Gamedev.js Weekly #108

Articles

WebGL off the main thread
We’re happy to announce WebGL in Web Workers in Firefox 44+! Using the new OffscreenCanvas API you can now create a WebGL context off of the main thread.
Nick Desaulniers at Mozilla Hacks blog

The high price of free
As an industry we have become accustomed to getting hundreds of hours of work, and the benefit of years of hard-won knowledge for free.
Rachel Andrew at A List Apart

Water interaction model for boats in video games: part 2
Jacques Kerner is a senior software engineer at Avalanche Studios. In this article, he discusses the work put into Just Cause 3's boat physics.
Jacques Kerner at Gamasutra

5 ways to help define a game audience
Defining for which audience you’re going to build your game can be very difficult. We want to give some suggestions on how to get to know your audience.
Scott Johnston at Spil Games

Feeling anxious? Try playing a video game
Anxiety, like pain or cravings, works on the spotlight theory of attention - the more we focus on the problem, the worse it gets.
Meghan Walker at Huffington Post

The burrito that wraps up excellent VR design fundamentals
In a typical video game, to exit a play session you press the start button, and select “exit”. In Owlchemy Labs’ VR game Job Simulator 2050, I ate a burrito to quit the game.
Kris Graft at Gamasutra

Oracle deprecates the Java browser plugin, prepares for its demise
The much-maligned Java browser plugin, source of so many security flaws over the years, is to be killed off by Oracle. It will not be mourned.
Peter Bright at Ars Technica

Global Game Jam: make an AirConsole game
We're embracing this idea and welcome all developers to try out AirConsole.
Alice Ruppert at AirConsole blog

Tutorials

How to create a HTML draggable and scrollable map with inertia using Phaser framework
Today I am showing you how to create a HTML draggable and scrollable map with an inertia effect which can be used in several ways.
Emanuele Feronato's blog

How to make a turn-based RPG game in Phaser – part 2
We are going to create a WorldState were the player can explore and eventually find enemies. In addition, we will improve our battle system to consider units speed.
Renan Oliveira at GameDev Academy

Multiplayer card game using WebSockets, Cocos2d-x-HTML5 - part 1
The purpose of this tutorial series is to learn the very basics of the real time game server and client. And one of many principles behind multiplayer games.
Meir Yanovich at GameDevCraft

Competitions

AirConsole HTML5 Game Contest 2016 just started

Global Game Jam 2016 is happening this weekend

Tools

FRP state machine

Voxel.css makes 3D rendering easy

Behavior system for Phaser games

Demos

Apple keyboard in pure CSS

Unmandelboxing WebVR

Games

Math Max