Gamedev.js Weekly #75

Articles

Secrets to getting your indie game viral
After months of going unnoticed, the game Flappy Bird suddenly and quickly soared up to the number 1 rank in both the App Store and the Play Store.
Daniel Doan at Black Shell Media

Four-step puzzle design
Good puzzle design gives a player that moment of epiphany, where suddenly all is clear, and the following satisfaction when your put your solution in place, and it works.
Asher Einhorn at Gamasutra

Oculus Rift hack transfers your facial expressions onto your virtual avatar
There are some interesting bits of tech starting to emerge from the now Facebook-owned Oculus that hint at what the future might hold for the Rift outside gaming.
Mark Walton at Ars Technica UK

MMA could be the next big thing in game development if its potential can conquer hype
Game developers are naturally suspicious of the hype that comes with new technology, but the revenue potential for Mobile Marketing Automation makes it worth a closer look.
Scott Johnston at Spil Games

Exploring games from the creator’s perspective
I want to explore with you an efficient analysis process, for learning purposes. It is about exploring games with a creator’s eye.
Nathan Lovato at Game Analytics blog

Applying entrepreneurial lessons to game development
Let’s see what lessons we can take from the modern entrepreneurial mindset that will help push us forward.
PowerUp Games blog

Exorcising game development demons with The Magic Circle
As many of our readers may know, the "magic circle" is the theoretical barrier that stands between a virtual world and the real world - it's the space within which the magic of play takes place.
Phill Cameron at Gamasutra

Knowing when to stop
A life in game development can mean stress, fatigue and worry. Jurie Horneman has learned the value of stepping back.
Jurie Horneman at Games Industry Biz

Tutorials

Creating a platformer tilemap for Phaser
Tilemaps are layered maps created for games using images split up into tiles, generally 16 x 16 pixels or 32 x 32 pixels in size. These images are known as Tilesets.
Hover Craftie's blog

Bringing Web Audio to Microsoft Edge for interoperable gaming and enthusiast media
Web Audio provides tight time synchronization not possible with HTML5 Audio Elements, and includes audio filters and effects useful for enthusiast media apps.
Microsoft Edge Team at Microsoft Edge Dev Blog

HTML5 game scaling
This article will describe scaling techniques, including the use of a game safe area, to best fit an HTML5 game regardless of where it is played.
William Malone's blog

Saving and loading a large HTML5 Canvas with Phaser
I was able to completely finish the save/load functionality. For one saving/loading runs completely from the client-side, which is a contributing factor in how fast it is.
Chris at Feudal Wars dev blog

Resources

An open source shoot-em-up engine for Phaser

Web Audio Weekly newsletter

Demos

Mountains of Mouthness: a quirky WebGL experiment demo

Multiplayer NES through the magic of WebSockets and Go

Videos

No one knows about your game - here's what to do about it

Games

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