Gamedev.js Weekly #185

Articles

Yahoo Japan launches HTML5 and cloud-based browser games platform Game Plus
As reported by Japan Times, the portal allows mobile gamers to play both F2P and premium HTML5 games directly from their phone's browser.
Ric Cowley at Pocket Gamer

Reverse engineering one line of JavaScript
Few months ago I saw an email asking if someone could unwrap this line of JavaScript.
Alex Kras' blog

Mad World is a stunning post-apocalyptic MMORPG that's built in HTML5 and totally cross-platform
It's really impressive just how many different sprites there can be onscreen at once in Mad World, and how about that massive boss near the end?
Jared Nelson at Touch Arcade

AI is inventing languages humans can’t understand, should we stop it?
Researchers at Facebook realized their bots were chattering in a new language.
Mark Wilson at Co Design

Adobe alternatives: pixel art applications
Outstanding pixel artists often remind me of artisans who create tiny ships in tiny bottles; achieving a lot with a little is always impressive.
Kezz Bracey at Tuts+ Web Design

Protect your Steam keys
What follows is, I hope, a series of tips and encouragements that can help some indies keep control of their brand and retain value in their product.
Dr. Matthew White at Gamasutra

Tutorials

WebGL quest #2: tiny raymarching bootstrap with Distance Estimation functions
A simple WebGL raycasting algorithm, accepting any Distance Estimation function and rendering it with distance fog and no distorsion, can be as short as 135b.
Maxime Euzière's blog

“Spellfall” HTML5 prototype made with Phaser updated to 2.8.2 and reusing tweens to improve performance
Rather than creating a new tween at every player move, we create only one tween and update its target property according to the tile to be moved.
Emanuele Feronato's blog

Resources

AudioGames.net

Warped Caves Pack by Luis Zuno at Patreon

Demos

Castles, responsive parallax landscape

Flat Forest icon in CSS

Games

Wizard in a Bubble

Blast Down