New PC, PS3 and Xbox360 Game - Fursan al-Aqsa - Knights of al-Aqsa Mosque

Legacy UDK Projects
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https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/fursan_aqsa_release_banner_2019.png

Assalamu Alaykum (Peace be with you)

First of all, I would like also to thank my friends here at UDK Engine Forums for all their help and support, specially @O_and_N

I would like to thank aswell, my brazillian fellow, ROD Lima, for all his help with Unreal Scripting Programming. He is most know for his Resident Evil 2 Fan Remake in UDK Engine:

As you may know, recently I had to put offline my project UDK Ultimate Engine (the custom build of UDK Engine with PS3 and Xbox360 Export Support) for copyrights reasons (EPIC asked me to do this), however, they were very kind with me and allowed me to keep using my custom version of UDK to publish my games, I even signed with them an Unreal Engine License Commercial Amendment, so now I am a **Licensed Unreal Engine Developer **and I am ready to pursue my dream of life!

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https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/resistance_not_terrorism_final.png

DISCLAIMER: In this game, the player does not shoot Israeli civilians, women, children, elderly, only soldiers. Also in this game there are NO images of sexual content, illicit drugs, religious desecration, hate of speech against any group, ethnicity or religion, anti-Semitist propaganda against Jews, Nazi propaganda or boasting of any terrorist groups and / or other unlawful acts. This game only contains the virtual representation of the Palestinian Resistance Movement against the Israeli Military Occupation, which is officially recognized by the United Nations (UN). I even sent this project for Brazillian’s Government Justice Department, Age Rating Sector (kinda Brazillian ESRB) for their approval and age rating. This project was approved, now I am just waiting for the Age Rating Information of my game which will be available very soon on their website (http://portal.mj.gov.br/ClassificacaoIndicativa/jsps/ConsultarJogoForm.do)

I am Brazillian, from Arab ascendance, my father is from Palestine, and something I never revealed before, and one of the biggest reasons of me creating this game, is that my father was a Fighter of the Palestine Resistance Movement, he fought against Israel Army in the Lebanese Civil War on the 70’s, and from since I was a kid, I felt too much proud of my father and the Palestine People in General, because of their Strenght and Constant Resistance. So this game is kinda tribute to the Brave People of Palestine and their Resistance against Military Occupation.

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/fursan_al_aqsa_title_screen.png

Fursan al-Aqsa - Knights of al-Aqsa Mosque is a Third Person Action Game on which you play as Ahmad al-Ghazzawi, a young Palestinian Student who was unjustly tortured and jailed by Israeli Soldiers for 5 years, had all his family killed by an Israeli Airstrike and now after getting out from the prison he seeks revenge against those who wronged him, killed his family and stolen his homeland.

This game is being developed during the course of 4 years by one person (me, Nidal Nijm), in a custom version of UDK Engine (Unreal Engine 3), using the best technology to tell a compelling story through a game packed with non stop action, advanced 3D graphics and modern gameplay mechanics, however keeping the soul of old school shooters. You will play in missions accross ground, sea and sky, you have many objectives to accomplish in each mission, epic bosses battles, powerful guns, vehicles to drive, helicopters to take down, and much more. Expect a LOT of Action and Adrenaline!!!

This game also is greatly inspired by Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Insurgency Sandstorm.

I hope you enjoy this game and support me by purchasing it, Insha Allah (God’s Willing). I decided to release this game as episodes (missions), each mission by a symbolic value just to cover my development costs, as everyone knows that develop a game is not an easy task, it takes a lot of time and efforts. It will be a very small value, however any copy sold of this game is very important and will trully help me. Please buy this game to support me (whenever I release it), Insha Allah (God’s Willing), because I trully need your help!

I hope untill the end of this month (november) release a free demo of this game (for PC, PS3 and Xbox360), so people can enjoy and feel what my game is about, enjoy the gameplay, feel the action. I plan to make something similar to Metal Gear Solid VR Missions (If you may remember), on which I will teach the player the basis of the Gameplay, like training the player for the true battle that will come on the final game. About the first episode (mission), I hope to release it untill the end of December, beginning of January 2020.

Now I will show you some trailers of the game itself, a beta version of this game. I am already redoing everything from scratch, remaking the models, animations, and maps, raising the overall quality, polishing things here and there, to deliver a high quality product for all people enjoy.

Also you can see the new updated model for my character protagonist, and the difference between the new player model and the old one, so you all can be sure I am commited to do my best on this game. These old models were just placeholders for me develop the basic game programming framework and features.

