Phaser is a fast, free, and fun open source HTML5 game framework that offers WebGL and Canvas rendering across desktop and mobile web browsers. Games can be compiled to iOS, Android and native apps by using 3rd party tools. You can use JavaScript or TypeScript for development.
Phaser is available in two versions: Phaser 3 and [Phaser CE - The Community Edition](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser-ce). Phaser CE is a community-lead continuation of the Phaser 2 codebase and is hosted on a separate repo. Phaser 3 is the next generation of Phaser.
Along with the fantastic open source community, Phaser is actively developed and maintained by [Photon Storm](http://www.photonstorm.com). As a result of rapid support, and a developer friendly API, Phaser is currently one of the [most starred](https://github.com/collections/javascript-game-engines) game frameworks on GitHub.
Thousands of developers from indie and multi-national digital agencies, and universities worldwide use Phaser. You can take a look at their incredible [games](https://phaser.io/games/).
I'm pleased to announce the immediate availability of Phaser 3.8.0. This release continues our mission of enhancing Phaser 3 as best and as quickly as we can. New in this version is a completely overhauled Plugin system, allowing you to add game and Scene level plugins into Phaser with ease, as well as custom Game Objects and File Types too. This continues the work carried out in 3.7.0, in which we made significant improvements to the Loader, allowing for far more flexible file loading, new loader packs, new file formats, normal map support and more. We've also improved our build process, making Phaser 3 much easier to package outside of Webpack. You'll also find hundreds and hundreds of items now have full documentation too. As always, please check out the [Change Log](#changelog) for comprehensive details about what recent versions contain.
After 1.5 years in the making, tens of thousands of lines of code, hundreds of examples and countless hours of relentless work: Phaser 3 is finally out. It has been a real labor of love and then some!
Please understand this is a bleeding-edge and brand new release. There are features we've had to leave out, areas of the documentation that need completing and so many cool new things we wanted to add. But we had to draw a line in the sand somewhere and 3.0.0 represents that.
For us this is just the start of a new chapter in Phaser's life. We will be jumping on bug reports as quickly as we can and releasing new versions rapidly. We've structured v3 in such a way that we can push out point releases as fast as needed.
We publish our [Developer Logs](https://phaser.io/phaser3/devlog) in the weekly [Phaser World](https://phaser.io/community/newsletter) newsletter. Subscribe to stay in touch and get all the latest news from us and the wider Phaser community.
You can also follow Phaser on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/phaser_) and chat with fellow Phaser devs in our [Slack](https://phaser.io/community/slack) and [Discord](https://phaser.io/community/discord) channels.
Phaser 3 wouldn't have been possible without the fantastic support of the community and Patreon. Thank you to everyone who supports our work, who shares our belief in the future of HTML5 gaming, and Phaser's role in that.
Developing Phaser takes a lot of time, effort and money. There are monthly running costs as well as countless hours of development time, community support, and assistance resolving issues.
Every week we publish the [Phaser World](https://phaser.io/community/newsletter) newsletter. It's packed full of the latest Phaser games, tutorials, videos, meet-ups, talks, and more. The newsletter also contains our weekly Development Progress updates which let you know about the new features we're working on.
1. Go to https://photonstorm.github.io/phaser3-docs/index.html to read the docs online.
2. Checkout the [phaser3-docs](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser3-docs) repository and then read the documentation by pointing your browser to the local `docs/` folder.
The documentation for Phaser 3 is an on-going project. Please help us by searching the Phaser code for any instance of the string `[description]` and then replacing it with some documentation.
### TypeScript Definitions
[TypeScript Definitions](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser3-docs/tree/master/typescript) are now available.
They are automatically generated from the jsdoc comments in the Phaser source code. If you wish to help refine them then you must edit the Phaser jsdoc blocks directly. You can find more details, including the source to the conversion tool we wrote in the Docs repo.
As soon as we're happy with the accuracy of the TS defs we'll merge them into the main repo, for now, please download them from the docs repo, linked above, and add them to your project.
