Sunlight

Game development is an iterative process. That means we are constantly changing things around. This might be because we experience that certain ideas don't work, or work differently than expected, or just because we get new ideas that are more awesome. This is especially true for characters in Awesomenauts , so today I would like to show a couple of examples of how enormously some Nauts changed in the period from their first conception to their final in-game appearance. The first one I would like to show is Ayla. She started out as an electricity character called Glint. Ronimo artist Olivier made these awesome concept sketches for him: Glint's power is that he can move through enemies and damage them while doing so. That is basically exactly what Ayla's Rage mode does, and thus Glint slowly evolved into the Ayla we know today. Glint's other skill didn't make it into Ayla, as often happens: elements from ideas are combined and morphed until they work, have synergy a...

A couple of days ago we announced that if our Kickstarter campaign would reach $290,000, we would add a fourth character to the Starstorm expansion for Awesomenauts . Today I would like to talk about the kind of art that came with that announcement. We posted these concept sketches, by Ronimo artist Olivier : This looks fun, and it is also a nice example of the kind of sketching that works really well to communicate ideas. This kind of concept art does a lot more than just show something: it makes others enthusiastic about the ideas. In a company like Ronimo, where all team members are involved in the core concepts, convincing others that your ideas are good is almost as important as having good ideas in the first place. Several of the devs at Ronimo are masters at this, so today I would like to show you some examples of how art can be used to communicate ideas. (I am really bad at this myself, by the way: my concept sketches for Proun are completely incomprehensible for anyone but...

Last week I shared the first part of the statistics from our games . Today let's look at the second part: numbers about assets and audio. Plus a bunch of (hopefully) interesting contemplations and anecdotes about them. In fact, I had intended to also include stats about code today, but I typed so much text about all of this that I had to split it further. This series is now three blogposts instead of my originally intended two. Before I continue, let me abuse this moment for a short commercial break by (again) marketing our Kickstarter campaign for the Awesomenauts: Starstorm expansion ! Including PayPal pledges we have by now reached the first stretch goal (a new map) and are working towards the second stretch goal: Custom Games! Now, let's get to the actual numbers! Assets Levels 1 1 42 42 5 3 4 Skeletal animations 12 82 n/a n/a 0 n/a n/a Particles systems 2 10 43 43 2 526 751 Animation templates n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a ...

As you might know, we are currently running our Kickstarter campaign for our big Starstorm expansion to Awesomenauts. While we were preparing for that, I was thinking about how much Awesomenauts has grown since launch, and how much further it would grow by creating the Starstorm. Being a programmer, I love numbers and started collecting data on just how much Awesomenauts has been growing. Today I would like to share the first half of those with you! Since I like comparing, I have also added the other games I have worked on: De Blob, Snowball Earth, Swords & Soldiers and Proun. Hopefully you will find this as fascinating to look at as I do! But first, let me abuse this moment to blatantly market our Kickstarter campaign ... ;) We have already reached our main goal, and there are still tons of fun things in the stretch goals, including releasing our editors for modding. So please help make those features possible by backing the Starstorm, and scoop up lots of goodies in the reward ...