Newsletter 50: April 2024

[github-actions]

Newsletter 50: April 2024

Editors: @janhohenheim, @AngelOnFira, and @mamaicode

Another month has gone by, so it's time to put together the Rust Gamedev newsletter with April's news!

Current Schedule

The deadline for all section PRs is the 28th of April, 2024

Any PRs submitted after this date will be moved to the next newsletter period. The target release date for this newsletter is the 3rd of May, 2024

Current Structure & Status

Below is our current planned structure for the newsletter, and the status of each PR (which we'll try to keep updated).

This is not an exhaustive list - if you have your own project that you want to write about, just make a comment on this issue and open a PR!

Game Updates

• sm64jsarchive by @uuphoria2: N50: sm64jsarchive (fixed) #1477
• OpenCombat by @buxx
• Times of Progress by @wilk10
• Jumpy Steam Playtest by @erlend-sh / @MaxCWhitehead
• Monk Tower @maciekglowka
• WoR by @MasonRemaley
• You Are Merlin by @hseager

Learning Material Updates

• Building Android Games by @maciekglowka

Engine Updates

• Bottomless Pit by @EggShark
• Bevy 0.13.2 by @janhohenheim (or, if they want, @alice-i-cecile / @mockersf)

Tooling Updates

None yet. Feel free to submit yours!

Library Updates

• Lightyear by @cBournhonesque
• Hexx by @ManevilleF (@janhohenheim will do this part if Felix doesn't find the time)
• joltc_sys / rolt by @LPGhatguy?

Other News

• Chris Biscardi - Bevy: A case study in ergonomic Rust by @ChristopherBiscardi
• Reactivity in Bevy by @viridia?

Discussions

None yet. Feel free to submit yours!

Publishing Steps

• Final review - by everyone
• Publish - by @janhohenheim
• Post on /r/rust, /r/rust_gamedev, /r/gamedev, URLO - by @janhohenheim
• Pin thread on Twitter - by @janhohenheim
• Add comment links - by @janhohenheim

How to Contribute

If you want to help writing the newsletter:

• Read CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Choose one or more of the "🆓 free" sections listed below, and leave a comment letting us know you want to work on them.
  • The links in brackets (like [1](#), [2](#), [3](#)) are suggestions of links to include in the section. Feel free to add more!
  • The username listed next to the section (like @janhohenheim?) is a suggestion of who may want to pick up the work (usually the project's developer, or someone who has expressed interest in the past).
  • You are not obligated to write a section if you're tagged or your project is listed! You're welcome to ask someone else to write the section, or to ask for your project to be excluded from this month's post.
  • Extra sections not listed in the plan are welcomed - just leave a comment and open a PR!
• Write a short overview in the newsletter's Markdown file, making sure to follow the style guidelines (see below).
• Send a PR to the source branch (example: N15: A/B Street #336).
• Mention this issue in your PR's description to link it all together.

Style Guidelines

The full style guide is in CONTRIBUTING.md,
but here are the most important rules:

• Write in third-person perspective.
• Each line must be 80 characters or less, for ease of reviewing/diffing.
• Only one image per section is allowed.
  • The maximum size is 300kb for static images and 2.5mb for GIFs.
  • The image should come before the text, and must have alt text for accessibility.
  • Prefer static images to GIFs, to keep the page load times down.
• Each section should be under 1000 characters, and under 6 paragraphs.
  • This only applies to the rendered text, not the markup.
• Keep formatting minimal - no bold/italics/etc.
• Avoid long/nested bullet point lists - no changelogs!

Please use these templates as a starting point:

Games/apps/libraries:

### [Game name]

![alt text](img)
_optional image label_

[Game name] ([GitHub], [Discord], [Twitter]) by [@nickname]
is... {short project description in one sentence}.

{An overview of the recent updates with links to more details}.

_Discussions: [/r/rust_gamedev](link), [Twitter](link), [etc](link)_

[Game name]: http://example.com

Articles/blog posts/videos/etc:

### [Article name]

![alt text](img)
_optional image label_

[@nickname] published an [article] about...
{overview what the resource is about}.

_Discussions: [/r/rust_gamedev](link), [Twiter](link), [etc](link)_

[Article name]: http://example.com

[buxx]

I will take the OpenCombat game update.

[mamaicode]

So happy we are back in game!

[janhohenheim]

@mamaicode agreed :D
I'm currently writing a little call for submissions to spread on social media.
Update: Done!

[ChristopherBiscardi]

Happy to see the newsletter running again!

I can write something up for my talk.

[DrAlta]

The deadline for a April issue is May 3rd. you have a time machine, or should that be the May issue?

[Seldom-SE]

The deadline for a April issue is May 3rd. you have a time machine, or should that be the May issue?

The April issue covers news that happened in April, but is released in May. That's not to say they don't have a time machine, though

[janhohenheim]

Exactly. The plan for next month is to start on the 3rd, have the deadline on the 28th and then release the newsletter and start the next call for submissions on the 3rd again :)

See #1482

[ElhamAryanpur]

Excited for this month! gonna start the video recording as soon as deadline reaches 💪🏼

[Im-Oab]

I have another SHMUP game that I am making after Flesh is released.

[maciekglowka]

Hi, I took the liberty of adding my little game that has recently been released ;)

[ghenry]

Hi all, saw this mentioned in the Hands On Rust book, but can't find how I sign up to the newsletter. Can someone kindly share the link? Thanks!

[janhohenheim]

@ghenry the newsletter itself is hosted on https://gamedev.rs and there's an RSS feed at https://gamedev.rs/rss.xml
There's no email subscription yet. If you want to have the newsletter arrive in a Discord channel, I think there's something you could do by subscribing to another channel. Let me know if that is something you'd be interested in.

[ghenry]

Thanks. What do these guys use? https://this-week-in-rust.org/

Do you need a sponsor? I used to life feedburner for this type of thing.

[ElhamAryanpur]

@ghenry I think this week in rust gets their feed from reddit as well as I've seen several threads there. For newsletter, there are a lot of open source services that can handle email bulk push such as postal. Sendgrid, mailgun, postmark, ... works too

[ElhamAryanpur]

perhaps opening a new issue about it could get some eyes and possible implementations?

[janhohenheim]

That issue already exists since 5 years haha #24
I'd like to see this, but I haven't got the necessary knowledge or time to implement it. I'm very open to reviewing anything people might contribute ASAP though :)

[ElhamAryanpur]

oh I didn't notice that, it is possible and quite easy but main issue is IP being blocked by some services like google if enough people put it to spam. Thats why hosting services don't offer mail server DNS option. Linode used to allow it.

We can use something like mailchip, Sendgrid, mailgun, postmark, ... They are not open source but 100% can work. Can send email through GH action even

[maciekglowka]

Hi, I've just remembered that I also did recently some small write-up about issues related to Android targeting. I use some obsolete solutions like cargo-apk - so not sure it's all that relevant. But if you'd think it's useful I can also make a PR for that.
https://maciejglowka.com/blog/building-games-for-android-with-rust/

[janhohenheim]

@maciekglowka yes please! That definitely looks relevant :)

[maciekglowka]

@maciekglowka yes please! That definitely looks relevant :)

Thanks, just added a relevant PR

[janhohenheim]

The first draft of the release is now done at #1496. Feedback is welcome :)