Join our live webcast: Introducing the Turbulenz HTML5 game engine!

We are holding a live webcast to introduce users to the open source Turbulenz Engine on Tuesday 21st May. It is free and anyone can join. You can receive email updates on the event by registering online. Whether you’re already using Turbulenz, working on HTML5 games or applications, investigating technologies for an upcoming game, or have a general interest in modern game technologies, this session is worth joining. You can even send us questions in advance on the event page here.

The agenda is:

• Getting set up with the Turbulenz HTML5 Engine
• An introduction to the main features and APIs
• Creating an HTML5 app
• Getting your app online
• Q&A with the Turbulenz development team

Time: Tuesday 21st May at 8am West Coast US / 4pm UK time / Midnight Japan time.

Location: Streamed live online at livestream

Duration: Presentation will last 1 hour. We are leaving an additional hour afterwards for Q&A.

We hope to see you there.

TypeScript in focus - getting started with TypeScript Turbulenz

SDK 0.25.1 is a minor update to SDK 0.25.0 and contains a few fixes and updated documentation. If you’ve just updated to 0.25.0 this update should be a breeze.

TypeScript in Focus

There’s now a whole new section in the “Getting Started Guide” that goes into depth about how to build against Turbulenz TypeScript modules. With a walkthrough example and commands that you can use with your own build system. You should be up and running in no time. Future developments will include a standardised build structure, so watch this space.

More and more COLLADA updates

We’re continuously making updates to our dae2json tool; supporting additional features and making improvements. There’s so much going on we can get them out fast enough. See the detailed release notes to find out what’s new.

A fistful of fixes

Fixes in this release include a bug in the soundDevice.listenerGain property on canvas and the correction of a few missing files in the SDK. See the release notes for details.

TypeScript version of Turbulenz Engine now available

Type check… one, two - TypeScript support rocks Turbulenz

SDK 0.25.0 has been a long time coming, but we hope it will be a significant step in helping our developers make awesome games. This SDK includes the first public release of TypeScript versions of our libraries. With improved syntax checking and validation using TypeScript should help you streamline your development process and avoid silly bugs and runtime errors down the line. It compiles to JavaScript and works with other existing JavaScript libraries.

You don’t need to use TypeScript to use Turbulenz, but we now provide type definitions for all of our libraries, which is just one good reason to try it out!

For more information on TypeScript check out: http://www.typescriptlang.org

Features

TypeScript

The SDK now includes tslib and jslib (generated from tslib) as well as TypeScript versions of apps and samples.

This feature is in beta and we need your help to try it out! Make sure to read the detailed release notes and the TypeScript recommendations.

• Existing developers: Use the standard jslib as usual. If you have your own modifications, compare your code to the tslib version which has a similar layout to previous jslib releases. Investigate whether TypeScript would help you with your project.
• New developers: Start your project with either of tslib or jslib depending on preference. 

interesting blog article of his findings during developmentOur TypeScript guru Duncan has written an . Definitely worth a read.

Video support

The GraphicsDevice now supports the creation of video objects that can render video data as a texture. This feature can be used for cut-sequences and other media playback in the game engine. The video sample shows how this can be used in conjunction with audio to playback a video. Check graphicsDevice.isSupported to find out if the browser supports WebM or MP4 video formats.

Physics snapshots

The PhysicsManager now supports snapshots for creating and restoring snapshots of dynamic physics objects on the scene.

Ideal for resetting the state of physics simulations.

Clean-up outstanding API requests

A new destroy function has been added to the RequestHandler to help clean-up outstanding request callbacks and stop them from accessing invalid state on destruction. Make sure to add this to your existing shutdown code.

UV transformation support for the renderers

DefaultRendering, DeferredRendering and ForwardRendering now support uvTransform allowing you to rotate, scale and translate UVs. See the release notes for more details.

Updates for dae2json

dae2json, the COLLADA import tools for models, animations, materials and more has had a number of bug fixes and improvements. It has better support for various exporters from Maya/Max to Sketchup. Notable is the addition of the NvTriStrip command which is a recommended step for optimising meshes.

Fixes

• T152 - An issue where deploygame tool was unable to upload to the Hub.
• A rounding error for certain values in storeitems.yaml that caused an error on the Hub.
• Various fixes to dae2json to avoid crashing and give more warnings for incorrect/unsupported files.
• Fixed an issue where JSProfiling was unable to generate array information in the latest Chrome.

See the 0.25.0 release notes for more details.

The SDK is available to download from the developer service at hub.turbulenz.com.

Automatically play with your friends as we power-up Turbulenz

Auto connect with your friends

Looking for your friends on Turbulenz? When you sign-up to turbulenz.com using your Facebook account, you will now automatically follow all your friends on Facebook that are using Turbulenz, in return they will follow you too. So when you first sign-in, you’re more likely to have friends to chat with and invite to multiplayer games immediately. This was requested by quite a few users.

Internet Explorer even more friendly to play with

We’ve also added a few boring things (other than many bug fixes) to make it easier for games to update on non-HTML5 browsers. So expect games on the site to release updates more frequently! If you really want to know how this has changed, see the developer notes for details, or just go forth and play more games!

Tighter control of engine versions for developers

The Hub has now been updated to request specific engine versions for your projects, when testing the plugin. Previously it would try and play the latest engine you had installed, but now you can ask for engine versions in the form X.Y. This means you can be developing a game that works with 0.24 while still being able to play older games that are built with 0.23. Less switching of engines, should make it easier to go back and forth (with the added benefit you can jump between development and playing games on turbulenz.com).

There have also been updates to how leaderboards and store icons are processed on the Hub (See SDK 0.24.0 release notes for details).

Play-before-sign-in added to Turbulenz

Turbulenz SDK 0.23.0 is now available on the hub.

