Blog

How to implement custom pathfinding A* & CC in Unreal Engine 4

In this article, we see how our team implemented pathfinding in the Unreal Engine 4 for the upcoming tower defense game MassMonsterMaze. Besides using the default navigation meshes of the Unreal engine we implemented an A* algorithm in blueprints and a connected components (island detection) algorithm in C++. The hope is that the article gives a headstart to other game developers trying to implement pathfinding in their projects. The use case In our game, the Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

My new web application architecture: A Svelte front-end using API Platform (micro)services

For a new project, I decided to upgrade my architecture. My previous architecture ran with single-instance SaaS build in Drupal. Meaning that every new customer would get its own Drupal installation with its own database. As I learn more about APIs with by building services with API Platform the advantages of a big monolithic application like Drupal is diminishing. Currently, I developed the following services that I use in my applications: Video processing API Environment Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

A co-op tower defense game on the Unreal Engine – intro

As lifelong video game enthusiasts, a friend and I decided to build a tower defense game together. I have some previous experience in an internship building games for the Nintendo DS and he (Sander Vereecken) is an environment artist involved in level design for Killzone Shadow Fall, Horizon Zero Dawn and, Renegade-X. We want it to be a multiplayer game that is fun to play at a LAN-party, the main inspiration comes from TD maps Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

Lancering bijlesaanbod.nl

Vandaag lanceer ik officieel het platform Bijles aanbod. Wij bieden een oplossing voor docenten van het voorgezet onderwijs die voor zichzelf willen beginnen met het geven van bijlessen. Na een lange test periode met twee docenten die zijn begonnen met bijles geven ben ik overtuigd dat het andere docenten kan helpen bij het opzetten van een bedrijf. Ons model onderscheidt zich van veel andere bijlesplatforms omdat we niet als tussenpersoon tussen de docent en de Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

My retrospective of 2018

Most of my working career I sit at a desk interacting with my computer. No longer having colleagues because of quitting my job in June 2018 to start my own company this blog is my main connection to other professionals. Therefore, I decided to write and share a retrospective of the year 2018. How is the blog going? The initial plan was to write articles on a bi-weekly schedule but it became more difficult to Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

My thoughts on the Google Adwords API and how to get to your first API call

tl;dr: Do NOT USE the Google Adwords API but the Google Ads API when you build your first integration. The world is a better place because Google connected us faster and more user friendlier to the internet than other options. However, as the company matured the output of the innovation efforts have stagnated. For example, the self-driving car efforts of Waymo (now part of Alphabet), which started testing since 2009, have been caught up by Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

A tutorial on how to use the Messenger component of Symfony 4 with RabbitMQ

Running tasks asynchronous is becoming vital for any large web application. An example, on which I worked, is a Facebook-like activity stream for Open Social (Drupal 8). Imagine that a personal notification based on a relation, rank, and gender has to be generated for millions of users when an event happens. Pretty complex right? Now, imagine the messages to have to be aggregated (e.g., messages like there are 5 new comments on your posts). It Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

Why you should use CSS Grid for your layouts

In my career as a backend web developer, I was often amazed by the state of the technologies needed to get something working at the front end. From backward browser compatibility to getting the layout you want the solution always seemed to consist of hacky workarounds. For example, for my tutoring product, in order to get the grid to get a non-sticky footer always on the bottom, I had to use a wrapper element with Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago

An architecture to build a YouTube / Netflix service

In this article, I present an architecture that I use for building my video streaming website with open source components. I am new to the video streaming technology, but I was positively surprised at the number of tools available to make a video streaming service. Technical requirements of the service Should have authorization for retrieving the videos. Should include a commerce and payment (iDEAL) platform. Should be performant (also in uploading and processing videos). A Read more…

By nielsvandermolen, ago