Newsletter โ Issue 003
Happy new year, everyone! May 2023 be a great year for you and your game projects! ๐
Letโs start the year with some fresh content to get the creative juices flowing.
๐ฅ Headlines
Webspaces is a new project by Greg Fodor built on top of Mozilla Hubs to create and self-host 3D virtual spaces for users to visit. Webspaces are simple HTML files that can be edited directly from within the scenes they represent by writing to the local file system or via GitHub pull requests. Visitors connect to each other via peer-to-peer WebRTC. Learn more in this blog post.
Greg also optimized and packaged for NPM a CLI tool for the Smooth Voxels library, which lets you create smooth 3D models from voxels that you can author with plain text! ๐คฏ
In the last issue, we talked about
Threlte. This time, letโs shed some light on
PlayCanvas, a full-featured WebGL 3D engine owned by
Snap (not
sponsored). It is composed of the open-source Engine,
which can be used on its own for a code-first approach, and the online
Editor, which has free and paid
plans. Here is their 2022
showcase and a crash
course to get started. They also
make the PCUI components library.
gltfjsx v6 is
out. Itโs a CLI and
online tool to generate JSX components for React Three
Fiber. This new version features better
compression via the --transform and --simplify
flags, thanks to Don McCurdyโs
glTF-Transform,
Draco, WebP,
and sharp. Optimize your models right from the CLI without
Blender!
โฌ๏ธ Updates
Three.js r148 โ The
examples/jsdirectory has been removed (changelog, migration guide).
A-Frame v1.4.0 โ
Switched to Custom Elements V1, Meta Quest Pro support.- Drei v9.44 to v9.50 โ Adds
<Hud> and
<ScreenSpace> for heads-up-displays,
<Gltf> to render models,
<Grid> to measure
distances, <Html> and
<SoftShadows> improvements, and the
<AsciiRenderer>.
โ๏ธ Content
- ๐ฌ Three.js Crash Course For
Beginners by
developedbyed.
- ๐ฌ
Letโs Talk About MatCaps in
Babylon.js by Patrick Ryan. - ๐ฌ Custom shaders on
PlayCanvas by Cem
Demir for Venge.io.
โจ Games & Demos
- ๐ฎ Aritelia, a beautiful world created by Solar
Games with PlayCanvas.
- ๐ฎ Minecraft Classic is a web port of the
original Minecraft game made in Babylon.js.
- ๐ฎ
Did you know the massively-successful Vampire
Survivors is made with
Phaser? - ๐ฎ Gucci is making games for some
reason, with Three.js, React Three
Fiber, and Next.js.
- โจ
A cool AR
demo by Mate
Steinforth on Meta Quest Pro.
See more on the โจ Games & Demos page or ๐ฎ WebGamer.io.
๐ WebGameDev.com
- โจ Games & Demos now shows a beautiful gallery of games.
- ๐ Web Game Engines & Libraries has been updated with wrappers, WebXR, and JS OpenGL.
- New ๐ Progressive Web Apps page.
- New ๐ Authentication page.
- New ๐ฎ Consoles page.
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