Gamedev.js Weekly #80

Articles

What makes an on-screen keyboard fun?
We recently released our typing game ZType for the iPhone and learned a whole lot in the process.
Phoboslab's blog

Mozilla CEO: virtual-reality Firefox could be game-changer
Mozilla has started letting outside developers use a test version of its Firefox browser with new virtual-reality technology that could make surfing the web more like watching movies or playing video games.
John Shinal at USA Today

Hard and soft choices and their roles in game design
Not every choice is created equal in game design and today's post looks at the concept of hard and soft choices.
Josh Bycer at Gamasutra

4cr Interview – Luis Zuno
I had a lot of fun reviewing Elliot Quest on Wii U, so I went ahead and got in touch with indie developer Luis Zuno of Ansimuz Games to catch up and find out what he’s been up to since the launch of his game.
Antonio Garcia at 4 Color Rebellion

Releasing a commercial ASCII roguelike, a post-mortem
Releasing sci-fi tactical combat and exploration roguelike Cogmind felt great - two years of hard work finally reaching a state where I could share it in its entirety.
Josh Ge at Gamasutra

Incomplete testing punished by users
Testing is critical to a game’s success. A technical slip can spell disaster.
Scott Johnston at Spil Games

China’s Wozlla lands $2M for its HTML5 game development platform
Native apps may be the current vision for what mobile services and games should be, but a number of companies are pioneering HTML5-based web apps as a more rounded alternative.
Jon Russell at Tech Crunch

AsmJS and WebGL for Unity and Unreal Engine
Unity, and Epic’s Unreal Engine, the popular middleware tools frequently used by game developers are not limited to creating compiled applications that run as an executable.
Dave Voyles Game Dev blog

The full monty: Orangepixel 10 years of Indie stats
Sharing revenue information is hard, not sure why that is, I guess it’s something of a status symbol and telling other people opens you up to a range of comments and remarks that are not always what you like to hear.
Pascal Bestebroer at Gamasutra

Prove you can make a pure JavaScript game and win a lot of prizes with js13kGames competition
Ok, we all know you can create awesome games using HTML5 frameworks like Phaser and CocoonJS, but what are you able to do with pure JavaScript?
Emanuele Feronato's blog

Flash player blocked on Chrome and Firefox, it’s HTML5 time
The Hacking Team case continues. Leaked documents have revealed that Adobe Flash has a serious vulnerability that lets hackers take over anyone’s computer.
GamePix

Tutorials

The magic of compound objects with Box2D – HTML5 version powered by Phaser
Back in 2008 I blogged about the magic of compound objects with Box2D to create complex shapes, and eventually built a game upon this concept, called MazeRoll. Now it’s time to do the same thing with Phaser, building a maze in a single body.
Emanuele Feronato's blog

Building shaders with BabylonJS and WebGL: theory and examples
I am going to explain to you how shaders work, and give some examples of common types of shaders.
David Catuhe at Tuts+ Game Development

Hack physics and JavaScript (part 1)
I discover that I could actually have used some of the physics math to create cool animations with the canvas. I figured out pretty quickly that I didn't need to revise my highschool education and could instead cheat.
Rachel Smith's CodePen blog

Tools

Phaser Kinetic Scrolling plugin

Resources

ThreeJS Games - all you need to build games with ThreeJS

Demos

Sneeze the dragon

LightyearFM - a journey through space, time, and music

Games

Adventure games in the Firefox Marketplace