Newsletter
Welcome to Issue 102 of Phaser World
Hello! It's good to finally be back after being knocked out cold for a week due to illness. It means I'm still catching up on work and happenings in the Phaser community, hence the reason this issue is a day late.
I'm currently on the look-out to hire someone to help write news articles for the Phaser website. I'm also looking to hire freelance developers to help finish off some parts of Phaser 3. Please see the Dev Log section for details about both.
So, until the next issue, keep on coding. Drop me a line if you've got any news you'd like featured. You can reply to this email or grab me on the Phaser Slack or Discord channels.
The Latest Games
Game of the Week
A brilliant two-button remake of the Namco arcade classic. Can you double jump your way through spike pits, collect the gems and avoid the dragons?
Staff Pick
What's better to do on a foreign planet than collecting gems? That's right. Avoiding the meteors!
How many bits of chicken can you fling into the buckets in this promotional Facebook Messenger game?
A fun custom Mario-styled game where you leap across the platforms, stomping the baddies and collecting coins to fund invoices. Yes, really.
A minimalist, casual reflex game. Can you stop the bar within the target range?
What's New?
A comprehensive particle editor that exports to JSON which the included plugin can load and run.
Creating an Endless Runner Part 4
The fourth part of the endless runner tutorial series adds in the illusion of creating movement.
A new model view component framework for Phaser written in TypeScript.
Game Characters MicroTweens Tutorial
A small tutorial on adding micro-tweens to game characters, giving them more 'life' on-screen.
Spriter and Phaser Editor Tutorial Video
Nearly an hours worth of video content on creating and exporting Spriter sprites and using Phaser Editor.
Welcome and a massive thank you to the new Phaser Patreons who joined us this week: ms, Michael Dorn and Chris Cowan.
Patreon is a way to contribute towards the Phaser project on a monthly basis. This money is used entirely to fund development costs and is the only reason we're able to invest so much time into our work. You can also donate via PayPal.
Backers get forum badges, discounts on plugins and books, and are entitled to free monthly coding support via Slack or Skype.
Dev Log #102
I'm going to spare you the gory details but suffice to say I was not well last week at all. I have a pre-existing condition that flares up now and again. When it does, it causes massive amounts of pain and stops me from being able to even walk. I have medication for this which I take when it occurs. It needs a few days to kick in, but it does stop the pain. The only side-effect is, the medication makes me really sick. The irony of which is not lost on me.
It's a classic case of being stuck between a rock and a hard place. None of this is life-threatening and it only happens a few times a year, but when it does happen it disables me for an entire week or more. Which is pretty much how the last week panned out.
It couldn't have come at a worse time. Not that there is ever a good time for debilitating pain, but with Felipe currently on holiday and me laid-out, it meant virtually no progress was made on Phaser 3 at all. And that worries me.
Truth be told, things are taking longer than expected anyway. I'm happy with what we've achieved so far. I'm happy that we're putting every last possible ounce of effort into development. I spend nearly every waking moment thinking about Phaser 3. Jotting down ideas in my numerous notebooks, working on code, creating examples, dealing with issues, keeping track of the still-changing browser landscape. It's a fulltime job and then some.
I'm healthy again and Felipe is back next week. But I can't help feeling we still need some more help on-top of this. There are some parts of Phaser 3 that haven't been started yet and things taking up my time. We need to recruit some extra hands.
Phaser News Support (Part-Time)
Every week I have to publish news articles to the Phaser site. On a typical week I publish 5 tutorials and 5 games. I collect a huge list of potential content in an Evernote file. Each week I select clippings from it and check them out. If the item is suitable I write about it, create high res screenshots and a thumbnail and publish it to the site.
It would be really good to have someone help me with this.
You need to have perfect written English, a familiarity with MarkDown (as that is what all articles are written in) and suitable software to capture and create high res screenshots. Sometimes this is as easy as just saving an image off the page, other times you'll need to capture interesting shots from games as you're playing them.
The articles themselves are usually very short. Generally just a description of the item I'm linking to and a few key features about it. For the games, I use a combination of whatever text the game developers provide (if any!) and then add my own observations. These are not game reviews. I'm never critical of the games, I don't rate them, I just present the news to get readers to make up their own minds and hopefully play them.
You would be responsible for creating 10 articles per week: 5 games, 5 news items. Each item would be approximately 100 words, although 2 of the games should be 'featured' games, which require more screenshots and content.
Please scroll through the current news page and read a selection of articles to see what tone of voice is required and how much content is needed. You'll notice I often just quote content from the piece I'm linking to, wrapped with a few extra details.
Here's an example of a featured game and here's a standard game, compare the two to see the difference in the number of images and length of text required.
The games take longer to write about because I always play each one of them. The only exception is with native apps, as I don't have time to install them all (and I don't expect you to either). So for those I generally use the app store descriptions.
