I’m thrilled to announce that Blazor WebAssembly is now officially released. This is a fully-featured and supported release of Blazor WebAssembly that is ready for production use. Full stack web development with .NET is now here!

Get started

Getting started with Blazor WebAssembly is easy: simply go to https://blazor.net and install the latest .NET Core SDK (3.1.300 or later), which includes everything you need to build and run Blazor WebAssembly apps.

You can then create and run your first Blazor WebAssembly app by running:

dotnet new blazorwasm -o BlazorApp1
cd BlazorApp1
dotnet run

Browse to https://localhost:5001 and voilà! You’ve just built and run your first Blazor WebAssembly app!

To maximize your Blazor productivity, be sure to install a supported version of Visual Studio for your platform of choice:

You can find additional docs and samples on https://blazor.net.

Upgrade an existing project

If you already have an existing Blazor WebAssembly project, you can upgrade it from the 3.2.0 Release Candidate to the official 3.2.0 release by doing the following:

• Update all Microsoft.AspNetCore.Components.WebAssembly.* and System.Net.Http.Json package references to version 3.2.0.

That’s it, you’re all set!

What is Blazor WebAssembly?

In case this is your first time learning about Blazor, let me introduce you to what Blazor WebAssembly is all about.

Blazor is an open source and cross-platform web UI framework for building single-page apps using .NET and C# instead of JavaScript. Blazor is based on a powerful and flexible component model for building rich interactive web UI. You implement Blazor UI components using a combination of .NET code and Razor syntax: an elegant melding of HTML and C#. Blazor components can seamlessly handle UI events, bind to user input, and efficiently render UI updates.

Blazor components can then be hosted in different ways to create your web app. The first supported way is called Blazor Server. In a Blazor Server app, the components run on the server using .NET Core. All UI interactions and updates are handled using a real-time WebSocket connection with the browser. Blazor Server apps are fast to load and simple to implement. Support for Blazor Server is available with .NET Core 3.1 LTS.

Blazor WebAssembly is now the second supported way to host your Blazor components: client-side in the browser using a WebAssembly-based .NET runtime. Blazor WebAssembly includes a proper .NET runtime implemented in WebAssembly, a standardized bytecode for the web. This .NET runtime is downloaded with your Blazor WebAssembly app and enables running normal .NET code directly in the browser. No plugins or code transpilation are required. Blazor WebAssembly works with all modern web browsers, both desktop and mobile. Similar to JavaScript, Blazor WebAssembly apps run securely on the user’s device from within the browser’s security sandbox. These apps can be deployed as completely standalone static sites without any .NET server component at all, or they can be paired with ASP.NET Core to enable full stack web development with .NET, where code can be effortlessly shared with the client and server.

Fully-featured

Blazor WebAssembly comes packed with features to keep you productive on your next web app project:

Blazor in action

Blazor WebAssembly has everything you need to build fully-featured production web apps. To see all these Blazor WebAssembly features in action, checkout Steve Sanderson’s on-demand BUILD session (link should be live after 12pm PT): Modern Web UI with Blazor WebAssembly.

Ready-made components

Of course, any web app is going to need beautiful and feature rich components. A variety of Blazor UI components are available from our fantastic partners that work great in any Blazor app, including Blazor WebAssembly apps:

Open-source community

Blazor also has a thriving open-source community and ecosystem. Members of the community, (folks just like you!) have built lots of great component libraries, interop libraries, test frameworks, and more, and then made them freely available for you to use. Some great examples include:

You can find these community projects and many others listed on the Awesome Blazor GitHub repo.

LTS or Current?

Blazor WebAssembly 3.2.0 is a fully supported release under the .NET Core Support Policy. Since this is the first release of Blazor WebAssembly, it is a Current release, not an LTS release; it does not the inherit LTS status of .NET Core 3.1. This means that once Blazor WebAssembly ships with .NET 5 later this year, you will need to upgrade to .NET 5 to stay in support. We expect Blazor in .NET 5 to be a highly compatible release.

What’s next?

Now that we have shipped Blazor WebAssembly, we are shifting our attention to .NET 5. Work has already started on making Blazor WebAssembly available with .NET 5, which we expect to complete for preview next month.

We also have a number of Blazor features and improvements that we are investigating for the .NET 5 & 6 wave. You can see the list of core deliverables that we are considering in the Blazor Roadmap for .NET 5 issue on GitHub. Please note that we consider this list to be highly aspirational. While we hope to deliver all of the improvements listed, there are still many unknown and plans will certainly change as we go. We also expect that there will be plenty of smaller improvements that we will deliver as well.

