Phaser 1.1.3 “Arafel” has landed with a shadery splash

I’m pleased to say that version 1.1.3 of Phaser is now released! And we’ve also got over 1000 stars on our github project, which is excellent 🙂

This release focused on updating Phaser to use the latest version of Pixi.js, which introduces the wonderful world of shaders to your WebGL games. We have been busy creating and modifying shaders for your use and you’ll find a bunch of them in the new filters folder in the repository plus examples in the Examples area. They include fire, plasma, light beams, marble, blur effects and there are lots more coming. It’s safe to say we’re a little bit addicted to creating shaders at the moment. They can add a visual sheen to 2D games that transport it to another level entirely. Don’t worry though, we haven’t bloated out the core library: we allow you to load them dynamically as needed.

There is also a brand new (but still experimental) BitmapData object which we’ll work on making more solid over the coming weeks. But it essentially gives you a blank canvas onto which you can draw, plot lines, render text, copy and paste pixels and perform all kinds of effects. It is designed to be used as a texture by any Sprite. So multiple sprites can share the same dynamic texture now. We’ll carry on ironing out this class in future releases, but it’s already pretty powerful.

I have spent a long time updating the documentation as well. Some classes which didn’t have any, like the Tilemap ones, are now fully done. And I’ve replaced lots of instances of place holder documentation with actual meaningful descriptions, with many type definitions have also fixed. Thanks to community help the TypeScript definitions file is now a lot more accurate too.

There is a brand new Getting Started guide on the Phaser site and we will start releasing new tutorials in the coming weeks too.

Marching towards 1.1.4

We will aim to get version 1.1.4 (“Kandor”) released before the end of the year, and then start planning out the features that will form the backbone of the 1.2 release. Right now we’re almost certain that will consist of a proper physics system, as our p2.js tests have been going extremely well.

It never ceases to amaze me just how receptive the community has been to Phaser. Every day we’re seeing more and more games created in it, new developers signing-up to the forum and some fantastic contributions via github, both in the shape of reported issues, fixes and enhancements. Not a day goes by when something isn’t improved or planned, helping us take it that little bit further with each step. I’m genuinely excited about what 2014 will bring.

Posted on December 1st 2013 at 1:50 pm by Rich.
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