Welcome to Issue 36 of Phaser World
I apologise in advance if I sound far less enthusiastic than in usual issues. The simple fact is that today my country decided to leave the European Union. While I don't wish to drag politics into a game dev newsletter, I firmly believe that we now live in a globally connected world.
It's a tiny example, but Phaser is the result of hard work from developers the entire world over. An open exchange of talent, skills, and knowledge, shared for a common good. While it was technology that facilitated this, it was a global development culture that allowed it to flourish. Everything about the decision today seems a chronic step backward in so many ways.
On a financial front there are potentially very serious implications for my company. We rely a lot on the global nature of the games business, both employing staff who live in Europe, and providing services to the US and beyond. Compared to yesterday, our monthly running costs are now significantly higher, and our bank balance dramatically weakened. The hope is that things will settle down in the coming weeks. I really pray they do. If you've ever thought 'maybe I'll buy that book', or throw a dollar in our support fund, believe me, now would be the optimum time to do so!
Until 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.
News
Phaser 2.5.0 is here! You can read more about it in the Development Progress section of this issue. There are loads of cool new features, stacks of bug fixes, all of the new Examples are online, and een a brand new GitHub page to boot!
Games made with Phaser
Game of the Week
An innovative new puzzle game, where you match and swap the bubbles to clear the grid.
Staff Pick
It's a wacky game of football, with over-sized noggins!
Run all the way from birth to the grave!
A homage to the Japanese 8-bit MSX games of the 1980s.
Connect the tiles, and match the numbers, before the time runs out.
Phaser Tutorials
A free PDF Tutorial from PragPub magazine.
A beginners tutorial on making the game Smart Box.
How to run Phaser games in the Android Studio Simulator.
Match 3 Tutorial Suggested Move
In this part of the Match 3 tutorial series, a 'suggested move' feature is added.
A series of videos on creating your first Phaser game.
Development Progress
After the large release of Phaser 2.5.0 it was inevitable things would be quieter this week. Yet we've certainly not been sitting idle. If you look at the dev branch Change Log you'll see new features, such as support for Typings and Loader headers. With new bug fixes and updates already in place, a mere handful of days after 2.5.0 came out. It just goes to show what an on-going process this all is.
Pixi Docs
Another thing I personally have been working on is updating the Pixi documentation. As you know, Phaser is built on-top of Pixi v2. I have been spending time changing the yuidoc syntax for the jsdoc format that the rest of Phaser uses. And while updating I've also been adding in far more detailed descriptions of what the methods and properties do. There are still lots of classes to go, but it's a step in the right direction to improving all of the Phaser documentation.
Lazer Development
Dev work continues on Lazer. This week you'll notice a bunch of commits testing out Transform Updates. Transforms are needed for every renderable object in your game, and control things like scaling, rotation and the influence of that upon children further down the display list. Felipe has been hard at work trying various approaches to dealing with this, so we can be sure we've got the fastest and most robust possible solution in place. It's a crucial element, as it underpins the whole of Lazer, and any renderer that sits on the top. As usual you can track all dev in the GitHub repo.
Arcade Physics 2 First Look
This is a repeat of last weeks article, because I'd really like to encourage more people to get involved and test it, if they can:
Felipe has been working like a trojan on the Arcade Physics 2 API, and has been making great progress.
We're now at the stage where we'd love it if you could pull down the Lazer and Lazer Examples repos, and start playing with the Arcade Physics 2 API.
It's all coded in ES6, and very different to how Phaser works internally. So he's written a detailed overview for you. This covers what's in the new API, how to get started with it, and where to find the examples and code.
Please give the Arcade Physics 2 First Look article and read, and let us know how you get on! You can open issues in the Lazer repo, post to the Lazer forum, or find us both on Slack (where he goes as @bitnenfer and I'm @rich)
Geeky Links
Skyrim - The Dragonborn Comes as performed by the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and sung (beautifully!) by Sabina Zweiacker.
Worm NomNom is a great Pico8 game, with graphics by Ilija, the guy who created the Phaser logo and characters.
Godzilla Resurgence - the beast is back, Toho style :)
Phaser Releases
The current version of Phaser is 2.5.0 released on June 17th 2016.
Phaser 2.5.1 is now in development in the GitHub dev branch.
Please help support Phaser development (now more than ever)
Have some news you'd like published? Email [email protected] or tweet us.
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