For the TPS Mode of Fursan al-Aqsa Remake I am going for a more Gears of War Over the Shoulder Camera Style:
I just finished the Mobile UI Design I made for Fursan al-Aqsa Remake Android version. It is just a photoshop layout yet, but I think the overall interface is very clean and practical.
By the way, does any of you have an idea on how could I make a HUD Editor for the mobile version of my game, since many mobile games allow the player to edit the HUD elements, position, opacity and so on.
Because sometimes less is more, I decided to change Fursan al-Aqsa Game Remake HUDs, to make it more similar to recent Call of Duty games, more simplistic, minimalist and professional
I am now finishing the touch controls for Fursan al-Aqsa Mobile, the Android version of Fursan al-Aqsa Remake. I am making these controls inspired by Modern Combat 5, the mobile shooter game with one of the best touch controls out there.
Such a game on a phone is hard to do i think.
Looks really good, but if i think only mobile i only can think about talking to someone. Maybe it is the age but i like to play on a big monitor or even a tv
Hahaha, yeah bro, I am also NOT used to play in mobile, I am coming to my 40’s (39 yrs), so I am also an old school gamer, I love to play on big monitor as well.
However, since the majority of Arab gamers play on mobile, and since this is one of my target audiences, alongside brazilian gamers (they also play most on mobile), I am making a mobile version of Fursan al-Aqsa Remake. The game will have the same content of the Steam version, but the gameplay will be more simplified (also the assets textures and poly count will be optimized for mobile). I plan for the mobile to make the AI less agressive, give the player the ability to health regeneration and other things, since I have been playing many mobile shooters now (like Modern Combat 5), and no matter the touch controls configuration, you will never have the same agility and accuracy of mouse and keyboard whenever playing with touch controls, so because this mobile games need to be easier than PC/Console games.
Praise be to Allah!
The 1st test build for Fursan al-Aqsa Mobile, the Android version of Fursan al-Aqsa Remake is working perfectly! This is the core Gameplay and touch controls running on Samsung Galaxy S7
Assalamu Alaykum, Nidal!
Ya know, I was also concerned about how Fursan al-Aqsa would look on mobile. I agreed with @Thorsten09 about how such a game might appear for the small screen…but after seeing your pics, Fursan al-Aqsa looks really, really great! Better than expected! I also really love your choice of design for the HUD icons! How smooth are the touch controls, my friend?
Alaykum assalam my brother!
Thanks for the compliments! Yeah, it took me one entire week to design the touch controls, I made them from scratch, over the FPS Game Starter Kit (for me one of the best kits on the marketplace, and my choice for Fursan al-Aqsa Remake Core Gameplay Framework):
I first made a research about the mobile shooters with best touch controls, since I am new to mobile gaming (I am an old school gamer), until I found that Modern Combat 5 has the best touch controls among mobile shooters:
Then I searched through the marketplace to see if I could find some touch controls ready to use, but did not find one which I could say: “Yeah, this is the one I need”. So I said bismillah and let’s get the dirty work done by myself.
I downloaded and played Modern Combat 5 on my mobile phone, then I took some screenshots, opened these screenshots on photoshop, and began to manually draw my mobile HUD over Modern Combat 5 reference. But I made some changes to fit better my game, like letting the most important buttons close to the player thumb (Shoot, Sprint, Run and ADS), which are the bottom right buttons. The least important buttons, the less used I placed them on the top left (Camera Change between FPS and TPS, the inventory and the pause button).
Then on the bottom left area I placed first the bullet time button, and it is easy to be accessed by the player which his left thumb, and it is very close to the moving pad, which will be used constantly. Then at its side comes the crouch and the melee (least used).
And on the top right I placed the interaction button, the grenade and the weapons swap. I have left the left side with icons related to the shooting. In example, it is more easy for the player to swap weapons with the swap weapons button on the top right, since the distance between his right thumb which will be constantly shooting to the weapons swap button is small.
I may add an option to the player be able to customize the mobile hud positions and opacity, since I already found this tutorial here:
That can be a first step for achieving this.
About the smoothness of the controls, I feel that it is a bit clunky , because I am not used to touch controls yet, but they look and feel almost exactly as Modern Combat 5. So I think I am on the right way, in sha Allah!
