Welcome to Issue 5 of the Phaser Newsletter.

In this issue we cover the release of Phaser v2.0.5, how the success of the framework is impacting on us, some stunning new sites, games and plugins and a quick look into the future.

On May 20th we released the latest version of Phaser: 2.0.5. This build continues our efforts of releasing smaller regular updates, to ensure issues are resolved in production fast. It also contained a handful of great new features and updates. Some key ones include:

• QuadTree.retrieve can now accept a Rectangle and return any objects it intersects with.
• The PluginManager will now pass on any constructor parameters to the plugin.
• Pointer.withinGame is now accurate across touch and mouse.
• Tweens now have a 'from' action, which works as the opposite of 'to'.
• ArcadePhysics.getObjectsUnderPointer will return all children that overlap a given Pointer.
• Utils.rotateArray will rotate the given array by 90 or 180 degrees in either direction.
• All of the Tilemap setCollision methods let you set if recalculation happens or not.
• Tilemap.searchTileIndex allows you to search for the first tile matching the given index, with optional skip and reverse parameters.

As usual many thanks to the community for their support with this release. Lots of the fixes and updates come directly from awesome devs out there who help with the Phaser project. If you'd like to be one of them then please don't hesitate!

https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser

With Phaser 2.0.5 out we are coming to the end of our sprint schedule. There will be one final minor point release: 2.0.6 in approximately 3 weeks time. This will specifically focus on improving Phaser support for CocoonJS, and work on this is already underway.

Hopefully it will also be able to include the latest updates from Pixi.js and p2.js. Both of which have some great new features lined-up which we'd love to see in Phaser. So as soon as those drop we'll start merging them.

Beyond that we will start looking at the 2.1 release. Features for this release are not yet fully defined, and in part are lead by what the community needs as much as our own plans. So if you'd like to get involved in steering the direction of Phaser then please do so in our forums or just send us an email.

Here is a round-up of all the new links that have been posted to the Phaser site since the last newsletter:

• sixty shells - a zen game Find all 60 tortoises and they'll donate to charity
• A slush generator for Phaser If you use Slush, you'll want to use this :)
• Set Phasers to PHUN! (or making games with phaser.js) Attend this session at the Liverpool JavaScript Meetup (UK).
• Why HTML5? Our Self Reflection A great blog post from TempaLabs explaining the move to HTML5 game dev.
• Clap to Flap! Clap to control this Arduino, Phaser and XSockets powered Flappy Bird game.
• Tools and References A useful set of links for attendees of Code Liberations HTML5 Game Dev Workshop. Slides online here
• MightyEditor is a visual Phaser game editor Just drag and drop your game together! Plus video tutorial
• Glide Platformer A fun little platformer game with full source available.
• Procedural dungeon generation using PHP and Phaser and also Part 2!
• Multi-platform games with Phaser A great tutorial covering Phaser app set-up by Eden Agency.
• Phaser 2.0.4 is Released Lots of timer related fixes and bitmap and color manipulation updates.
• Multi Screen Development in Phaser A nice tutorial and set of code for multi-screen support.
• French Flappy Bird Tutorial A comprehensive tutorial building Flappy Bird (French language).
• A Simple Rogue like With the code on github to learn from and expand.
• Game Mechanic Explorer A fantastic interactive resource for learning Phaser game mechanics.
• Slides from the CodeMotion Phaser talk By Valerio Riva.
• LessMilk's 13th Phaser Game Pixel War 2. Great shoot-em-up fun!
• Codevinskys Phaser 2 Tutorial Part 5 Scoring, Sound, Particles and Persistant Storage.
• Set Phasers to TypeScript! How to set-up Phaser, TypeScript and Brackets.
• A Game a Week Here's another indie developer trying to make 1 new Phaser game per week.

No-one is more excited about the fact that Phaser has become so popular than we are! It is genuinely exciting to see it being used in so many different places, and in so many different ways. The quality of games being released is just mind blowing.

However the downside of this is that the volume of posts to our forum and emails we receive has grown so much that we're genuinely struggling to even read them all, let alone give personal replies.

In the early days this was much easier for us to manage, as the overall volume was lower and we could dive in and help in most cases. But now we're seeing hundreds of new posts a week and piles of emails this isn't possible. We do still actively post to the forum, every day in fact, but we can't promies we'll reply directly and solve your specific issue.

Please don't be put off posting though: In lots of cases the wider community will help. There are lots of skilled developers on the forum now, and so long as your problem is well explained and clear, they'll often jump in with an answer.

Also please don't add me on Skype for the purpose of getting one-on-one support.  I literally have no time to be able to offer this, and hate to come-off as "rude" by ignoring you, but the reality is that if I allowed myself to offer Skype support then there would never be a new release of Phaser, ever! because it simply takes up too much time.

As a company we are looking in to providing a proper premium support service. This isn't ideal for everyone, especially not hobbyists, but will provide a means for companies using Phaser in deadline tight projects to get a response faster. Once we've ironed out the details we'll announce how this will work.

