Newsletter
Welcome to Issue 41 of Phaser World
This is the last issue, and indeed final day, of July. Things always tend to get a little slower over the summer months, and I for one will be enjoying some time off during August.
However, until then, I've got some more awesome updates in store for you :) Phaser continues to go from strength, to strength, and you'll find out what's new in the Development Progress section this week.
And you guys, wow.. some of the games you're creating are stunning! Check out Run the Net, and Monster Temple. Both featured this week, for good reason too. I can't wait to see what you make of Phaser 2.7 when it lands :)
Until the next issue, keep on coding. Drop me a line if you've got any news you'd like featured (you can just reply to this email) or grab me on the Phaser Slack channel.
Games made with Phaser
Game of the Week
The Internet is under attack! You have been sent back in time to the dawn of the Internet to save it.
Staff Pick
This temple is full of monsters in this excellent match 3 game.
An endless fun experience!
Lead your Ravens. Feed on Cadavers. Avoid Wolves.
Shoot for the 8-bit hoop in this fun little highscore challenge.
Phaser Tutorials
The benefits of texture atlases, and how multi-texture support will help all our games.
In this TechnoTip video tutorial they cover creating and updating a progress bar.
Configuring Global Settings Tutorial
In this TechnoTip video tutorial they cover storing and accessing global configuration settings.
Managing Multiple States Tutorial
In this TechnoTip video tutorial they cover building multiple states and linking related modules.
In this TechnoTip video tutorial they cover coding custom functions and passing parameters.
In this TechnoTip video tutorial they cover the Phaser Update loop.
Development Progress
Easily the biggest thing to happen to Phaser this week (or indeed, ever) is that we've landed multi-texturing support into the dev branch.
I wrote a detailed article about what multi-texturing is, how it will benefit your games, and how to implement it. So I'd absolutely recommend you read it, and test out the dev build if you can. This feature will land in Phaser 2.7.0 final, along with WebGL tilemaps.
Compressed Texture Support
We've been hard at work implementing support for compressed textures. The first iteration of this has landed in the texture-compression-webgl branch on GitHub. This will allow you to use PVRTC, DDS, ETC1 and S3TC texture formats.
Using compressed textures allows the GPU to decode, and access, the texture data much faster than traditional image compression schemes such as JPEG. iOS devices in particular benefit greatly from using PowerVR Texture Compression (PVRTC). The resulting textures take up less memory than their traditional counterparts, and when it comes to iOS, every bit of memory helps!
It's also possible to achieve better compression rates in some cases. Lots of popular tools support export compressed textures, including the invaluable Texture Packer.
The Phaser Loader will be adapted to support multiple formats. For example you'll be able to load an image, or an atlas, and provide an object of texture formats. The first one Phaser comes across that the GPU supports will be the one loaded, falling back to good-old PNG / JPG if needed. Internally it will then parse the compressed texture, extract the data needed from it, and set it up so that WebGL can use it. All you will need to worry about is providing the files and slightly tweaking your loader calls, everything else happens behind the scenes.
This, along with multi-texturing, and WebGL tilemaps, are fundamental features in my mind, and I'm really excited to see them in Phaser. We've a few more core updates coming, which I'll talk more about next issue. Until then, keep your eye on the dev branch, because things are getting hot around here!
Geeky Links
How about the complete first level of the NES game Contra, done entirely in a shader?! Incredible stuff.
Textcraft is a fun web site that allows you to generate all kinds of logos, using various styles. From Minecraft to Pokemon, lots of genres are catered for.
Do you remember the classic game Indiana Jones and the Iron Phoenix? No? It's because it never left the design stages. But the design docs are a beauty to behold!
Phaser Releases
The current version of Phaser is 2.6.1 released on July 11th 2016.
Phaser 2.7.0 is in development in the GitHub dev branch.
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.