Version 3.80.0 - Nino - in dev

New Features

• The Scale Manager has a new scale mode called EXPAND. This is inspired by the Expand mode in Godot: "Keep aspect ratio when stretching the screen, but keep neither the base width nor height. Depending on the screen aspect ratio, the viewport will either be larger in the horizontal direction (if the screen is wider than the base size) or in the vertical direction (if the screen is taller than the original size)" (thanks @rexrainbow)
• Phaser now performs a WebGL Context Restore to keep the game running after losing WebGL context. This affects many parts of the rendering system, but everything should work just the same unless you're doing something very technical. See the link for more details.

New Features - Base64 Loader

The Phaser LoaderPlugin and related classes have been updated so that they now work natively with base64 encoded files and Data URIs. This means you can now load a base64 encoded image, audio file or text file directly into the Loader. The Loader will then decode the data and process it as if it was a normal file. This is particularly useful for environments such as Playable Ads where you have to provide a single html file with all assets embedded and no XHR requests.

• Loader.File.base64 is a new read-only boolean property that is set if the file contains a Data URI encoded string.
• Loader.File.onBase64Load is a new method that is called when the file has finished decoding from a Data URI.
• The ImageFile will now default to using the Image Load Element if a base64 file is detected, instead of throwing a console warning about unsupported types.
• The XHRLoader will now return a fake XHR result object containing the decoded base64 data if a base64 file is detected, skipping the creation of a real XML Http Request object.

Spine Updates

• The Spine 3 and 4.1 Plugins will now call preUpdate automatically when the play method is called. This forces the new animation state to update and apply itself to the skeleton. This fixes an issue where Spine object would show the default frame in the Spine atlas for a single update before the animation started. Fix #5443 (thanks @spayton)
• SpineGameObject.setSlotAlpha is a new method that allows you to set the alpha on a specific slot in a Spine skeleton.
• The SpineGameObject.setAlpha method has had its 2nd parameter removed. This fixes needless slot look-ups during rendering when a Spine Game Object is inside a regular Container. If you need to set slot alpha, use the new setSlotAlpha method instead. Fix #6571 (thanks @spayton)
• The SpineFile.onFileComplete handler was running a regular expression against file.src instead of file.url, sometimes leading to double paths in the atlas paths on loading. Fix #6642 (thanks @rez23)

Updates

• The TweenChainBuilder was incorrectly setting the persist flag on the Chain to true, which goes against what the documentation says. It now correctly sets it to false. This means if you previously had a Tween Chain that was persisting, it will no longer do so, so add the property to regain the feature.
• The dropped argument has now been adeded to the documentation for the DRAG_END and GAMEOBJECT_DRAG_END events. (thanks @samme)
• Container.onChildDestroyed is a new internal method used to destroy Container children. Previously, if you destroyed a Game Object in an exclusive Container, the game object would (momentarily) move onto the Scene display list and emit an ADDED_TO_SCENE event. Also, if you added a Sprite to a non-exclusive Container and stopped the Scene, you would get a TypeError (evaluating 'this.anims.destroy'). This happened because the fromChild argument in the DESTROY event was misinterpreted as destroyChild in the Container's remove(), and the Container was calling the Sprite's destroy() again. (thanks @samme)
• The Text and TileSprite Game Objects now place their textures into the global TextureManager and a _textureKey private string property has been added which contains a UUID to reference that texture.
• The Tilemaps.Components.WeightedRandomize method now uses the Phaser Math.RND.frac method with a seed instead of the Math.Random static method. (thanks @jorbascrumps)
• Tilemaps.Components.IsometricCullTiles does the CheckIsoBounds method check last when building the outputArray, as to help optimize in situations where the tile would not be visible anyways. (thanks @zegenie)
• Tilemaps.Components.WeightedRandomize now uses the Phaser Math.RND.frac method with a seed instead the Math.Random static method. (thanks @jorbascrumps)
• The Layer Game Object has had its removeAll, remove and add methods removed. These methods are all still available via the List class that Layer inherits, but the destroyChild parameters are no longer available.
• The Renderer.Canvas and Renderer.WebGL will now only be included in the build file if the corresponding feature flags CANVAS_RENDERER and/or WEBGL_RENDERER are set to true. For Canvas only builds this saves a lot of space in the build. (thanks @samme)
• You can now specify an autoResize boolean in the RenderTargetConfig which is passed to the Render Targets when they are created by a pipeline.
• The UtilityPipeline now sets autoResize to true in its Render Target Config, so that the global fullFrame and halfFrame Render Targets will automatically resize if the renderer changes.
• Actions.PlaceOnLine now has an added ease parameter which accepts a string from the EaseMap or a custom ease function to allow for different distrubutions along a line. (thanks @sB3p)
• If you enable a Game Object for Input Debugging, the debug shape will no longer be rendered if the Game Object itself is not visible. Fix #6364 (thanks @orjandh)
• The XHRLoader will now listen for ontimeout and if triggered it will hand over to the File.onError handler. This prevents the Loader from stalling if a file times out. Fix #6472 (thanks @343dev)

