Newsletter – Issue 020

🔥 Headlines

WebGPU is now available for testing in Safari Technology Preview!

✍️ 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 by Dirk Krause. If you’d like to write an article for the blog, please get in touch with me (verekia) on Discord or Twitter!

📝 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, and I’ll prepare a list of links to easily follow everyone! Responses are public, and emails are not collected.

⭐️ Sponsor

💼 Jobs (sponsored)

Senior WebGL Graphics Engineer • Phaser Studio 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.

Gameplay Engineer • Novablocks 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.

🏎 Engines & Libraries

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

🛠 Tools

• Holographic Material by Anderson Mancini

• 🎨 Aseprite 1.3 is out! Aseprite is an animated sprite and pixel art editor. 1.2 came out in 2017!

• 🎨 Sprite Fusion – Free web-based tilemap editor. Exports to Unity, Godot, and JSON (video) by Hugo Duprez.

• 🕹 Optimized fork of Joymap (8x smaller) by Christoph Nakazawa. Joymap is a Gamepad API wrapper.

• Object thumbnails Tampermonkey script for PlayCanvas by Cem Demir

• Instanced Sprite (demo) by Marcin Jerzak

• Poki PixiJS Template by Erik Dubbelboer

• 🧍 CharacterStudio – 3D avatar studio for editing and optimizing glTF / VRM avatars by M3

• 🦾 StableProjectorz (video) by Igor Aherne – Generate textures that preserve UVs with AI.

• Steam now somewhat allows pre-generated AI content as long as it doesn’t include illegal or infringing content. Games will have to disclose how AI was used during development.

• Rune, the company organizing React Jam, is announcing $100.000 Open Source Grants for indie JavaScript game developers who publish open-source multiplayer games on Rune.

🎬 Videos

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

✍️ Articles

• 🌐 What PWA Can Do Today by Danny Moerkerke
• 🌐 How We Enabled In-App Purchases for PWAs on iOS by Gleb Khmyznikov
• 🎓 DOOM - Graphics Study (2016) by Adrian Courrèges
• 🎓 GPU Optimization for GameDev by Ken Hu
• Holiday Break + TerrainSynth (demo, repo) by Kenneth Pirman
• Converting a Shader from Three.js to Babylon.js by Thomas Burgess
• Inside the Evolution of glTF by Gary Hsu
• Compressing Gaussian Splats by Donovan Hutchence
• 6 Million Plays in 30 Days – Vortelli’s Pizza Delivery by Devortel
• CSS Wrapped 2023 by the Chrome UI DevRel Team
• 5 Reasons To Make Web Games In 2024 by P. Martin Ortiz
• 📨 New Events & Messaging (PubSub) page on Web Game Dev.

🎮 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

• Synthcity by Jeff Beene
• 2D Global Illumination by N8
• Procedurally-generated planet (repo) by Coffee Code Create
• A Storm at Midnight by Faraz

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