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Joost's Dev Blog: March 2015

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015_03_01_archive.html

Sunday, 15 March 2015. What many indies are doing wrong. The indie explosion has finally happened. New indie companies and teams appear every day. At the same time a lot of pessimism has entered the scene: so few indies are actually making money! This is mostly because the market simply isn't big enough to support us all. But I believe another cause is that a lot of indies are all making the same mistakes. Here is what I think many indies are doing wrong. The true skill of the game designer isn't in comi...

joostdevblog.blogspot.com

Joost's Dev Blog: July 2014

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html

Sunday, 27 July 2014. Using throttling to reduce network errors. Recently we managed to reduce the number of network errors in Awesomenauts. By 10% by improving our throttling algorithm. While automatic throttling by a router is killing, smart throttling by the game itself can be a good tool to make the game work better on crappy internet connections. Today I would like to explain what throttling is and how we approached this topic. That are currently being tested in beta.). Now that we know how. It is n...

joostdevblog.blogspot.com

Joost's Dev Blog: October 2014

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Saturday, 25 October 2014. Proun gets its first trailer! We have released the first trailer for Proun , the biggerbetter Proun that is coming to 3DS, iOS and Android! Proun is being made together with Engine Software. Saturday, 18 October 2014. Area based depth of field blur. While working on the visual style for my weird live performance game Cello Fortress. Which by the way is coming to 3DS, iOS and Android soon! Click for larger image. Click for larger image. Click for larger image. The goal was to ha...

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Joost's Dev Blog: Why adding multiplayer makes game coding twice as much work

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/why-adding-multiplayer-makes-game.html

Sunday, 9 August 2015. Why adding multiplayer makes game coding twice as much work. Most gamers and reviewers these days expect almost any game to have online multiplayer. What they might not realise (or not care about), is that adding online multiplayer makes a game twice as much work to program. In a normal game, when you want to start a match, you just do so. In a multiplayer game, computers first need to talk about that to make sure all computers go into the game together. Since sending messa...Basic...

joostdevblog.blogspot.com

Joost's Dev Blog: The level art tools for Swords & Soldiers II

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-level-art-tools-for-swords-soldiers.html

Sunday, 19 April 2015. The level art tools for Swords and Soldiers II. For our new game Swords and Soldiers II. Coming to Wii U on May 21st! We wanted to create detailed and varied levels. Because of the number of maps and their large size we needed art tools that provide a lot of automation to be able to populate them quickly. At the same time we wanted to allow customisation and control over the details to create unique, designed places. Today I would like to show the tools that Ronimo. The first thing...

joostdevblog.blogspot.com

Joost's Dev Blog: November 2014

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Sunday, 30 November 2014. Proun out now on iOS! On 27 November Proun. The first reviews are extremely positive, both from the press and from users. We also got a big feature in the European App Store, so it seems like Apple itself also likes the game. :) Here are some quotes from the reviews and the launch trailer:. A bright, searingly good twitch racer that takes the fundaments of the genre and builds something staggeringly entertaining on top of them. Saturday, 22 November 2014. Often has well over 1,0...

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Joost's Dev Blog: February 2015

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015_02_01_archive.html

Saturday, 28 February 2015. Luck and success in the indie business. Luck is an important part in the success or failure of any game studio. Why do some studios succeed while so many others never make a significant amount of money? Regardless of how good your theories are on what makes a successful business, you can never know for sure which games are going to be a hit. Games are entertainment and hit-driven and thus their success is inherently unpredictable. Luck cannot be controlled, but you can. Howeve...

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Joost's Dev Blog: September 2014

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Sunday, 21 September 2014. Last week I discussed the core network structures for games. There is one really important topic that I left out then: relay servers. Relay servers are especially important to understand since I have recently heard them confused with dedicated servers quite often. Today I would like to explain what relay servers are, and what they are not. So why is this useful? An important aspect of connectivity issues is that if one. Packet count is an important factor in connection quality.

joostdevblog.blogspot.com

Joost's Dev Blog: Using key poses to prototype character animations

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/using-key-poses-to-prototype-character.html

Saturday, 25 July 2015. Using key poses to prototype character animations. This is why our artists first draw key animation poses and throw those into the game as quickly as possible. During early development of a new character for Awesomenauts. Of course, the phase after this is to create the actual animations. A finished character in Awesomenauts consists of hundreds of animation frames. But today I'd like to focus on the prototyping and concepting before the real animations are made. Early animations ...

joostdevblog.blogspot.com

Joost's Dev Blog: August 2014

http://joostdevblog.blogspot.com/2014_08_01_archive.html

Friday, 29 August 2014. A simple trick for fast high quality bokeh on lights in Cello Fortress. Bokeh is an effect that pops up in a lot of new games. It is one of those effects that makes a game instantly feel a lot more "next-gen". It is also an effect that usually eats up a lot of performance. For Cello Fortress. Image from HDWallSource.com. Two years ago, as a fun little experiment. Proun already had really high quality DoF (as I described in this blogpost. According to this article. Most games that ...