We use Webpack to build Phaser and we take advantage of several features specific to Webpack to do this, including `raw-loader` to handle our shader files and build-time flags for renderer swapping.
If you wish to use Webpack with Phaser then please use our [Phaser 3 Project Template](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser3-project-template) as it's already set-up to handle the build conditions Phaser needs.
During our development of Phaser 3, we created hundreds of examples with the full source code and assets. Until these examples are fully integrated into the Phaser website, you can browse them on [Phaser 3 Labs](https://labs.phaser.io), or clone the [examples repo][examples]. We are constantly adding to and refining these examples.
This is a standard empty webpage. You'll notice there's a script tag that is pulling in a build of Phaser 3, but otherwise this webpage doesn't do anything yet. Now let's set-up the game config. Paste the following between the `<script></script>` tags:
`config` is a pretty standard Phaser 3 Game Configuration object. We tell `config` to use the WebGL renderer if it can, set the canvas to a size of 800x600 pixels, enable Arcade Physics, and finally call the `preload` and `create` functions. `preload` and `create` have not been implemented yet, so if you run this JavaScript code, you will have an error. Add the following after `config`:
`game` is a Phaser Game instance that uses our configuration object `config`. We also add function definitions for `preload` and `create`. The `preload` function helps you easily load assets into your game. In `preload`, we set the Base URL to be the Phaser server and load 3 PNG files.
Here we add a sky image into the game and create a Particle Emitter. The `scale` value means that the particles will initially be large and will shrink to nothing as their lifespan progresses.
After creating the `emitter`, we add a logo image called `logo`. Since `logo` is a Physics Image, `logo` is given a physics body by default. We set some properties for `logo`: velocity, bounce (or restitution), and collision with the world bounds. These properties will make our logo bounce around the screen. Finally, we tell the particle emitter to follow the logo - so as the logo moves, the particles will flow from it.
This is a tiny example, and there are hundreds more for you to explore, but hopefully it shows how expressive and quick Phaser is to use. With just a few easily readable lines of code, we've got something pretty impressive up on screen!
There are both plain and minified compiled versions of Phaser in the `dist` folder of the repository. The plain version is for use during development, and the minified version is for production use. You can also create your own builds.
Phaser 3 is built using Webpack and we take advantage of the Webpack definePlugin feature to allow for conditional building of the Canvas and WebGL renderers. As of Phaser 3.7 we have updated our webpack config to make our source far easier to consume in other package managers like Parcel and Electron. Please look our webpack config files to get an idea of the settings we use.
You can then run `webpack` to create a development build in the `build` folder which includes source maps for local testing. You can also run `npm run dist` to create a minified packaged build in the `dist` folder.
New in this release is a revamped Plugin Manager. Phaser has always used plugins extensively internally but this release opens them up and builds in a lot of new features making them easy for you to both create and digest.
There is a new `Phaser.Plugins` namespace in which the classes live. The functions of the old PluginManager have moved to the new PluginCache and the PluginManager, which is available under `this.plugins` from all Scenes by default, now allows you to install and access any plugin.
Plugins are split into two different types: A Global Plugin and a Scene Plugin.
A **Global Plugin** is a plugin that lives within the Plugin Manager rather than a Scene. You can get access to it by calling `PluginManager.get` and providing a key. Any Scenes that request a plugin in this way all get access to the same plugin instance, allowing you to use a single plugin across multiple Scenes.
A **Scene Plugin** is a plugin dedicated to running within a Scene. These are different to Global Plugins in that their instances do not live within the Plugin Manager, but within the Scene Systems class instead. And that every Scene created is given its own unique instance of a Scene Plugin. Examples of core Scene Plugins include the Input Plugin, the Tween Plugin and the physics Plugins.
Plugins can now be installed in 3 different ways: 1) You can preload them, using the `load.plugin` and the new `load.scenePlugin` methods. This will allow you to load externally hosted plugins into your game, or pull down a plugin dynamically at run-time. 2) You can install global and scene plugins in your Game Configuration. The plugin code can be bundled with your game code into a single bundle. By specifying plugins in the game config they're instantly available as soon as your game boots. Finally, you can install plugins at run-time directly from within a Scene.
