Gamedev.js Weekly #132

Articles

What I learned from my first free experimental HTML5 game CRAVEN
After four years working on two major indie games, I decided to take a break by rapid-prototyping a few micro ideas. My first title already taught me a few good lessons.
Koobazaur's Domain

10 work-life balance commandments for game developers and programmers
Work-life balance is one of the most debated topics on the internet. Eventually, you lose track of your life and live a life of a permanently exhausted owl.
LivecodingTV

5 innovative game weapons that every dev should study
Ravenous zombies, treacherous snipers, rampaging killbots, vicious aliens, giant spiders... game developers sic an imaginative parade of deadly foes on players.
Bryan Lufkin at Gamasutra

Is Unity a viable option for creating web based games?
I'm wanting to create a web based game, I have my mind set on using Unity as I have the most experience in this. I would like to know if there are much better approaches or alternatives before I start?
syphon222 at Reddit

Building a cross-platform WebGL game with Babylon.js
To celebrate the new version 2.3 of the library, we decided to build a new demo named “Sponza” to highlight what can be done with the WebGL engine and HTML5 when it comes to building great games nowadays.
David Rousset at Smashing Magazine

How did Pokemon Go conquer the planet in less than a week?
The mobile location based game Pokemon Go got a bit of a rough start when it launched last week, but once the servers seemed to ease up on Friday it absolutely took off.
Staff at Gamasutra

Free DLC for indie games: financial suicide or smart politics?
In the dawn of the success of CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3 and their welcomed, arguably innovative, or perhaps retro attitude towards free content, it is easy to see why even the little guys may want to follow those giant footsteps.
Yuuki at Muha Games

Tutorials

Pre-Order Advanced Game Development with Phaser (Multiplayer games included)
Become a Black Belt Phaser developer and create advanced games. It's that next-level training that will take you from intermediate to pro.
Zenva Academy

Make your HTML5 games run on Android devices with Cordova and Android Studio – running on actual devices
It’s not just a matter of plugging your phone with an USB cable and select it from available devices, you will have to enable debug testing on your phone first.
Emanuele Feronato's blog

Getting started in WebGL, part 1: introduction to shaders
I'm going to show you around the graphics pipeline and explain what shaders are, and while we're at it we'll write our first shader.
Omar El Sayyed at Tuts+ Game Development

Tools

Phaser 2.6.0 released

LayaAir, an open-source HTML5 engine

Resources

Maths and trigonometry cheat sheet for 2D games

The must-have game assets for designers and digital artists

Games

Shards