The main update in this release is to add support for “Play before sign-in”. This allows users to try games before signing into the game site. The web services are smart enough to then allow users to create accounts later and keep all the badges, scores and their game progress.

New Features

• Support for Internet Explorer 10 has now been added.
• Support has been added in Turbulenz Services for play before sign-in. Games that are built with this version of the SDK will automatically support play before sign-in, when available on turbulenz.com

Fixed

• In previous versions, calls to Turbulenz.setInterval() in plugin mode could generate callbacks at 60Hz independent of the interval value passed in. This has been fixed.
• The previous version of the Turbulenz Engine installer (0.22.0) for Mac OS X unconditionally replaces parts of existing plugins, even if a newer plugin is already installed. This has been fixed, but users installing 0.22.0 after later versions of the engine should be aware of this behaviour and should ensure that they (re)install the newest Turbulenz Engine after 0.22.0 if they wish to continue using the 0.22.0 engine alongside newer versions.
• Callbacks from the NetworkDevice are now called asynchronously, fixing an inconsistency between the canvas and plugin versions.
• Sending of websocket data >8kb was being incorrectly buffered in the plugin (T1221)

The full release notes are available online at docs.turbulenz.com.

Lock & Load: More Weapons In The Fight For Better Browser Games

Lets face it, developing for lots of different configurations can be a pain. That’s why in this release of the Turbulenz SDK we’ve added functionality to make it easier to check the things you need and not be concerned with the things you don’t. Here are a couple of examples:

Which sound files do I need to load?

The Sound Device has built in checking for supported file formats. It can tell you what a browser supports, saving you from loading megabytes of the wrong file type.

How do I check what version of Turbulenz a user has?

In short, you don’t need to. The new Turbulenz loader takes away the hassle of checking which version a user is running. You request the version of the engine you need and if the user has it, the loader will run it. When on turbulenz.com the site is aware of what the user’s configuration supports and can direct them to the most compatible version of your game. You don’t need to do anything apart from provide the game builds. Cool, huh?

Read More

Multi-player, Multi-configuration, Multi-ple choices!

This release of the Turbulenz SDK is all about multiplying the possibilities. We’ve spent some time making it easier to develop for different target configurations simultaneously. Using the new makehtml and maketzjs tools you can write code once, create a canvas and a plugin compatible version of your game at the same time.

Now that you can target multiple configurations, why not add multiple players? We’ve introduced a new multi-player match making service. When integrated into your game it automatically pairs players with their friends ensuring that you’re not playing alone when you could be playing together.

There’s a new place for the full set of release notes.

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Robust input, robust loading and robust profiling

Are you interested in a more flexible method of detected user input? If so, then this release of the Turbulenz SDK is for you. We’ve added additional callbacks and input state detection, so now you can tell if a user has clicked on your game and when they navigate to a different window. We’ve also bundled a robust request handler that deals with lost internet connections. Lose a connection, stay in the game!

The full release notes are available on Github - you need access to the Turbulenz SDK repository to read these. Get in touch if you want early access.

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Turbulenz SDK 0.17.0 now available

Have you been working on a HTML5 game using canvas? Turbulenz SDK 0.17.0 introduces canvas support, providing the first step in bringing your game to the Turbulenz platform, not to mention making it playable on browsers that lack canvas compatibility. In this SDK we’ve also revamped our input support providing a system of mapping keys that works for Windows/Mac and across different keyboard configurations.

The full release notes are available on Github - you need access to the Turbulenz SDK repository to read these. Get in touch if you want early access.

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Turbulenz SDK 0.16.0 now available

Stop the press! This release of the Turbulenz SDK 0.16.0 comes with a special feature that we at Turbulenz are proud to make available to users and developers.

Introducing Apple Mac OS X support for the Turbulenz Engine. Now you can access the Turbulenz game site and other services using your Mac. We’ve been working towards a goal of ensuring a great user experience on each of our supported platforms, so we hope you enjoy it.

The full release notes are available on Github - you need access to the Turbulenz SDK repository to read these. Get in touch if you want early access.

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Turbulenz SDK 0.15.0 now available

A new version of the Turbulenz SDK is now available!

The Turbulenz Team has been busy in the lab cooking up some new features and we’re excited about what the Turbulenz SDK 0.15.0 brings for our developers! This release introduces new Turbulenz Services: ‘Leaderboards’, ‘Badges’ and ‘User Profiles’ to developers. With added support for Firefox 4/5 and Internet Explorer 9, speed improvements and WebGL support, there’s a lot crammed in there, so read on to find out more.

The full release notes are available on Github

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Turbulenz at Develop and Evolve - what did we learn?

Turbulenz were at Develop and Evolve in Brighton, here are our main take aways, helpfully condensed into 10 bite size portions of wisdom. 

1. Physical Media is Dead 

Games industry will be £87bn by 2014. In 2008 digital sales made up 31% of the industry. In 2010 this figure had increased to 45% meaning nearly half of all game revenue is generated without need for a retailer. Still wondering why HMV are doing so badly now?

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Turbulenz SDK 0.14.0 now available

The next version of the Turbulenz SDK is ready.

In this release, we bring you a range of new samples to aid your development with Turbulenz technology.

We have also included improved graphics support:

• Closer alignment with OpenGL ES 2.0
• Compatibility with older graphics chipsets and graphics drivers with known OpenGL implementation issues

The full release notes are available on Github - make sure you’re signed in to see them.

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Turbulenz SDK 0.13.0 now available

A new version of the Turbulenz SDK is now available! 

In this release, we’ve added another Turbulenz Service API and improved the Turbulenz Engine installer to be as easy as possible.

The full release notes are available on Github - make sure you’re signed in to see them.

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