We are also continuing to collaborate with our friends on the Xamarin team on experimental support for building native UI using Blazor through the Mobile Blazor Bindings project. This includes some early efforts to explore building hybrid UI for native apps, which we hope to share more about soon.

Thank you

We sincerely appreciate all the enthusiastic support we have received from the Blazor community as we’ve worked to make the release a reality. The number of Blazor articles, blog posts, docs, sample apps, libraries, books, videos, presentations, workshops, courses, meetups, feature suggestions, and feedback issues that have been contributed by the community to the Blazor ecosystem even while it was still in preview has been truly outstanding. To everyone who helped make this release possible, thank you! We couldn’t have done it without you.

Try Blazor today

We hope you enjoy this release of Blazor WebAssembly. Give Blazor a try today by going to https://blazor.net. We look forward to seeing what you create with it.

As always, if you have any questions of feedback about Blazor please let us know by filing an issue on GitHub.

Google Fi is this week began to roll out eSIM support for current iPhone subscribers, allowing them to use the dual-SIM capabilities of select Apple handsets.

And welcome back to your daily dose of Animal Crossing: New Horizons goodness, brought to you by the insanely talented community that has built up around the game since launch back in March which continues to deliver incredible custom content on a daily basis.

Yep, the latest addition to the catalogue of custom design crossovers is from Twitter user @uma73 who has used the red toy race car bed and copies of various scenic items to recreate the look of SEGA’s feel-good arcade racer Out Run on their island, complete with coastal roads and those all-important blue skies. We particularly love the repeating items used to simulate the effect of Out Run’s Super-Scaler sprites:

Of course, this is just one of the heartwarming, custom-made crossovers that has appeared over the last few weeks. At the weekend we looked at the Goldeneye 007 intro recreated in New Horizons, and just yesterday we saw an island transformed to look like actor Danny DeVito from above. Feel free to check out our picks of the most impressive island designs we’ve seen so far.

Be warned, though, that returning to your plain old island might be tough after witnessing what you could be doing on yours if you had the time and the talent.

In other news, we crafted a table recently. Absolutely chuffed with it, we were. What’s that? Someone meticulously recreated Panzer Dragoon with a bunch of fossils and custom art designs?…

Er…, did we say how nice our table is?

Where has the time gone?  How long have you been playing Minecraft?  I may not have been there from the beginning but I have fallen in love with this game and it has opened up a new genre of survival crafting games that range all age ranges.  Did you start out playing creative?  What are some of your favorite builds?

As 11 years have gone by Minecraft has hit some record highs in terms of sales.  No one could ever expect this game would grow to what it has become today.  11 years of updates, 11 years of development, 11 years of belonging to a great and creative community!  Over 200 million, yes over 200 MILLION copies have sold for Minecraft across all platforms and I can’t see that slowing down any time soon.

With over a decade under the belt, Moajng also announced their rebranding.  Say hello to Mojang Studios!

What are your thoughts?  What are your fondest memories over the last year or Minecraft?  What made you start playing Minecraft?  Share in the comments below!

Unless you’re glued to Animal Crossing: New Horizons pretty much 24/7, collecting a decent number of Star Fragments can really take a while. One of the less common crafting materials, Star Fragments can usually only be obtained by wishing on a shooting star, and are used to craft special items such as the Star Wand.

That is, unless you decide to hack the game, of course. As spotted by Animal Crossing World, a new trend has started to appear among Animal Crossing’s trading communities online, in which special trees holding items like Star Fragments, Hearts, Cupcakes, and more are being swapped for other rare goodies.

As keen players will know, trees cannot hold items such as this in regular play. Trees in-game can hold a variety of fruit – and even Bells – but definitely not these rare, harder to obtain items.

Animal Crossing World says that ‘save editor hacking’ is the method being used to make this a reality, and while we’d advise that you don’t try this yourself – we’ve all heard the horror stories of Nintendo banning systems being used to do things that they shouldn’t – we must admit that it does make for some lovely looking scenery.

Nintendo has been actively working against hackers in Animal Crossing, actually putting out a patch to combat them before the game had even officially released. At the time, it was warned that players going online with cheats active should expect bans.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

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Traditionally, a lot of marketing and visibility for games — especially indies — comes about as a result of participating in cornerstone physical events throughout the year: PAX West, Gamescom, E3 … but for the past few months and foreseeable future, those annual touchpoints have all been completely upended as a result of the pandemic and stay-at-home orders around the world.