I will improve them later, but now I am going to the next step, making a brand new map which I will release as a free demo of Fursan al-Aqsa Remake and Mobile.
I do not want to spoil anything, but this is just for the hype . This is the first map of Fursan al-Aqsa Remake, and this will be on the free demo I will release soon on Steam and Playstore, in sha Allah. This is Camp Ariel Sharon Part I: Infiltration. Spoiler: I am proudly using marketplace assets.
This looks very good and you are pretty fast.
Seems like the time you build the whole game i need to build a few nanite models
After releasing my game on Steam and interacting with players, I already realized that gamers do NOT care how the game was made, they do NOT care if the developer made the assets from scratch or used game ready assets, so long as the game is good, beautiful and fun to play. I mean, players will not buy more copies of your game if you made everything from scratch, and they will not stop buying your game if you used marketplace assets. So I do NOT see any reason why solo develpers or even small indie teams should NOT use marketplace assets. You will never find an asset which fits 100%, you will always have the hand work of modifying the assets to fit your game, and this is a LOT of work, specially for a solo developer like me.
I have read that even the first versions of PUBG used many UE4 Marketplace assets.
So I am proudly using ANYTHING I see fit my game, from the Marketplace.
Cheers!
You are absolutly right to use the assets from the marketplace, that is why it is there.
And of course player do not care if you do all models by yourself, heck i dont think about such myself if i play a game. They also dont care about if you do this alone or if there are working 100 people working on the game.
The game needs to be fun thats all.
Yeah, that’s the spirit. But I know many, and too many indie devs that feel ashamed of using these game ready assets, many of them fear their game be called “asset flip”. But as you said, players neither give importance if the game was made by a solo developer or by 100 people, in the end they care about the game, and they want the game to be fun!
Hi Nidal!
Thank you so much for sharing your sources - the foundation of your FPS game! I see that you’re a hands-on researcher. While you may ask a few questions, you’re more inclined to jump into something new with both feet and determine what could be learned from it. I admire this!
Fursan al-Aqsa is coming along swimmingly! Does the name “Ariel Sharon” have significance? If yes, how so? (If it is a story spoiler for the game, it’s okay if you don’t answer that. )
Haha, thanks brother for your kind words and compliments!
Yeah, I do not like to bother people asking too much, since now, for UE4, you can find thousands of tutorials on youtube to help you to do anything you can imagine, and also you can find many things on Marketplace.
I am keeping Fursan al-Aqsa Classic Narrative, also all the missions and names, just with brand new environments.
Ariel Sharon Camp is the name of a real IDF Base on the Negev Desert, in southern Palestine, it is called the City of Training Bases:
But for the Remake I will make this base in 2 parts, Part 1, Infiltration, which will be on the free demo I will release soon, in sha Allah, and Part 2, which will be on the full game.
Very soon I will showcase the first look at Fursan al-Aqsa Remake on PC and Mobile.
Finally I finished the first map of Fursan al-Aqsa Game Remake, Camp Ariel Sharon. Due the new workflow of Unreal Engine 4, specially regarding lighting, it took me many trials until I was able to reach best lighting setup.
I am using a Moveable Directional Light to simulate the sun, a moveable skylight to make the shadows less dark, and I used stationary point lights under the light sources (lamps).
And this is the mobile version of the map. It was very tricky to get this map running at 30-40 fps on my old Samsumg Galaxy S7 Phone. I used the same map and same assets (models) from the PC version, however, I reduced the textures resolution to 25% of the original size (from 2048x2048 to 512x512, in example). I also created LODs for every static mesh on the map, I used the UE4 Hierarchical Level of Detail Overview, Precomputed Visibility Volumes, Distance Culling Volumes, Mobile Resolution Scale Factor, Scalability Settings for Android, and other tricks (specially with the lighting). But I am very happy with the results.
My focus is to let even old smartphones to run my game. Since for players who have a gaming PC, they can get the best experience playing Fursan al-Aqsa Remake on Steam. But for those who don’t have a gaming PC, they can enjoy the same game, the same missions, the same gameplay, but compressed to fit on a mobile device.