Bug Fixes

• The InputManager.onTouchMove function has been fixed so it now correctly handles touch events on pages that have scrolled horizontally or vertically and shifted the viewport. Fix #6489 (thanks @somechris @hyewonjo)
• Factory.staticBody had the wrong return type in the docs/TS defs. Fix #6693 (thanks @ddhaiby)
• The Time.Timeline class didn't show as extending the Event Emitter, or have config as an optional argument in the docs / TS defs. Fix #6673 (thanks @ghclark2)
• The Animations.AnimationFrame member duration is now the complete duration of the frame, which is a breaking change. Before this Animations.AnimationState#msPerFrame was combined with Animations.AnimationFrame#duration which wasn't intuitive. The fix to remove Animations.AnimationState#msPerFrame from Animations.AnimationFrame#duration has been removed from the Animations.AnimationManager method createFromAseprite because of this clarification. Fix #6712 (thanks @Nerodon @TomMalitz)
• The NineSlice Game Object method setSize now recalculates its origin by calling the updateDisplayOrigin method. (thanks @dhashvir)
• When a Layer Game Object is destroyed, i.e. from changing or restarting a Scene, it will no longer cause an error when trying to destroy the children on its display list. Fix #6675 (thanks @crockergd @gm0nk)
• DynamicTexture will now automatically call setSize(width, height) for both WebGL and Canvas. Previously it only did it for WebGL. This fixes an issue where DynamicTextures in Canvas mode would have a width and height of -1. Fix #6682 (thanks @samme)
• DynamicTexture.setSize will now check to see if the glTexture bound to the current frame is stale, and if so, destroy it before binding the one from the Render Target. This fixes an issue where constantly destroying and creating Dynamic Textures would cause a memory leak in WebGL. Fix #6669 (thanks @DavidTalevski)
• The BloomFX and BlurFX and any custom pipeline that relies on using the UtilityPipeline full or half frame targets will now correctly draw even after the renderer size changes. Fix #6677 (thanks @Nerodon)
• The PostFXPipeline.postBatch method will now skip onDraw if the pipeline hasn't booted, introducing an artificial frame skip. This should potentially fix glitch errors on mobile devices where Post FX would appear corrupted for a single frame. Fix #6681 (thanks @moufmouf @tongliang999)
• The Matter.Body function scale has been updated so if the Body originally had an inertia of Infinity this will be restored at the end of the call. This happens if you set a Matter Body to have fixed rotation. Fix #6369 (thanks @sushovande)
• Modified the RandomDataGenerator.weightedPick method to avoid sampling past the last element. Fix #6701 (thanks @jameskirkwood)
• The touch event handler onTouchEndWindow now stops pointer events when clicking through DOM elements to input. Fix #6697 (thanks @laineus)
• The Physics.Matter.Factory method pointerConstraint no longer returns an error when it can't find the camera. Fix #6684 (thanks @spritus)

Examples, Documentation, Beta Testing and TypeScript

My thanks to the following for helping with the Phaser 3 Examples, Beta Testing, Docs, and TypeScript definitions, either by reporting errors, fixing them, or helping author the docs:

@AlvaroEstradaDev
@stevenwithaph
@paxperscientiam
@samme
@actionmoon
@rafael-lua
@Byvire