Digital events are popping up like daisies to fill in the gaps left by physical event cancellations. Festivals like the recently concluded LudoNarraCon and Steam Spring Games Festival, the upcoming Steam Summer Games Festival, IGN’s Summer of Gaming, Gamespot’s Play For All, the Wholesome Games’ Wholesome Direct, and…*takes a deep breath* Let’s just say, there’s a lot to pick from!

The prevalence of online events can be truly exciting for developers hoping to showcase their games to a wider audience without the limitations of cost and geography (and who can say know to showcasing a game in your sweats, amirite?), but what can these digital events mean for an indie studio in terms of prep work required and results?

Just a few weeks ago, we showcased one of our titles, Garden Story, at LudoNarracon, Fellow Traveller’s annual digital event, so we wanted to use this chance to recap how it went for us, and compare it with the experiences we’ve had showing Garden Story at physical events to illustrate some of the benefits — and challenges — of both showcase styles as an indie studio.

A Little Bit of Context

Before we dive into specifics, let’s take a second to talk a bit about Garden Story. Solo developer, Picogram has been working on Garden Story since March 2018. Garden Story is a wholesome title, filled with soft colors, cute & fruity characters, and an overall message advocating for community, empathy, and kindness. After seeing it at local Portland indie game events and getting to know Pico, we decided that we wanted to have Rose City Games team up with them and help release their game! 

Prior to participating in LudoNarraCon, we also had the benefit of taking Garden Story to a handful of physical events. The Indie Megabooth at PAX East, Seattle Indies Expo at PAX West 2020, and PAX Together at PAX South are three times where folks had the chance to experience the game in-person. During times we were at events, we also experimented with limited time releases of the Autumn Town Demo (a standalone Garden Story gameplay demo) digitally on Steam, so folks at home could play if they wished even if they weren’t able to attend. 

LudoNarraCon

From April 24 -27th, Fellow Traveller hosted their second annual LudoNarraCon, a digital festival celebrating narrative games on Steam. The majority of the event took place over the weekend, with live panels, sales, and game demos available for players to try out, although the demos were available for an entire week after the main festival to allow folks to take their time and experience as much as possible. 

LudoNarraCon: Prep

LudoNarraCon really appealed to us because of the curation of the event. When we had the chance to experience it in 2019, LudoNarraCon impressed us with the panels available as well as the way it seemed to reach folks who all shared the same taste and goals with gaming. Curation, for me, is a magical word: a well-curated event allows you to reach the specific audience who’ll most appreciate what your game has to offer! Since many storefronts and events don’t typically participate in this type of curation, having opportunities that do target specific genres, moods, and tastes can be extra valuable. 

Since LudoNarraCon’s focus is on games emphasizing narrative and story, we predicted we’d be able to reach an audience that would perhaps, as a whole, enjoy what Garden Story has to offer versus a more broadly gathered group of games with a wider variety of genres.

To prepare for the major requirement of participating in LudoNarraCon (3-4 hours of loopable video content), our entire team took time to pitch in! We all recorded video footage and tried some things we’ve never done before: Picogram recorded themselves creating pixel art for the game, Grahm played live versions of the tracks in the OST and discussed composition, we played through the game’s demo with commentary, and we found some creative ways to make sure gameplay was on screen most of the time. 

In addition to preparing content for the weekend of the festival, we took time to make sure we knew how to stream to Steam (a relatively new tool with recently added features), added some polish to the existing Garden Story demo, and made sure all of Garden Story’s pages looked ready for a bunch of fresh eyes. This preparation took a fair chunk of time, and the week before the event was filled with editing videos and making sure we were good to go. This was on top of balancing normal daily tasks and community management for Garden Story and our other titles.

This felt, as you may expect, different in many ways from preparing for a physical event. For something like PAX West, while the majority of our team does jump in to help with preparations, the actual participation of the event sits more on the marketing and communications part of the team. We typically start months ahead of the event, purchasing tickets, travel, and accommodations, in addition to preparing all of the materials for setting up a booth and showcasing the game. 

While LudoNarraCon did take effort, we experienced lots of savings — time and money — compared to our previous experiences at physical events. Generally, our team sends 2-3 folks to shows like PAX, and floor hours often require folks to arrive around 8:30 AM and close up by 6 PM. This translates to a very full day, even if you have team members to break shifts up with, not to mention set-up, tear down, all the after-hours events and showcases, and long travel hours: it’s an exhilarating, but also exhausting, time!

LudoNarraCon was a change of pace (especially for my introverted sensibilities). While the event lasted for 4 days, after the first day, I just made sure to pop in throughout the day and check the chat on our Steam page, and even was able to enjoy panels and other developer livestreams and demos while in the comfort of my own home!