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This trailer tells the history of how the muslims re-conquered Jerusalem:

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/1-Fursan_al-Aqsa-_Reveal_Trailer.1.png

This trailer tells the history of the Game’s Protagonist:

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/fursan_al_aqsa_title_screen.png

This is the promotional trailer “Join the Resistance”:

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/3-Fursan_al-Aqsa-_Join_The_Resistance_Trailer.1.png

This is the PC Gameplay Trailer. The PC Version supports ANY Gamepad through xbox360 controller emulator (already included):

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/6-_Fursan_al-Aqsa_PC_Gameplay_Teaser.1.png

This is the PS3 Gameplay Trailer (sorry for the video quality, I don’t have a HDMI Capture Card):

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/7-_Fursan_al-Aqsa_PS3_Gameplay_Teaser.1.png

This is the Xbox360 Gameplay Trailer (sorry for the video quality, I don’t have a HDMI Capture Card):

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/8-_Fursan_al-Aqsa_Xbox360_Gameplay_Teaser.png

Some Screenshots of the new Player Model In-Game:

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_1.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_2.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_3.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_4.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_5.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_6.png

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/Updated_Player_Model_In_Game_7.png

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Now some Behind the Scenes Trailers.

Making off “Crusader Battle Trailer”:

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/5-Fursan_al-Aqsa-_Reveal_Trailer_Making_Off.1.png

Making off “Ahmad al-Ghazzawi”:

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/10-_Fursan_al-Aqsa_Ahmad_al-Ghazzawi_Making_Off.png

You can follow the development of my game here:
https://sites.google.com/view/fursanalaqsagame/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcw8iE7JGheoU3Tq4ducTpw/
https://twitter.com/UdkUltimate

Jazakom Allah Khayr (May God give you the best)

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I salute your will. And congratulations on the release of your game. ^^

By the way, I think there is a little lack part. Please refer to the link below.

http://www.inven.co.kr/webzine/news/…class=0&page=2

The contents of the above link is in Korean so you will not understand it. To summarize the contents of the link above, the content of the link above is that Bluehole (Korean game company) converted the game ‘TERA’ made with UE3 into the game for PS4 using ‘UE3-Unsupported’ tool made by ‘Hardsuit Labs’.
The video below is a play video of ‘TERA’ for PS4 made using ‘UE3-Unsupported’.

In other words, if you use the tool called ‘UE3-Unsupported’, you can convert your game to a game for PS4 and XO(Xbox One).

The homepage address of ‘Hardsuit Labs’ developed by ‘UE3-Unsupported’ is as follows.

Honestly, it’s more profitable for you to play your games on PS4 and Xbox One than on PS3 and Xbox360.
Therefore I hope you contact ‘Epic Games’ and ‘Hardsuit Labs’ to convert your game to PS4 and Xbox One.
Good luck. ^^

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Thanks man for the compliments! And also thanks for this very informative article. Yeah, I did understand a bit of this using google translate. From what I have read, these guys they manually did Port UE3 to PS4 and XboxOne (through changing the UE3 Source Code), just like in example, NetherRealm Studios (the dev of Mortal Kombat) ported UE3 to PS4 and XboxOne (MK11 on consoles runs on UE3 not UE4, only MK Mobile, Android, runs on UE4).

This is far beyond my knowledge :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

About my game, no, I will not “sell” the PS3 and Xbox360, I will give these versions as a Free Gift for anyone who purchases the PC Version of my game. As the game is exactly the same on all versions, PC, XBox360 and PS3. This is just for those people who still like to play on PS3 and Xbox360.

I will try to publish my game on ALL stores I can, like Steam, Epic Games Store, Itch.io, GameJolt, and so on. I will even sell on my own website also, through a small e-commerce system, because selling on these stores are too much expensive for us, brazillians, because of the fees and taxes.

Anyway, I know that there are people who feel more secure purchasing the game on these stores, so because this I will try to publish there.

Cheers!

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Hello guys!

Something important I forgot to say.

This map, which will be the first mission (episode) of my game:

It’s a remake of a Custom Map for Counter Strike Global Offensive, the map name is de_heat.

Whenever I create my maps, I like to take many games as reference, and I prefer to use Source Engine Games Maps, because it’s easy to import on 3dsmax, and use the original map as a reference to model my map over the original map.

I have choosen this map, because it’s similar to the real city of “Old Jerusalem”, which is where the first mission of my game takes place.

However, I contacted the original author of this map from since I began creating this map in UDK Engine, last year. And he was very kind to me and gave me authorization to remake his map for my game:

However, as I told before, these screenshots of this map, and the gameplay trailers, are a bit outdated, because I am already working on chaing this map a bit, especially changing some assets (props) which are from Valve (the devs of Counter Strike) and not from the map author.