This role is part-time by its nature and you're welcome to queue-up a batch of news items in advance. For example, I have already added most of the news for the coming week to the site already. I have a large queue of news items already which I add to daily. So you won't have to source them yourself, you'll just have to go through the queue and pick out a good selection. It's important that you mix the content up so we get something different each day.
If you'd like to take this role on then please email me (rdavey@gmail.com) with your rate for producing 10 news items per week. I'd expect it to be approximately 4 hours worth of work in total, although it may need a little longer at the start until you get used to it.
Payment will be made via PayPal. Files to be shared with me via DropBox. I'll provide all the help you need with regards to the template, thumbnail sizes, Evernote, etc. Having someone take this on for me will save me nearly a day a week, which is a huge amount of extra time I could be working on Phaser!
Phaser 3 Developers (Part Time or Full Time)
I need some experienced developers to help with the final push completing Phaser 3. This work could be undertaken full-time or part-time and it's all isolated enough that you can work on your specific section without having to wait on us or touch other systems too much.
Right now I would like help with the following sections of the API:
Tilemap API
We have built a really fast tilemap rendering system, but none of the Tilemap API itself has been added yet. Look at the Phaser 2 API for a solid idea of what we'd need. It will consist of the ability to parse CSV and Tiled data into Tilemap Layers, the ability to change tiles within the map data, get tile positions, etc. Basically all of the import and tile operation methods to allow devs to manipulate and read from tilemap data. You won't need to do the physics collisions, we'll handle this part ourselves.
Pointer Lock API
We need to add support for the Pointer Lock browser API into the Input Manager. This should be a relatively small task but does require quite a lot of testing to make sure it works properly.
Matter.js Integration
This is quite a large task, although nicely isolated too. We are going to support Matter.js from the start as an optional physics module. The work will involve creating a bridge between Phaser 3 and the Matter.js API. You can look at the P2 API in Phaser 2 for a good example of what's expected. Things are different in V3 but the general principle of exposing friendly methods to help with fast physics body creation and detection still remains. You can use the current Impact JS system as a guideline for how the classes could be structured, and the P2 API for guidance on what methods should be added.
Gesture Support
This work will involve using the current Input Manager and Pointers in order to support gestures and emit relevant events. For example, we want to natively support pinch, swipe, rotate and so on and have relevant events dispatched that devs can pick-up on. A lot of the groundwork has been done with regard to the Pointers themselves, so your role would be to determine how gestures are defined and configured (i.e. what distance is needed to be considered a swipe, what delay for a long-press, etc) and create the code needed to track them.
Interested in helping? Please get in touch
Please note that all of these roles are paid positions and we'd expect a suitable level of commitment and professionalism as a result. We'll treat you like the professional you are and not just a 'resource'. And we'll expect your behavior to reflect that.
Your JavaScript skills will, of course, need to be excellent. You'll need to code in ES5, matching our existing style (and editorconfig and eslint rules). You will need to commit your work regularly, every day that you work on it. We will not accept just one large merge request at the end, it has to be an iterative contribution to the project. There will be no 'going dark' and ignoring us. Work with us, not for us.
The Phaser 3 API changes daily and we're constantly tweaking and enhancing it. It would also be extremely useful if you're on the Phaser slack, as we have a private phaser3 channel to discuss work and can answer questions quickly there.
Payment for this work is being funded directly by my own savings combined with money we raise from Patreon and shop sales as the money we were awarded from Mozilla won't arrive until later this year. I clearly don't expect your time for free but my resources are by no means unlimited either. Work fast, work effectively, work professionally.
Interested? Then email me: rdavey@gmail.com. Let me know 1) Which area you'd like to work on, 2) your daily rate and 3) how much time you've got available to put towards this. Part-time is fine, but please state this. 4) Include a link to your GitHub profile (or similar) so we can see what else you've worked on in the past.
There will be plenty of opportunity for the wider community to get involved with smaller bite-sized tasks like creating examples or docs work, but right now we just need a couple more hands on deck to push this thing out.
Phaser 3 Labs
Phaser 3 Beta 7 is out and ready for testing.
Visit the Phaser 3 Labs to view the new API structure in depth, read the FAQ, previous Developer Logs and contribution guides.
You can also join the Phaser 3 Google Group or post to the Phaser 3 Forum - we'd love to hear from you!
There is an IndieGoGo campaign running for the second volume of The Atari ST and the Creative People book. I backed the first and it was a thing of pure beauty, with lots of great details, interviews, and graphics. Hoping the second gets published too!
Here's a great list of The Horror's of 80s Kids Movies - I forgot how creepy the Dark Crystal was!
Donate Your Tab allows you to leave a browser tab opening mining away for Monero (like Bitcoin) and whatever is mined is collectively given to charity.
Phaser Releases
Phaser CE 2.9.1 released October 10th 2017.
Phaser 3 Beta 7 released October 16th 2017.
Please help support Phaser development
Have some news you'd like published? Email support@phaser.io or tweet us.
Missed an issue? Check out the Back Issues page.
©2024 Phaser Studio Inc | 548 Market St PMB 90114, San Francisco CA 94104