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Here’s a quick (and extremely simplified) breakdown of key differences in preparing between LudoNarraCon and PAX West: 

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While there were a lot of places we were able to save time and money, I want to be sure and acknowledge that a large part of that was because we did already have access to streaming hardware, video editing software, and someone on the team who could spend dedicated time coordinating all the different aspects of event participation. Teams who didn’t have the necessary equipment or experience may have not had the same experience or even opportunity since having a broadcast was a requirement for participation.

LudoNarraCon Results

Logistically, LudoNarraCon was one of the most organized digital events we’ve participated in. Fellow Traveller had a wiki set-up explaining almost everything we could ever hope or need to know about preparing for the event, from recording video to streaming best practices, and even suggestions for social media prior to the event. They were incredibly responsive anytime we had questions (via email as well as Discord) and even took into account providing moderators for both the panels AND developer livestreams throughout the event. As the person who was the primary contact for organizing the Rose City Games side of things, this was immensely helpful and appreciated! We’re all in relatively uncharted territory in organizing for digital events on a larger scale like this, and their organization made us feel incredibly comfortable and ready for what lay ahead. 

Our theory that participating in a more curated digital event could result in higher wishlist numbers also seemed to come to fruition. Comparing the results during LudoNarraCon and the weekend prior (as our ‘control’) was night and day. From Jan 01 – 31st, when we were pretty heads down in development for Garden Story, we averaged about 69 (nice) wishlists a day. From April 24th – 27th, the weekend of the event, we averaged 1.2k – 1.4k wishlists a day. A huge jump! 

The only other times we’ve had comparable spikes were at (starting from the right going back): the Steam Spring Games Festival, PAX East, and when we’ve released the demo during limited time periods, and those wishlist numbers were at about 50% of digital event activations (like the Steam Spring Festival and LudoNarraCon).

Visibility for the Steam page was way up as a result of the festival as well. As you can see below, impressions went from almost 20k the weekend prior up to almost 77k. The click-thru rate (which is when an impression actually turns into a store page visit) jumped from 7% up to 31%! Even if not everyone wishlisted the game, this means at least folks know of the game and are gaining familiarity with what Garden Story is about.

April 17-19, 2020:

<meta charset="utf-8">April 24-27, 2020:

While wishlists and overall page visits seemed to be flying, we were a little surprised to see that the demo downloads were lower than we anticipated. There were only 2,734 downloads during LudoNarraCon, and we felt that the higher number of wishlists to low number of demo downloads was an interesting phenomenon. A couple of reasons why this could be: 

• The Autumn Town Demo was available on a separate demo page, thus adding to the friction between the point of folks being interested and actually clicking on the demo to play.

• Because of the highly curated nature of the event, perhaps folks just saw the Steam page or our broadcast and didn’t feel the need to play the demo (or didn’t have the time!) but wishlisted it anyway.

• There’s also more and more discussion about the difference between quality vs cursory wishlists. You can read more about it in places like Simon Carless’s Tales From Discoverabilityland and Zukalous’s Did Warriorbs Use of Prologues “Fail?”.

  • It’s worth considering the fact that the act of wishlisting may not hold a serious intent to purchase a game when it releases for some Steam users. In some cases, it may act more as a bookmark to keep the game in mind in the future.

The looped Store Page broadcast got almost 50k individual viewers over the festival weekend! The broadcast played both on our Garden Story page and was accessible via the LudoNarraCon event page. Through our own monitoring, we were able to average 50 concurrents watching the stream throughout the entire weekend (until the very last day) and even had almost 150 concurrents at one point! This is a marked difference from in-person events like PAX East, where we are only able to allow about 2 simultaneous players in demo stations, with perhaps another 5-6 folks around the booth comfortably to be able to watch and ask questions. To know we had, on average, 50-some eyes on the game’s page and our stream throughout the event was exciting, to say the least!

Even with that many concurrents, chat activity was relatively quiet, which did feel very different from a physical event where folks are very eager to talk about the game. This may have been because the videos were pre-recorded and looping. I would say that’s perhaps the biggest part that I missed about in-person events: the face-to-face interaction and observation of players! In future events, I’d love to play with scheduled AMA’s and activations throughout the weekend and not just have the rush be on the first day of broadcasting.

Especially with an event like LudoNarraCon that emphasizes stories, human connections, and the people behind games, it was nice to have the streams up and allow folks to feel more connected to the team since we weren’t able to connect with them in-person as they played. So, while chat activity came and went, it was overall quite positive, and folks did take time to pop in and say how much they enjoyed the art style, music, and demo.