I am replacing these assets with some assets created by me and others purchased on 3D Marketplaces arround the internet. This is very common especially for indie and solo developers, purchase assets, download royalty-free assets to use whenever developing a game.

Imagine if all indies would make games creating all the assets from scratch. You would not see so many indie games arround there.

The same is truth for my new updated protagonist model. This new updated model is a mix of character parts from many models, which I purchased recently to update my 3d models library, which was a bit outdated (the marjority of my old models were from the time of Counter Strike Source).

However, you may think: “Man, getting ready models to create a game is very easy, because you have done almost nothing”. I must inform you that the truth is far away for this thought. In game development there is no a “copy and paste”, or “plug and play” solution, just one click and your game is done! No, even using pre-made 3d Models, you will never get the model which you want to fit on your project unless you do the dirty work of modifying this asset to fit on your game. Yeah, there is a LOT of work to be done.

I have done a lot of manual changes on this model, in example, the head cover was untill the neck, however I wanted this headcover to raise down untill the chest, so I manually modelled that extra part to make it reach the chest. Also the original texture was a plain black, so I manually created in Photoshop this Shemagh Texture in red color, the traditional Palestine Head Cover. Also to add some more depth, I did bake some small shadows on the texture to make it look more realistic and give a kind of fake volume to this head cover.

Another change I have done, because I am using the default UDK Skeleton (Unreal Tournament 3 Rig), and the default Animation System in UDK Engine (UE3) is pre programmed to work with the UT3 Skeleton outside the box, I did manually rig the character mesh to the UT3 Skeleton, as you can see in the video. And the character arms I used for this model, were a bit larger than the UT3 Skeleton, so I had to manually reduce the arms lenght, thus repositioning the hands aswell, to fit perfectly to UT3 Skeleton (so I don’t have to re-program the Animation System).

Cheers and untill next update!

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Very cool maps remind me of squad maps I can’t wait to play such a game. honestly talking here : ).

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Yeah dude, I will soon release a free demo, and the first mission of my game will be released very soon also, right after the demo.

Cheers and thanks for the compliments!

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For those who accused my game of terrorist propaganda: I sent the game synopsis alongside gameplay to Brazillian Government Justice Department for Approval and Age Rating. My game was approved, and got Age Rating +18!

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IndieDB - Indie Game of the Year. Please vote on Fursan al-Aqsa: [http://tiny.cc/8hkmgz

https://media.indiedb.com/images/groups/1/35/34231/profile/ioty.svg](http://tiny.cc/8hkmgz)

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Keep going man don’t let em censor you : P !

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There just 2 days left for the competition, so if you did not vote yet, please vote now: Fursan al-Aqsa: The Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque® Windows, X360, PS3 game - Indie DB

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I would like to thank all my friends for voting in my game on @IndieDB](https://twitter.com/IndieDB)

I don’t have words to say how happy I am with all your support guys.

You are awesome people who are supporting me and my game. I think the best word is:

جزاكم الله خير

May Allah (God) give you the best

My game is now on the top 100 list, and first one on its category!

There is still 10 days to go!

Please vote again for this second phase: [http://tiny.cc/5lu9gz

https://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/fursan_al_aqsa_title_screen_IndieGOTY.png](http://tiny.cc/5lu9gz)

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By the way, are there any prizes for the winners or just the acknowledgment (which is still welcomed advertising)

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Hello dude. No, this year will be no prizes (I think they couldn’t get a sponsor to the prizes). Anyway, most important than any prize is indeed the visibility. My game have only one month registered on IndieDB, and it already have made the top 100 (alongside @CobaltUDK and his game Babylon Project).

I feel too much honored man of being among the best 100 indie games on IndieDB. It shows, that, opposing what many people (even here from UDK Forums) said that my game would fail, it would be tagged as “terrorist propaganda”. No my friends, I have now TOO MANY SUPPORTERS and FOLLOWERS on twitter from all arround the world who are enjoying my game’s development and are dying to play this game.

Just a random thought, and it can be as a counseilling for all game devs arround here, something I already knew (because I work with Marketing and Advertising), however, now I am living it in a real game project.

You simply don’t sell a “game”, you sell an idea, a project, you need to make people understand first what is the message of your game, then, day by day, you make them raise interest on your game, by making them participate with you on the development.

Just access the images and video pages of my game’s profile in IndieDB:

As you can see, each new update on my game, I go there and publish to people live with me the development of the game. Gamers love to see how a game is being made, they love to see a screenshot of your game on the engine, the assets on the 3d Software, I also began to write a development blog on which I explain in simple words how I have done such and such on my game:

Many people on gamers websites (Joyfreak, Gaming Latest) thanked me for explaining to them how a game is made. Gamers simply love this close contact with the developers!