Plugins can also create brand new Game Objects and File Types, which install themselves into the respective factories. This means you can now write a plugin that adds a new file type and Game Object in a single package.
The new Plugin Manager and associated classes are 100% covered by JSDocs and there are stacks of new examples in the `plugins` folder in the Phaser 3 Labs too, so please dig in and have a play with these powerful new things!
* You can pass in your own `canvas` and `context` elements in your Game Config and Phaser will use those to render with instead of creating its own. This also allows you to pass in a WebGL 2 context. Fix #3653 (thanks @tgrajewski)
* WebGLRenderer.config has a new property `maxTextures` which is derived from `gl.MAX_TEXTURE_IMAGE_UNITS`, you can get it via the new method `getMaxTextures()`.
* WebGLRenderer.config has a new property `maxTextureSize` which is derived from `gl.MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE`, you can get it via the new method `getMaxTextureSize()`
* WebGLRenderer has a new property `compression` which holds the browser / devices compressed texture support gl extensions, which is populated during `init`.
* When calling `generateFrameNames` to define an animation from a texture atlas you can now leave out all of the config properties and it will create an animation using every frame found in the atlas. Please understand you've no control over the sequence of these frames if you do this and it's entirely dictated by the json data (thanks @Aram19)
* The keycodes for 0 to 9 on the numeric keypad have been added. You can now use them in events, i.e. `this.input.keyboard.on('keydown_NUMPAD_ZERO')` (thanks @Gaushao)
* All Game Objects have a new method `setRandomPosition` which will randomly position them anywhere within the defined area, or if no area is given, anywhere within the game size.
* Game.step now emits a `prestep` event, which some of the global systems hook in to, like Sound and Input. You can use it to perform pre-step tasks, ideally from plugins.
* Game.step now emits a `step` event. This is emitted once per frame. You can hook into it from plugins or code that exists outside of a Scene.
* Game.step now emits a `poststep` event. This is the last chance you get to do things before the render process begins.
* Optimized TextureTintPipeline.drawBlitter so it skips bobs that have alpha of zero and only calls `setTexture2D` if the bob sourceIndex has changed, previously it called it for every single bob.
* Game.context used to be undefined if running in WebGL. It is now set to be the `WebGLRenderingContext` during WebGLRenderer.init. If you provided your own custom context, it is set to this instead.
* The Game `onStepCallback` has been removed. You can now listen for the new step events instead.
* Phaser.EventEmitter was incorrectly namespaced, it's now only available under Phaser.Events.EventEmitter (thanks Tigran)
* The Script File type in the Loader didn't create itself correctly as it was missing an argument (thanks @TadejZupancic)
* The Plugin File type in the Loader didn't create itself correctly as it was missing an argument.
* WebAudioSoundManager.unlock will now check if `document.body` is available before setting the listeners on it. Fixes old versions of Firefox, apparently. #3649 (thanks @squilibob)
* Utils.Array.BringToTop failed to move the penultimate item in an array due to an index error. Fix #3658 (thanks @agar3s)
* The Headless renderer was broken due to an invalid access during TextureSource.init.
* Animation.yoyo was ignored when calculating the next frame to advance to, breaking the yoyo effect. It now yoyos properly (thanks Tomas)
* Corrected an error in Container.getBoundsTransformMatrix that called a missing method, causing a `getBounds` on a nested container to fail. Fix #3624 (thanks @poasher)
* Calling a creator, such as GraphicsCreator, without passing in a config object, would cause an error to be thrown. All Game Object creators now catch against this.
My thanks to the following for helping with the Phaser 3 Examples, Docs and TypeScript definitions, either by reporting errors, fixing them or helping author the docs:
- Found a bug? Report it on [GitHub Issues][issues] and include a code sample. Please state which version of Phaser you are using! This is vitally important.
- Before submitting a Pull Request run your code through [ES Lint](https://eslint.org/) using our [config](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/blob/master/.eslintrc.json) and respect our [Editor Config](https://github.com/photonstorm/phaser/blob/master/.editorconfig).