  

Because the streaming component of Steam is still in Beta, the analytics are currently limited to seeing viewer counts, so I can’t speak to how well the stream worked in terms of convincing folks to wishlist. I’d love to be able to dive into some details on how long folks stuck around the stream, and even perhaps see where they came from and headed to after checking out our content to help us dive down even more into what folks are connecting to the most about the game. I can say that having this event take place directly on Steam did provide great data overall for us moving forward: being able to see overall traffic, wish lists, and regional data in conjunction with viewership from the stream is incredibly helpful!

Conclusion

In a time when we’re unable to travel and attend the events we know and love, LudoNarraCon created an environment for developers, publishers, and players to connect. There were folks who popped into our Discord, the Steam chat, and our social channels all excited about Garden Story. This was awesome! The event, with its distinct focus and curation, was also very beneficial for visibility and quality wishlists, two important elements in the journey to find success as an indie game. 

Steam algorithms do allow for a level of targeting with tags, genre, and recommended queues, but providing featured space and time for events like LudoNarraCon allowed titles a level of visibility they may not have received if left purely to the algorithm. Hopefully we’ll continue to see more of these types of events in the future!

Interested in more? Corey, one of Rose City Games’ co-founders, is working on a post to follow up this one, diving into the specifics of wishlists: both how we get them as well as how we use wishlist data to determine goals for marketing Garden Story! So keep an eye out for that coming up. Thanks for reading!

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Espoo, Finland

Remedy Entertainment, the creator of Control®, Quantum Break®, Max Payne®, Alan Wake® and Death Rally®, and one of the leading independent game studios in the world, is looking for a Senior Programmer for a key role working on Remedy’s projects.

We are looking for a Senior Programmer to help unify our digital character creation workflows. We have recently started from scratch to unify our character creation pipeline, presenting an unique opportunity.

While this a full-time software engineering role, the character technology team has also worked on implementing existing skinning algorithms, novel convolutional neural network architectures, facial blendshape solvers, custom photogrammetry hardware and statistical analysis of motion capture among others things.

Responsibilities

• Help develop an industry leading digital content creation pipeline
• Collaborate with our proprietary engine and tools teams to build deep integrations between the Northlight engine and DCCs
• Adhere to high quality programming standards
• Support the teams involved with character creation with tools and algorithms to make their work easier.

Requirements and qualifications

• 4+ years of experience working in the game, film or equivalent industry
• Proficiency in at least C++ and Python
• Curiosity, ability to learn fast and to communicate concisely
• Experience working with any of the following APIs: Maya, MotionBuilder, Houdini, Modo
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills (in English)

The ideal candidate will also have

• A degree in computer science or software engineering
• Good math skills: calculus, linear algebra, optimization and numerical analysis
• Experience with any of the following: custom in-house game engines, test driven development, continuous integration, machine learning, UI frameworks, API design, parallelism

What is in it for you?

• Yes, you get to move to Finland where the quality of life is exceptional and cost of living is affordable
• Moving to a new country can be intimidating, but our relocation service is there every step of the way to take care of you. You can concentrate on work, while we’ll take care of everything else
• You will be offered competitive compensation with a bonus system
• We work hard, but at Remedy we believe in a great work life balance. Happy people work better. In Finland you get up to 5 weeks of paid vacation every year. This is on top of public holidays and other special occasions
• Above all, you get to work on awesome, unique video games that the global audience is interested in at a studio where your input is valued. We try our hardest to keep our team sizes and the work load sensible, so your contributions feel valuable

To apply, please fill in the application form with your CV and other information relevant to the position. The position will be filled as soon as a suitable applicant is found.

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Often, that wonderful feeling of nostalgia you get when loading up a game from your childhood comes from hearing the soundtrack or sound effects that used to blare out of your TV screen. From the iconic Super Mario Bros. theme to the Legend of Zelda‘s ‘da da da daaaaa’, there’s bound to be a few sounds that instantly bring you back to happy times.

YouTube user Teppei Okada has captured that very sensation in the best way possible. One of his specialities is performing the soundtracks to classic games in real-time, with the game playing in the background. He was brought to our attention when this new F-Zero video started doing the rounds on social media this morning:

What a tune.

Perhaps the best thing about his performances, though, is the fact that he also uses his violin to recreate all of the little bleeps and bloops that play when you go through menus or stomp on Goombas. His Mario video arguably shows this best. It’s truly wonderful:

And here’s a Zelda one, just because:

Can you imagine how much better rounds of Mario Kart or Smash would be with a performance like this to spur you on? Let us know what you think in the comments below.