Newsletter – Issue 020

📆 2024-01-16

🔥 Headlines

WebGPU is now available for testing in Safari Technology Preview (opens in a new tab)!

✍️ We now have a Community Blog! The first article is a tutorial about creating a Mech walker model and bringing it into a scene with A-Frame (opens in a new tab) by Dirk Krause (opens in a new tab). If you'd like to write an article for the blog, please get in touch with me (verekia) on Discord or Twitter (opens in a new tab)!

📝 I've created a form to share our social media profiles to strengthen our network of web game developers. Some of us would like to connect on Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, itch.io, etc., so this is a chance to diversify our social media presence and not keep all our eggs in one basket. Please fill out the form (opens in a new tab), and I'll prepare a list of links to easily follow everyone! Responses are public, and emails are not collected.

⭐️ Sponsor

Poki (opens in a new tab) is on a mission to create the ultimate online playground – where players and developers come together to play and create! Together with a growing 300+ game developer community and 50 million players each month, we're creating a new standard for web games. Interested in working together? Share your game with us (opens in a new tab)!

Poki, the market leader on Web, is proud to sponsor Web Game Dev, and we will be working closely over the coming months to share more about how to make the best web games possible. If there's any specific content you'd like to see from Poki, get in touch with us at dovelepersoppurt@piko.com or in the Web Game Dev Discord (opens in a new tab)!

💼 Jobs (sponsored)

Senior WebGL Graphics Engineer (opens in a new tab) • Phaser Studio (opens in a new tab) is looking for a focused, collaborative, professional graphics engineer to help craft the rendering engine for the current and next generation of the Phaser game framework. You'll be a bright, energetic, and talented individual who shares our love of video games and our passion for empowering game developers to make the most of the web as a gaming platform. Learn more (opens in a new tab).

Gameplay Engineer (opens in a new tab) • Novablocks (opens in a new tab) is on the lookout for a passionate Gameplay Engineer to refine the core mechanics of our browser-based gaming platform. Your role is to enhance the creator's toolkit and player experience, using our custom engine to craft intuitive, engaging gameplay elements. We value direct programming chops & user-centric design to elevate our creators. If you're about empowering accessibility and tangible iterative results, come build with us. 🧱 Learn more (opens in a new tab).

🏎 Engines & Libraries

Three.js r160 (opens in a new tab) and r159 (opens in a new tab) – See the changelog (opens in a new tab) and migration guide (opens in a new tab).
Drei Vanilla v1.14.0 (opens in a new tab) – Splat mesh (opens in a new tab) by vis_prime (opens in a new tab)
Drei v9.93.0 (opens in a new tab) (and previous) – Adds manual progression for SpriteAnimator (opens in a new tab), ShadowAlpha (opens in a new tab), Stats-GL v2 (opens in a new tab), Splat (opens in a new tab)
TresJS (opens in a new tab) – New website (opens in a new tab), new TresJS Nuxt Devtools (opens in a new tab), and 1-year anniversary (opens in a new tab)
Threlte v7 (opens in a new tab) – Includes a new Task Scheduler (opens in a new tab) (migration guide (opens in a new tab))
PlayCanvas Engine v1.67.0 (opens in a new tab) – High-performance 3D Gaussian splatting engine, new post effects framework (HDR, bloom), WebXR room capture, and persistent anchors.
A-Frame v1.5.0 (opens in a new tab) – Multiview extension, spatial computing UIs, mixed reality features, and Quest 3 support.
Wonderland Engine 1.1.5 (opens in a new tab) and 1.1.6 (opens in a new tab)
Babylon.js v6.38.0 (opens in a new tab)
PixiJS v8 is at the Release Candidate stage (opens in a new tab)
Phaser v3.70.0 (opens in a new tab) – Round pixels, Texture Packer Nine Slice support, Arcade Physics, FX updates and fixes. Richard Davey launched Phaser Studio (opens in a new tab) and is looking for senior WebGL developers (opens in a new tab) (read his dev report (opens in a new tab)).
Phaser Editor 2D v3.66 (opens in a new tab) – Adds Script Node libraries. v3.64 added Aseprite support (opens in a new tab). Arian Fornaris (opens in a new tab), developer of Phaser Editor 2D, joined the Phaser Studio team (opens in a new tab) 🔥
Modd.io (opens in a new tab), the full-stack HTML5 engine powered by Phaser (opens in a new tab) on the client by m0dE (opens in a new tab) is now open source (opens in a new tab). Read the Modd.io introduction on Phaser's blog (opens in a new tab).
Construct (opens in a new tab) now supports TypeScript (opens in a new tab). Read Construct's year in review (opens in a new tab) and Xbox support progress (opens in a new tab).
Defold 2023 Retrospective (opens in a new tab) by Björn Ritzl (opens in a new tab)
The new WebGPU backend is available for testing (opens in a new tab) in Unity 2023.3.
Needle Engine (opens in a new tab) – New samples website (opens in a new tab)
Colyseus 0.15.15 (opens in a new tab) – Introduces the Authentication Module (opens in a new tab)

