Phaser - HTML5 Game Framework

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. 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. As a result of rapid support, and a developer friendly API, Phaser is currently one of the most starred 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.

Visit: The Phaser website and follow on Twitter (#phaserjs)
Learn: API Docs, Support Forum and StackOverflow
Code: 700+ Examples (source available in this repo)
Read: Weekly Phaser World Newsletter
Chat: Slack and Discord
Extend: With Phaser Plugins
Be awesome: Support the future of Phaser

Grab the source and join the fun!

16th May 2018

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 for comprehensive details about what recent versions contain.

About Phaser 3

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 in the weekly Phaser World 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 and chat with fellow Phaser devs in our Slack and 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.

Happy coding everyone!

Cheers,

Rich - @photonstorm

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.

If you have found Phaser useful in your development life or have made income as a result of it please support our work via:

• A monthly contribution on Patreon.
• A one-off donation with PayPal.
• Purchase any of our plugins or books.

It all helps and genuinely contributes towards future development.

Extra special thanks to our top-tier sponsors: Orange Games and CrossInstall.

Every week we publish the Phaser World 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.

Over 120 previous editions can be found on our Back Issues page.

Phaser 3 is available via GitHub, npm and CDNs:

• Clone the git repository via https, ssh or with the Github Windows or Mac clients.
• Download as zip
• Download the build files: phaser.js and phaser.min.js

NPM

Install via npm:

npm install phaser

CDN

Phaser is on jsDelivr which is a "super-fast CDN for developers". Include the following in your html:

<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/phaser@3.8.0/dist/phaser.js"></script>

or the minified version:

<script src="//cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/phaser@3.8.0/dist/phaser.min.js"></script>

API Documentation

1. Go to https://photonstorm.github.io/phaser3-docs/index.html to read the docs online.
2. Checkout the 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 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.

Webpack

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 as it's already set-up to handle the build conditions Phaser needs.

License

Phaser is released under the MIT License.

Phaser 3 is so new the "paint is still wet", but tutorials and guides are starting to come out!

• Getting Started with Phaser 3 (useful if you are completely new to Phaser)
• Making your first Phaser 3 Game
• Phaser 3 Bootstrap and Platformer Example

Also, please subscribe to the Phaser World newsletter for details about new tutorials as they are published.

Source Code Examples

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, or clone the examples repo. We are constantly adding to and refining these examples.

Create Your First Phaser 3 Example

Create an index.html page locally and paste the following code into it:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <script src="https://labs.phaser.io/build/phaser-arcade-physics.min.js"></script> 
</head>
<body>

    <script></script>

</body>
</html>

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:

var config = {
    type: Phaser.AUTO,
    width: 800,
    height: 600,
    physics: {
        default: 'arcade',
        arcade: {
            gravity: { y: 200 }
        }
    },
    scene: {
        preload: preload,
        create: create
    }
};

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:

var game = new Phaser.Game(config);

function preload ()
{
    this.load.setBaseURL('http://labs.phaser.io');

    this.load.image('sky', 'assets/skies/space3.png');
    this.load.image('logo', 'assets/sprites/phaser3-logo.png');
    this.load.image('red', 'assets/particles/red.png');
}

function create ()
{
}

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.

The create function is empty, so it's time to fill it in:

function create ()
{
    this.add.image(400, 300, 'sky');

    var particles = this.add.particles('red');

    var emitter = particles.createEmitter({
        speed: 100,
        scale: { start: 1, end: 0 },
        blendMode: 'ADD'
    });

    var logo = this.physics.add.image(400, 100, 'logo');

    logo.setVelocity(100, 200);
    logo.setBounce(1, 1);
    logo.setCollideWorldBounds(true);

    emitter.startFollow(logo);
}

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.

Run it in your browser and you'll see the following:

(Got an error? Here's the full code)

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!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter for further tutorials and examples.

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.

Custom 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.

Building from Source

If you wish to build Phaser 3 from source, ensure you have the required packages by cloning the repository and then running npm install.

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.

Version 3.8.0 - Klein - 16th May 2018

New Plugin Manager

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!

New Features

• 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.

Updates

• 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)

Bug Fixes

• 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.

Examples, Documentation and TypeScript

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:

@samme @mzguimaraes @NaNdreas @Matthew-Herman @melissaelopez @TheColorRed

Please see the complete Change Log for previous releases.

Looking for a v2 change? Check out the Phaser CE Change Log

The Contributors Guide contains full details on how to help with Phaser development. The main points are:

• Found a bug? Report it on GitHub 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 using our config and respect our Editor Config.

• Before contributing read the code of conduct.

Written something cool in Phaser? Please tell us about it in the forum, or email support@phaser.io

Phaser is a Photon Storm production.

Created by Richard Davey. Powered by coffee, anime, pixels and love.

The Phaser logo and characters are © 2018 Photon Storm Limited.

All rights reserved.

"Above all, video games are meant to be just one thing: fun. Fun for everyone." - Satoru Iwata