Newsletter
Welcome to Issue 61 of Phaser World
As the year draws dangerously close to ending, we take time to reflect on what 2016 meant to us. It was certainly a challenge on lots of fronts, but with Phaser specifically you can read all about 2016 and beyond in our yearly summary.
You'll find the very last of the Christmas games this week. I promise you there will be no games at all featuring Santa in issue 62. Always good to go out on a bang though, and Santa's One Room is surely the way to do it.
Personally I'm looking forward to what the next year holds, and I hope you are too. Have a happy and safe New Years, and see you all in January as we kick off 2017.
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 or Discord channels.
Phaser in 2016 and beyond
A look back at the news and numbers of Phaser in 2016, and what the New Year holds.
Zenva have got some massive savings on their video based learning courses which end on December 31st. You can get the full Advanced Game Development with Phaser course for $29 (usually $149), or the Complete Game Development Platinum Course for $89 (usually $299). Check out the full range for details.
Games made with Phaser
Game of the Week
Fling the elves back into the workroom, in order to churn out presents, in this wonderful LD37 entry.
Staff Pick
Pop as many monsters as you can in the limited time!
Play as an Italian politician riding a speeder bike, avoiding a deadly minefield and collecting fried fish. Yes, really!
Take Santa for a run down the street, collecting coins and avoiding obstacles.
Keep your eye on the present as it moves around, then pick it from the pile.
Phaser News & Tutorials
An update to this scene graph plugin that now includes a live view of a display tree.
Interconnecting Nodes Tutorial
A tutorial on creating a series of nodes connected with lines, and tweening them around.
Stop Particles Sliding Tutorial
Explode skeletons and learn how to make the particles slide across the floor beneath them.
Learn how to create spell based special effects including a Magic Bolt, Ice Cage and Fire Storm.
Part 1 of a new video tutorial series on re-creating the classic game in Phaser.
Patreon Updates
Thank you so much to these Phaser Patreons who joined us this week: Quinten Clause, Jaaromy Zierse, Kraig Halfpap, Василь Бойчук and Ben Copeland. Also thank you to Jesse Crockett for increasing his pledge.
Patreon is a way to donate money towards the Phaser project on a monthly basis. This money is used entirely to fund development costs. You can also make one-off donations via PayPal. Donations receive discounts, forum badges, private technical support, and the eternal gratitude of the Phaser team :)
Development Progress
It's been an interesting couple of weeks to say the least.
A few days after Issue 60 of the newsletter was published, I posted an in-depth article called The Evolution of Phaser 3 and Lazer. If you've ever been confused over what happened to Lazer, and what is Phaser 3, and how does it all fit together, then I urge you to read it. It answers everything.
The article went into detail about what has been happening since January 2015, right up to today, and ended with a big question: Should we drop the name Lazer or not? If you've read the Phaser 2016 Round-up then you'll know the answer, and if you haven't, and are interested, then I urge you to please do so. Long story short: Lazer is no more, and we'll continue using the name Phaser for as long as we can.
A number of you have expressed an interest in helping with Phaser 3 development. In order to facilitate this, and for my own sanity, I am currently compiling a comprehensive roadmap of what needs to be done. When it's ready I'll announce it here, and publish it for everyone to see. It should make it a lot easier for those who want to help, to actually do so.
Bits and Pieces
As we've been closed for Christmas there hasn't been much in the way of development over the past week. I did find time to carry on porting some classes over, and made a start with the Geometry classes. So we now have Rectangle and Circle back in the API, and all of their associated functions.
Unlike with Phaser 2 these objects are now much more light-weight. The core class consists of just the geometry data and a handful of important getters and setters. All of the functions, such as Circle.circumference, or Rectangle.union, are now their own modules, and not part of the geometry class itself.
This serves two purposes: It means if you want to compile your own build of Phaser, you can require just the geometry functions you need, not all of them. Plus it makes it a lot easier to test and document the modules in isolation.
The whole concept behind Lazer was always one of 'lego bricks' - build what you need, however you need it, and this is something we're making possible with the structural choices being made with Phaser 3. Yet there is no ignoring the popularity of the Phaser API being 'easy to use', so we will absolutely be providing 'pre built' bundles of the most common Phaser classes and functions, so you can consume just a single JS lib if you prefer. For those that want fine-grained control though, you now have it.
Things will be back in full flow next week. Felipe is tackling creating a new Bitmap Text renderer, and I'll carry on porting over essential functions, and working on the roadmap.
Geeky Links
Badass Hero is a roquelite platformer shooter set in a comic book universe. The game features fast-paced hit and run gameplay, procedural generation of levels and random items that make every playthrough different! In short, it looks awesome :)
I really enjoy the podcast Under the Radar. Each episode is never more than 30mins long, and they focus on the life of an app developer. Episode 59 was especially interesting, being an 'audio diary' of the launch of a new app onto the App Store. They may not make games, but the things they go through should be familiar to all of us.
Finally this week is the reveal trailer for The Last of Us Part 2. Damn, those graphics! I can't wait for this one.
Phaser Releases
The current version of Phaser CE is 2.7.2 released on December 6th 2016.
Phaser 3.0.0 is in active development in the GitHub v3 folder.
Please help support Phaser development
Have some news you'd like published? Email support@phaser.io or tweet us.
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