🛠 Tools

Holographic Material (opens in a new tab) by Anderson Mancini (opens in a new tab)
🎨 Aseprite 1.3 (opens in a new tab) is out! Aseprite is an animated sprite and pixel art editor. 1.2 came out in 2017!
🎨 Sprite Fusion (opens in a new tab) – Free web-based tilemap editor. Exports to Unity, Godot, and JSON (video (opens in a new tab)) by Hugo Duprez (opens in a new tab).
🕹 Optimized fork of Joymap (opens in a new tab) (8x smaller) by Christoph Nakazawa (opens in a new tab). Joymap (opens in a new tab) is a Gamepad API wrapper.
Object thumbnails Tampermonkey script (opens in a new tab) for PlayCanvas by Cem Demir (opens in a new tab)
Instanced Sprite (opens in a new tab) (demo (opens in a new tab)) by Marcin Jerzak (opens in a new tab)
Poki PixiJS Template (opens in a new tab) by Erik Dubbelboer (opens in a new tab)
🧍 CharacterStudio (opens in a new tab) – 3D avatar studio for editing and optimizing glTF / VRM avatars by M3 (opens in a new tab)
🦾 StableProjectorz (opens in a new tab) (video (opens in a new tab)) by Igor Aherne (opens in a new tab) – Generate textures that preserve UVs with AI.
Steam now somewhat allows pre-generated AI content (opens in a new tab) as long as it doesn't include illegal or infringing content. Games will have to disclose how AI was used during development.
Rune (opens in a new tab), the company organizing React Jam (opens in a new tab), is announcing $100.000 Open Source Grants (opens in a new tab) for indie JavaScript game developers who publish open-source multiplayer games on Rune.

🎬 Videos

WebGL + WebGPU Meetup - November 2023 (opens in a new tab)
⚡️ How Games Have Worked for 30 Years to Do Less Work (opens in a new tab) by SimonDev (opens in a new tab) (great watch on culling)
WebGPU - JavaScript at the speed of Light (opens in a new tab) by Visionary 3D (opens in a new tab)
I tried making Zelda The Wind Waker in JavaScript (opens in a new tab) by Robin Payot (opens in a new tab) (game (opens in a new tab), repo (opens in a new tab))
Coffee Code Create (opens in a new tab) has great Three.js tutorials, including making Minecraft and SimCity clones.
I spent 10 YEARS coding a 2D Minecraft (opens in a new tab) by Zanzlanz (opens in a new tab)
Babylon Chronicles Episode 7: Let's Get Strategic (opens in a new tab) with Thomas Lucchini (opens in a new tab)
Story Of Defold (opens in a new tab) by Paweł Jarosz (opens in a new tab)
🎓 Developing a Procedural Mountain Forest (opens in a new tab) by Rune Skovbo Johansen (opens in a new tab)

✍️ Articles

🎮 Games

SimplyUp.io by Elanra Studios – A multiplayer parkour game
Cozy Room Design by ARF Games – A cute house decoration game
Crazy Bikes by No Pressure Studios – A motorbike game where you perform tricks in a playground
Flip Bros by Gametornado – Take down your enemies by launching yourself at them
Level Devil by Unept – A platformer with levels full of traps
Cryzen – A counter-Strike-like FPS
Starblast by Neuronality – A multiplayer spaceship shooting game
Pipedown by Nik Lever – Solve 3D puzzles by connecting pipes
Conq.io by Modd.io – A hexagonal tile-based strategy game
Robocalypse by Weavers Games – An adventure game of a robot in an apocalyptic world
Mine Blocks by Zanzlanz – A 2D Minecraft-like game
Acura: Beat That by Active Theory – A promotional racing game for Acura
The Great Gift Hunt by Piotr Obidowski – Help Santa find gifts and beat up some zombies
Seeds of Gomorrah by No Artist Available – Vampire Survivors-inspired FPS made for a 7-day game jam
Reckless Chess by Weavers Games – Chess game with a dice roll mechanic twist

✨ Demos

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