Phaser is a fast, free and fun open source game framework for making desktop and mobile browser HTML5 games. It uses [Pixi.js](https://github.com/GoodBoyDigital/pixi.js/) internally for fast 2D Canvas and WebGL rendering.
It's staggering to think just how much has been achieved in the short time Phaser has been alive. We've implemented literally hundreds of bug fixes and updates, thanks to the effort the community puts in to reporting issues they find. Exciting new features have been merged into the core and we revisited old ones and pimped them out. We also completely overhauled the Examples Suite, removed the requirement for PHP, rebuilt it and filled it with over 150 examples to dig in and learn from. And more importantly we've got our first pass at the API docs ready too.
There is still more to be done of course. The API docs, while a good start, are lacking in places and still need to be backed up with a proper comprehensive manual. And we desperately need to write some 'best practises' and 'getting started' tutorials too. But we hope you appreciate the amount of effort that has been put in by the team so far.
There are many exciting new features and tweaks in this build that we felt it warranted a proper point release, hence the shift to version 1.1. Because of several core changes games that were in development in a 1.0.x version of Phaser may need refactoring for 1.1, but we feel those changes have helped the framework grow and mature as a whole.
As before we offer a heart-felt "Thank you!" to everyone who has encouraged us along the way. To those of you who worked with Phaser during its various incarnations, and who released full games with it despite there being zero API documentation available: you are our heroes. It's your kind words and enthusiasm that has kept us going.
Phaser is everything we ever wanted from an HTML5 game framework. It powers all of our client work in build today and remains our single most important product, and we've only just scratched the surface of what we have planned for it.
* New: StageScaleMode.forceOrientation allows you to lock your game to one orientation and display a Sprite (i.e. a "please rotate" screen) when incorrect.
* New: World.visible boolean added, toggles rendering of the world on/off entirely.
* New: Added Group.iterate, a powerful way to count or return child that match a certain criteria. Refactored Group to use iterate, lots of repeated code cut.
Games created with Phaser require a modern web browser that supports the canvas tag. This includes Internet Explorer 9+, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. It also works on mobile web browsers including stock Android 2.x browser and above and iOS5 Mobile Safari and above.
For developing with Phaser you can use either a plain-vanilla JavaScript approach or [TypeScript](https://typescript.codeplex.com/) using the provided TypeScript definitions file. We made no assumptions about how you like to code your games, and were careful not to impose any form of class/inheritance/structure upon you.
Phaser uses both a Canvas and WebGL renderer internally and can automatically swap between them based on browser support. This allows for lightning fast rendering across Desktop and Mobile. Phaser uses and contributes towards the excellent Pixi.js library for rendering.
We've made the loading of assets as simple as one line of code. Images, Sounds, Sprite Sheets, Tilemaps, JSON data, XML - all parsed and handled automatically, ready for use in game and stored in a global Cache for Sprites to share.
Phaser ships with our Arcade Physics system. An extremely light-weight AABB physics library perfect for low-powered devices and fast collision response. Control velocity, acceleration, bounce, drag and full collision and separation control.
Sprites are the life-blood of your game. Position them, tween them, rotate them, scale them, animate them, collide them, paint them onto custom textures and so much more!
Sprites also have full Input support: click them, touch them, drag them around, snap them - even pixel perfect click detection if needed.
Group bundles of Sprites together for easy pooling and recycling, avoiding constant object creation. Groups can also be collided: for example a "Bullets" group checking for collision against the "Aliens" group, with a custom collision callback to handle the outcome.
Phaser supports classic Sprite Sheets with a fixed frame size, Texture Packer and Flash CS6/CC JSON files (both Hash and Array formats) and Starling XML files. All of these can be used to easily create animation for Sprites.
An Arcade Particle system is built-in, which allows you to create fun particle effects easily. Create explosions or constant streams for effects like rain or fire. Or attach the Emitter to a Sprite for a jet trail.
Phaser has a built-in Game World. Objects can be placed anywhere within the world and you've got access to a powerful Camera to look into that world. Pan around and follow Sprites with ease.
Talk to a Phaser.Pointer and it doesn't matter if the input came from a touch-screen or mouse, it can even change mid-game without dropping a beat. Multi-touch, Mouse, Keyboard and lots of useful functions allow you to code custom gesture recognition.
Phaser supports both Web Audio and legacy HTML Audio. It automatically handles mobile device locking, easy Audio Sprite creation, looping, streaming and volume. We know how much of a pain dealing with audio on mobile is, so we did our best to resolve that!
Phaser can load, render and collide with a tilemap with just a couple of lines of code. We support CSV and Tiled map data formats with multiple tile layers. There are lots of powerful tile manipulation functions: swap tiles, replace them, delete them, add them and update the map in realtime.
Phaser has a built-in Scale Manager which allows you to scale your game to fit any size screen. Control aspect ratios, minimum and maximum scales and full-screen support.
We are trying hard to keep the core of Phaser limited to only essential classes, so we built a smart Plugin system to handle everything else. Create your own plugins easily and share them with the community.
Phaser was built specifically for Mobile web browsers. Of course it works blazingly fast on Desktop too, but unlike lots of frameworks mobile was our main focus. If it doesn't perform well on mobile then we don't add it into the Core.
We use Phaser every day on our many client projects. As a result it's constantly evolving and improving and we jump on bugs and pull requests quickly. This is a living, breathing framework maintained by a commercial company with custom feature development and support packages available. We live and breathe HTML5 games.
Although Phaser 1.0 is a brand new release it is born from years of experience building some of the biggest HTML5 games out there. We're not saying it is 100% bug free, but we use it for our client work every day, so issues get resolved <em>fast</em> and we stay on-top of the changing browser landscape.
The 1.1 release was a massive under-taking, but we're really happy with how Phaser is progressing. It's becoming more solid and versatile with each iteration. Here is what's on our road map for future versions:
* Integration with an advanced physics system. We've been experimenting with p2.js but have yet to conclude our research.
* A more advanced Particle system, one that can render to a single canvas (rather than spawn hundreds of Sprites), more advanced effects, etc.
* Massively enhance the audio side of Phaser. Although it does what it does well, it could do with taking more advantage of Web Audio - echo effects, positional sound, etc.
* Comprehensive testing across Firefox OS devices, CocoonJS and Ejecta.
* Integration with third party services like Google Play Game Services and Amazon JS SDK.
* Ability to control DOM elements from the core game and layer them into the game.
* Touch Gestures.
* Virtual d-pad support and also support for the Joypad API.
* Test out packaging with Node-webkit.
* Flash CC HTML5 export integration.
* Game parameters stored in Google Docs.
* More advanced tile map features. Better support for advanced Tiled features and also I want to add full support for DAME tilemaps.
Phaser comes with an ever growing suite of Examples. Personally I feel that we learn better by looking at small refined code examples, so we created over 150 of them and create new ones to test every new feature added. Inside the `examples` folder you'll find the current set. If you write a particularly good example then please send it to us.
You can do this on the Phaser board that is part of the [HTML5 Game Devs forum](http://www.html5gamedevs.com/forum/14-phaser/) or email: rich@photonstorm.com
