Gamedev.js Weekly #36

Articles

How to Build a Local Game Developer Community
Community is vital. We're social creatures, and this is especially true for the increasingly common work-from-home remote gamedevs and the lone wolf indie developers.
Chris Tihor at Tuts+ Game Development

BoosterMedia gains 6 million MAUs with the purchase of HTML5 outfit Hallpass Media
HTML5 game publisher BoosterMedia has announced the acquisition of LA-based web game network, Hallpass Media from US outfit SGN.
Chris Kerr at PocketGamer.biz

Enabling Voice Input into the Open Web and Firefox OS
The possibilities of experiences Voice Input enables are huge, to say the least.
Sandip Kamat at Mozilla Hacks

Tips to Slash Game Loading Time by 87%... Without Giving Up On Quality
A great tip for developers is to use tools like TinyPNG and Kraken.io to strip unnecessary meta data from their images.
Scott Johnston at SpilGames

Microsoft Trying To Buy Mojang, Creators Of Minecraft
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that, according to "a person with knowledge of the matter", Microsoft is in "serious discussions" to buy Mojang, the studio that made smash hit Minecraft.
Luke Plunkett at Kotaku

Trappy Tomb postmortem
Trappy Tomb was conceived as a response to the poor score for ‘innovation’ I received from my previous LD entry ‘Midnight Minigun’.
Jimmy Paulin at Ludum Dare blog

Making the web “just work” with any input: Mouse, Touch, and Pointer Events
We recently announced support for the Touch Event API in Internet Explorer for Windows Phone 8.1 Update as a part of our commitment to make the Web “just work” for our users.
Jacob Rossi at IEBlog

4 Realtime Elements Every Multiplayer Game Dev Needs
When building out a multiplayer game, any aspect of the game that involves communication between two players, whether it be in-game chat or sync player position, requires a reliable and consistent connection between the users.
PubNub blog

Competitions

js13kGames submission deadline is tomorrow, September 13th, 13:00 CEST

The SETI Institute is running its own game jam next month

Tools

Phaser 2.1.0 "Cairhien" is Released

Leshy SFMaker is a retro-style sound effect generator

Videos

Guillermo Rauch: The Future of Real-Time

Chris Hughes: Where's the Money in HTML5 Game Development?