models inside VS Code, with R3F export support.
• stats-gl (repo) by Renaud Rohlinger – WebGL performance monitoring tool.
• 👾 Miniplex, the developer-friendly ECS library with React bindings by Hendrik Mans, just hit 2.0.0 🎉.
• aimless.js, a randomness library by Christopher Cavalea.
• 🎾 The Jolt physics engine by Jorrit Rouwe now has 2D physics support.
• 🍎 SVOX 2.0.0 (playground) – Transform groups, lights, Three.js materials, MagicaVoxel, WebXR, glTF support.
• 🤖 FRVR Forge (video) – Editor to create AI-generated games.
• 💰 AdLad by Pelican Party – An Ads SDK manager for people who actually release games.
• 📐 Graphtoy, a function graph visualizer by Inigo Quilez.

🎬 Videos

• The Making of Vampire Survivors - Documentary by Noclip
• Image of particles in 3D using Three.js (video demo) by Robin Payot
• Mesh Portal Material Tutorial by Wawa Sensei
• Dissolve Effect Tutorial by Wawa Sensei
• Blender Baking by Wawa Sensei
• TresJS V2 - Geometries with Vue by Alvaro Sabu
• TresJS v2 - Animate your 3D Objects with Vue by Alvaro Sabu
• WebGL + WebGPU Meetup - July 2023 – WebGPU + PlayCanvas talk by Martin Valigursky
• An introduction to Shader Art Coding by kishimisu
• Height-Field Water Simulator with 100 lines of code by Ten Minutes Physics
• Throw away your Xbox – The future of games is written in React (Talk at ReactNext ‘23) by Opher Vishnia
• Is the COST of JavaScript’s GC REALLY that high? by SimonDev
• Pokémon JavaScript Game Tutorial with HTML Canvas (7 hours 🤯) by Chris Courses
• Best performance on casual games? by Cem Demir (Venge.io, Tribals.io)
• Babylon.js Tutorial For Absolute Beginners by Wael Yasmina
• Defold Game Engine and Web Games (slides) at W3C by Björn Ritzl
• Let’s build Mega Man in JavaScript by Drew Conley (Excalibur.js)
• I Built a Zelda Game… With Multiplayer! by Drew Conley (Excalibur.js)

✍️ Articles

• Using WebGPU Compute Shaders with Vertex Data by Brandon Jones
• What’s New in WebGPU (Chrome 115) by François Beaufort
• Better full screen mode with the Keyboard Lock API by Thomas Steiner
• 🏹 Spilling our trade secrets! Narrow one updates by Pelican Party
• 🐙 Gamedev.js Jam 2023 results by Andrzej Mazur
• Building Babylon Native for the Apple Vision Pro by Cedric Guillemet
• TresJS v2 First steps with 3D on Vue by Alvaro Sabu

🎮 Games

I am launching a new game, Mini Mana! It’s an Action-RPG in early access, single-player for now. Built with React Three Fiber and Miniplex. Fight the Demons invading your world to earn experience and unlock new abilities! Happy to discuss the game and tech used on the Web Game Dev or Mini Mana Discord servers.

• The Race: Montblanc Explorer by Merci Michel – Promotional racing game for Montblanc 🏎
• Coastal World Season 2 by Merci Michel – Promotional adventure game for Coastal Community Bank 🏝
• Death Star Trench Run (repo) by Lunakepio – Blast your way through like Luke Skywalker! 🚀
• Izowave by Nikita Galadiy – Isometric open-world Tower Defense. 🗼

✨ Demos

• Viola the Bird by David Li for Google Arts & Culture
• Skateboard configurator by Thomas Saint-Martin
• Impossible box with MeshPortalMaterial by 0xca0a
• Unity dissolve effect in R3F by 0xca0a
• 3D liquid shader by Matias

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