Also on the meantime, between one update and other, I create some promotional art, banners, and share all arround the web, so people, gamers, get engaged on my game. You need to make them curious about your game, without spoilling everythinh. You need to make people feel that they need to play this game to see what is about.

These were just some ideas on how to promote your game alone on the web.

Cheers and untill next update (Updated Mocap Animations for my Game’s Protagonist)

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Fursan al-Aqsa Dev Blog #5 - Updated Animations for Ahmad al-Ghazzawi

In game development is a common practice to use placeholder assets, which can be 3D Models, Textures and even Animations. Whenever I first began developing this game 2 years ago, I use the default UDK AnimationSet, which includes all the Character Animations used in Unreal Tournament 3. However, to give my game some originality, I decided to replace some of these stock UT3 (Unreal Tournament 3) animations by other animations from my Assets Library (which includes MOCAP animations from MegaMoCap, TrueBones, TurboSquid, NaturalMotion, and others).

I did not make too much polishments on these first animations I used, as I was just bored to look all time to the Default UDK Animations, so I just wanted something provisory, to polish later.

UDK/UE3 Engine has a perfectly working Animation System, pre-configured to work outside the box for a Shooter Game. One of these functions is what we call Aiming Profiles, which means, for any type of weapon the player carries, there are a different set of animations: in example, run forward rifle, run left pistol, rifle idle animation, bazooka run forward, and so on. For the sake of simplicity, I just replaced many of these stock UDK animationsby these new mocap files (retargetting these animations to the default UDK Skeleton in Motion Builder).

It would be very cool if using custom animations for UDK was just a matter of copy and paste. Even though the retargetting animations process is flawlessy inside Motion Builder, however, because of differences in skeleton size (UDK Skeleton x Custom MOCAP Skeletons), I had to manually edit each mocap animation to fit into UDK Skeleton. The fixes is just reposition of the character skeleton to fit and work flawlessly. In Motion Builder I just added a new animaton layer and added some key frame animations to fix the MOCAP, one by one.

Added to this, I did some Custom MOCAP using my Kinect Camera, as you san see in the video above. I must admit that is far better using professional captured MOCAP files than doing it yourself. I used Custom Kinect MOCAP files whenever I could not find, inside my assets library, the animation wanted, so it is time for “Do it Yourself”. Again, after some (MANY) tweaks on these custom kinect mocap files, I got something good looking wich you can check aswell on the above video. And these will be the final animations for the game’s protagonist.

I hope you are enjoying de follow the development of Fursan al-Aqsa.

P.S: If you did not vote yet for Fursan al-Aqsa, please vote now, it is disputing the Top 10 Indie Games of 2019, it is now the #1 of Upcoming Third Person Shooter:

Cheers and until Next Update!

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Can you make a tutorial about the mocap, Can It work with blender? what program you using in first place to use the mocap, the animation and 3d program to do the animation?

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I think he is using motion builder or 3ds max for the mocap retargeting to the ut3 skeleton, but either way,the option Human IK is the same,or all most the same between motion builder,max or maya.Blender most probably have a retargeting workflow too (but i have no experience in blender)

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@Neongho

Hello dude! Like I wrote down on the dev blog, I am making just some few custom mocap, 90% are purchased mocap files. About my workflow. I use 3dsmax for creating/editing my 3D assets and exporting to UDK. I use 3dsmax2009 for almost all of my assets (because I have a lot of purchased plugins from the time I worked with 3D for TV Advertising). I use 3dsmax2013 for making my maps and exporting to UDK (because 3dsmax2009 can’t handle huge scenes). I don’t use a newest version of 3dsmax because these two I had purchased a permanent license many years ago, and I don’t have cash now to upgrade.

About the animation, I use MotionBuilder 2013 (again another permanent license I have).

I don’t have time for doing a tutorial, however I will share with you all the animation template files I created for working and make a explanation of how to do.

First of all, I manually rig/skin my character to the UT3 Male Template 3dsmax file which I got from UDN. Here is my custom version, with the units already setup to UDK, and a 3 point light environment to have a better visualization whenever texturing (creating the materials) for the mesh:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1q2DZz-5nOWrvM6obcqO0g_slFcdf4DqK

After I rig/skin the character mesh to the UT3 Male Template (you need to skin to the yellow bones and NOT the biped bones), and setup the materials (color, specular and normal maps), I select the mesh (you can make your character made of multiple mesh, just skin these meshes to the appropriate bone), and select all the yellow bones (UT3 skeleton), then I export selected as FBX (using the correct FBX export settings).