We are also actively looking into ways to allow all of our hard work on Phaser to start generating a tangible income for the company, and there are various ideas floating around on how we'll achieve this. So please bare with us we work through this transition. The last thing I want to do is lose the community feel we've got going, but I also understand that in order to continue growing as we are now we need to start putting some proper systems into place to deal with it.

Either way you look at it, there are some exciting times ahead for sure :)

MightyEditor is a browser based Phaser game editor created by the team at MightyFingers. They built it after producing a couple of Phaser games and wanting a tool to simplify their workflow. You can manage assets, create Sprites and Maps and drag and drop your scene together.

Asset Management

Drag and drop files or directories from the file explorer into the browser window to add the assets. Organize textures in folders. Delete, edit or replace unnecessary assets.

Map Editor

Define grid size and camera position in the map section. Paint your map using stamp tool or brush tool. You can use select tool to change position, scale and rotation angle of already created objects. Remember about Ctrl+z as an easy way to go back from unnecessary changes.

Groups

Create groups to organize existing objects in different game levels. You can select, hide, sort, lock and delete groups. New objects can be added in a group by selecting it.

Export

Use MightyEditor provided url and include it in your project. Any changes will be visible real-time in your game. Export all the data at any time and let your game be stand alone. No dependencies to the editor.

Check out MightyEditor at http://mightyeditor.mightyfingers.com/

We are on the hunt for a freelance journalist (or someone with enough free time and commitment) who can help produce the Phaser newsletter each month.

Your main role will be to keep an eye on the Phaser forum and social channels, and collect together items that you feel would make for interesting newsletter articles. This will be supplemented with content written by the team here, who will also forward links and items your way through-out the month.

You will then collate them together into a newsletter each month within Campaign Monitor. Ideally being responsible for producing screen shots as well. You can see from the current previous issues the sort of layout, quantity and style required.

We need someone proactive to take on this role. You will become the new 'face' of the newsletter, known for being the editor, and responsible for treating it carefully and maturely, while keeping content lively and engaging.

If this sounds like a role you'd be interested in then please contact rich@photonstorm.com with further details, ideally including previous writing examples (your own blog counts towards this), any game development experience you may have (not essential, but handy) and providing a monthly rate.

Juicy is a simple Effects Plugin by Jeremy Dowell (codevinsky) based on the "Juice it or Lose It" presentation by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho, which you should absolutely watch! It's essential for all game developers to have seen this.

Now that you've done that, this plugin currently allows you to easily implement the following effects:

• Camera Shake
• Screen Flash
• Object Trails
• Over Scaling
• Mouse Stretch
• Jelly Effect

Here is a demo of it in action. If you'd like to leave feedback you can do so on the forum thread. And of course the plugin is available on the new Phaser Plugins repository:

https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser-plugins

Thomas Palef (perhaps better known as lessmilk) has been hard at work on the first official Phaser book. The book will take you through the process of building out a Super Crate Box style game from start to finish.

I am also contributing to the book and am writing chapters on how to take the game and split it up into manageable chunks, showing how to extend Phaser Sprites and Groups to keep your code sane. As well as writing an introduction and overview of Phaser.

The book should be ready in the next couple of months and you can get on the mailing list for launch details.

http://phaser.io/book/

Every once in a while a new project pops-up that just blows me away, and the Game Mechanic Explorer by John Watson was one such project.

The concept behind the site is breath-takingly simple: demonstrate through visual examples core game mechanics, algorithms and effects. This includes:

• Walking and Jumping, with acceleration, drag, double-jump and variable jump heights.
• Bullets: Rapid fire, aiming, artilery and trajectory display.
• Spaceship motions.
• Following: with single and multiple followers.
• Homing missles: with wobble, smoke trails, explosions and flocking.
• Raycasting and shadows.
• Lights with soft edges, flickering and blending.
• Lightning with branches, glows, shake and flashes.
• Demonstration of easing functions

Every example includes the Phaser source code and hopefully John will continue to add to the already impressive list.

http://gamemechanicexplorer.com/

Ludum Dare 29 took place between April 25th to the 28th 2014 and the theme was 'Beneath the Surface'. I'm always pleased to see Phaser used in game jams such as LD, especially when the developers are brave enough to use Phaser even though they may have never touched it before!

The last time I reported on Phaser Ludum Dare games was in LD28 when just over 20 games were made with Phaser (that we knew about). LD29 however saw no less than 57 entries that were tagged with "phaser". This is a staggering amount and congratulations to all those who took part.

We're looking forward to LD30 this August :)

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Aaron Lee as part of a Develop Magazine article about web game development. It's a comprehensive and interesting piece, covering all kinds of technology and frameworks from Goo Engine and Turbulenz to Phaser.

Read the full develop magazine article

If you'd like a game, tutorial or product featured in the newsletter then please get in touch. You can do that by simply replying to this newsletter.

Enjoy Phaser 2.0.5 and we'll be back next month with issue 6.

Also don't forget you can Forward this newsletter to a friend - and we'd certainly appreciate it if you did :)

Cheers,

Rich
& the Photon Storm team

"Hey dudes, thanks for rescuing me! Let's go for a burger...Ha! Ha! Ha!"