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The first official Phaser book


lessmilk
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A book sounds great.

 

I'm sure that you'll get lots of people giving different directions that they think the book should go so here's mine :)

 

My preference would for the book to give you a broad overview of all the phaser features, with small examples. The book should make a concious effort not to just duplicate the documentation

You can do this by giving simple example code but also showing situations which push the phaser library to its limits.

O Reilly books sometimes work like this - Moocks "Essential Actionscript 3.0" is a good example.

 

Another example, I need pixel perfect collision and I looked at the "collide" method. It doesn't say whether its pixel perfect or not. An ideal book would go into this with detail and discuss strategies for optimising collisions to 

work in the most efficient manner.

 

Best of luck with the book and I look forward to seeing it when its finished.

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Hi guys,

 

Just to say that I'm no longer involved in this book, mostly due to a lack of time.

 

I wish Thomas all the best with it and am sure it'll turn out great, so don't let this put anyone off ordering it.

 

As a result it's no longer an official Phaser book. All that means is that we don't check the content for accuracy before publication (and some other legal title things). From what I've read up to this point that isn't something that should concern you, Thomas knows what he's doing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I bought the "Book + Code"-bundle.

 

The book (I used the PDF, there are ebub and .mobi-versions in the package as well), has a one-column layout, 128 pages, never looks to cramped and is easy to read. Sometimes it breaks code over more than one page where it would have been possible (and nice) to simply start on a new page (like on Page 8/9 in my version of the book). To understand the book, you'll need to know a little bit of html and of course javascript, which the book also states. The book begins with what Phaser is, what you need to set it up and how to get a game project started. It could be a bit more comprehensive on some of these points (How to set up a Webserver could use a little more detail, where is that f*cking Download-Button on Gitghub ;)), but that's not it's focus, so that's OK.

 

It then proceeds to make a game prototype and builds it up until you have a desktop and mobile-friendly game with animations, sounds, gamestates, touch/keyboard inputs, uses game-maps made with Tiled-Editor and so on. I think the only thing I'm missing would be, "scrolling" (Levels with more than one screen), but besides this, and the limitation, that it only makes use of Arcade-Physics, it looks really comprehensive and delivers it's topics in easy to digest portions.

 

The books ends with the whole total source-code of the finalised game and some suggestions/tips where to go from there. All in all I think it's a really great guide to start phaser. I guess you could find most of the thing explained in online-tutorials, but having them in one easy to digest book is really nice to have and 29$ seems a good price for it, and I wouldn't question the price, if it wasn't for the bundle.

 

The bundle "+ Code" is exactly what the page says: The final code of each chapter from the book in executable form, a cheat-sheet (which gained an update from ugly .txt to a nicer .PDF) that shows you all the phaser objects (and their methods/attributes) used in the book, as well as an empty template for a game with different gamestates.

 

It did cost an additional 30$, and I'm quite underwhelemed by it. I somehow expected the book to be even more comprehensive when the code is given as a different package, but the code (and if you take a sharp look even the empty game template) is completely in the book and you'll have it, if you work through the chapters. The code in the book, of course takes space of the 128 pages you bought, I guess something around 30-40 pages.

 

Now I'm not sure whether the book is worth less because of said 30-40 pages or I misspent the 30$, but since it's exactly what the Homepage of the book page says, I guess that's my own fault. The cheat-sheet is nice, but not 30$-nice.

 

I think I'll settle with a "thumbs up" on the book, but I can't really recommend the "+ Code" bundle.

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I bought the book too. I liked it and i suggest it to a newbie (like me) to html5 game development and Phaser.

The only thing i might add would be a chapter on scrolling games (using tilemaps bigger than the screen) and an intro to the other physic engines (just as ragnarok said).

So, it's a "thumbs up" for me too and a "thank you" to Thomas Palef for the book and his helpful site:D 

 

P.S.

now i am waiting for the book (https://leanpub.com/phaser) by Richard Davey  :rolleyes:

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I bought the whole thing 100€, but I think it's more interesting for really beginners. If you've already been developing 2 or 3 games with Phaser, I don't think you'll actually learn a lot. I really appreciate the idea of the book, it's just me who had put too much expectation on it.

 

If you're a beginner in phaser I recommend it though.

 

Thx to the author for the time and even if it's not what I was looking for I think you did well (better than I would do, so good job)

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Hi everyone,

 

Sorry for the lack of news, things have been really busy after the book launch. 

To answer some of your questions:

 

Its out :) and I took the plunge :) you can find it here: http://discoverphaser.com/

 

Note to Thomas: 2 of the suggested game examples are missing from the Premium pack (Match 3 & Infinite runner), however, Space shooter is all present and correct! 

 

Excellent format to follow too :)

 

I fixed this a week ago. All the packages have all the content included. Sorry about that.

 

I bought the "Book + Code"-bundle.

 

The books ends with the whole total source-code of the finalised game and some suggestions/tips where to go from there. All in all I think it's a really great guide to start phaser. I guess you could find most of the thing explained in online-tutorials, but having them in one easy to digest book is really nice to have and 29$ seems a good price for it, and I wouldn't question the price, if it wasn't for the bundle.

 

Thanks a lot for the feedback, really interesting! Do you have any specific ideas of things I could add to the "code" package to make it more interesting to you?

 

I bought the book too. I liked it and i suggest it to a newbie (like me) to html5 game development and Phaser.

The only thing i might add would be a chapter on scrolling games (using tilemaps bigger than the screen) and an intro to the other physic engines (just as ragnarok said).

So, it's a "thumbs up" for me too and a "thank you" to Thomas Palef for the book and his helpful site:D 

 

Thanks! I actually updated the book a few days ago with some information on how to make the the world size bigger than what is displayed on the screen.

 

I bought the whole thing 100€, but I think it's more interesting for really beginners. If you've already been developing 2 or 3 games with Phaser, I don't think you'll actually learn a lot. I really appreciate the idea of the book, it's just me who had put too much expectation on it.

 

If you're a beginner in phaser I recommend it though.

 

Thx to the author for the time and even if it's not what I was looking for I think you did well (better than I would do, so good job)

 

Yes, the book is called "Discover Phaser", not "Master Phaser". So it's a step by step guide to get started with it, sorry about the confusion.

 

Let me know if you have any other questions about the discoverphaser.com book :-)

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