Then I just import into UDK, and it will automatically create the materials. However I use the UT3 Character Shader (Material Instance Constant).

OBS: I make the animations separated from the character model.

Now on Motion Builder.

Download this UT3 Biped Character Motion Builder Ready:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZQYULvX2tpHSkg2qGGk6nnmTPZrokIAs

Open this file on Motion Builder and you will see a Solid Snake Character, Rigged, and Human-IK Ready (I used Solid Snake because his model is kinda of universal model, and it is more similar to my game’s character than UT3 Male Model. On the time which I was developing this workflow and animation pipeline for my game, I did not have any character ready for my game, so because this I did search for a generic soldier rigged for UT3 Skeleton (this is from a UT3 Mod).

Now you need to merge any mocap file to the scene (bvh, fbx, and so on). The retarget is very easy, however, you just need select all skeletons of your mocap file and manually make it into T position, then you just need to select each bone and assign it to a node on the HumanIK panel (like bone x is hand, bone y is arm, bone z is neck, and so on). After you assigned all bones to HumanIK nodes, just click “Characterize > Create FK/IK > Biped”.

Then on your UT3 Solid snake model animation panel source, you select on the list the new character you just created (mocap skeleton).

After this, your solid snake model will animate just like your mocap skeleton. However, you will need to manually fix somethings, like moving the hand a while to left, right, up, down, because of differences on the size and form of the UT3 character and the mocap skeleton.

After finishing the edit, you plot all animation data to the UT3 Skeleton, then on Human IK Panel you click to save character animation as, then this exported animation you import to the 3dsmax UT3 Male template.

In resume, we are going to retarget any MOCAP Animation to the UT3 Biped first inside motion builder, and then, inside 3dsmax we are going to import the UT3 Biped Animations which we created in MotionBuilder. After importing the biped animations to 3ds max UT3 Template, we are going to select the Yellow Bones in 3dsmax (UT3 Skeleton), and this will be exported to UDK as an animation.

Why I do this? To keep the IK Skeleton Control for Hands and feet working in UDK. If we export directly from motion builder to udk (retargeting to UT3 skeleton instead of udk biped), the IK bones on UT3 Skeleton will not animate with the hands, so IK skeleton control from UDK Animation Tree will not work, it will mess up the hand of the character.

I am doing this specific workflow because I am using default UDK AnimSet, Default UDK Animtree, just replacing the animations, however, everything is for UDK/UT3 Skeleton.

As the custom mocap, you need a kinect xbox360 camera, you need to install the default windows drivers, then you need to install the brekel kinect software:

https://brekel.com/kinect-3d-scanner/download/

As for blender, I don’t know man, sorry. I even tried to use blender, however, +10 years in 3dsmax you get addicted :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

On the time I began working with 3D (2004), I began with Cinema4D, as it was cheaper than 3dsmax. Later, after I began to earn a LOT of money :smiley: :smiley: :D, because our small studio composed by me, my father and my brother, was the first one on the town we were living (on North of Brazil) to make 3D graphics for TV, I purchased the top of line 3D Softwares: 3dsmax (it was still from discreet), Maya (from Alias) and MotionBuilder (from Kaydara). We made a LOT of TV Commercial with animated logo and 3D Characters, I plan to very soon upload my old 3D Portfolio to Youtube.

Cheers!

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New Updated Model for Zionist Soldier - Work in Progress

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The hat (or is it a helmet cover?) from the third image looks really cool.Did you made a new physics asset for these or reusing the udk one that comes with the robot?

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Hello my dear udk brother :cool:

Like you all know, my characters are kinda “frankestein” :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: They are made by mixing multiple body parts from different characters I purchased over the internet (model packs). However, I always do some edit here and there, change faces, vertices, change the shape and so on.

That hat is a traditional israeli hat used by IDF Army over a helmet. I made that hat by “deforming” the helmet of the second character :smiley: :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

Like I said, I am using top notch high quality 3D assets to raise up the quality of my game. I am still going to remake all the maps, replacing the marjority of the assets by others of higher quality.

About physics assets, like I said, I try to keep things as simple as possible. Yeah, it would be cool in example, to shoot the enemy and see the hat flying out. However, for me it is not worth doing it, because, it could cause imprevisible results (physics messup :D), as Kactors don’t work perfectly in UDK. So these hats, and all the character attachments (vest, knee protector, pistol holster and backpack), they are hard skinned (100% influence) to the closest bones (like hat is skinned to head bone).

Yes, I am using the default UDK Physics asset, as the ragdoll is working perfectly (like you could see on my old videos).

Never forget my friend, keep things as simple as possible!