Hello mate! Thanks for the compliments!
No, I did not model the Apache, I purchased a game ready model, but I did create the texture painting to make it like IDF Army’s Helicopters, and I did the Programming (UScript Class) and I did the animation.
Cheers 
Fursan al-Aqsa Dev Blog #11 - Maps Showcase - Camp Filon
Click here to see more Screenshots:
Click here to see the Video Showcase of this environment, without gameplay (to avoid spoilers :D):
Hello my friends!
Sorry for the looooong delay without posting updates. Even though I did not post here on the forums, however, I am very active on twitter, and most important, I have been working VERY HARD on this game, and will show you now some important updates and informations.
First of all, I want to apologize about the release date for Episode 1 of my game. I was planning to release on may 10th because I want to send my game to Brazil Independent Games Festival (BIG), and it had a deadline for sending the game until may 11th, so I was decided to release the game one day before it, on its current state.
As everyone knows, because Coronavirus, all the major gaming events were cancelled, and the same with BIG Festival. Now the deadline was extended until November.
So I continued to develop my game, and build the maps (the last step on my game dev workflow). I spent the last year of 2019 working on the programming and characters animations, and from since 2018 I did not build a new map for my game (I was only building small testmaps for testing the programming and animations). So I began to build this map, Camp Filon, and I have done an upgrade on my maps building workflow, and I was able to build this map under 10 days. Because this I realized that in one month I can complete, finish designing 3 maps, which means, 3 missions (for the campaign mode), and also some extra missions using these same maps with some time of day variations.
Then I came to the conclusion that would be a lot unfair from my part to release this game with only 1 map when I can add more content to make this game more playable and enjoyable by the community.
For all these reasons, I decided to delay the release of this game a bit more, maybe one month, or two (no more than this), for the sake of polishing this game, adding more content, and raising the overal quality, so Fursan al-Aqsa will live up to all this hype and the community expectations, maybe this can be one of the Best Indie Games of 2020 
I think I am not harming anyone with this delay, because I did not make any kind of pre-order (or the like).
I am very happy with the results, and this new map which shows the final game quality, is by far the best map I ever created in Unreal Engine 3, and the next maps will be even better.
Also another update, I did a complete revamp of the game`s website, made it very professional, with complete informations about the game, specs, features, and so on:
About the release itself, after thinking a lot, searching and re-searching, analysing various factors, I decided to go on my own even on the releasing and distribution of my game.
I will be skipping marketplaces like Steam, Itch.io, and other sites and will release it on my own website, a small ecommerce system I developed with PHP Cake Framework, integrated with Paypal IPN Payments (I am a web developers with +10 years of experience creating sites and e-commerces arround the web).
This is the virtual store for my game (you can`t purchase yet):
The reason is simple: Reduce my costs!
Steam is very expensive, 30% of revenue share, added to this, is the USA Government Withdrawal whenever Steam sends money from USA to my Bank Account in Brazil, that can reach more 30% (there is no Agreement between Brazil and USA regarding this fee). Last, but not least, is the Brazillian government`s fee for receiving money from outside brazil, which can reach from 5% to 10%. And adding to this problem, is the currency conversion, which today, 1 USD is almost 6 BRL!!!
So as you can see, Steam is no way for me. The only difference from Itch.io, is that their revenue share can be as low as 0%. Even then, there is still the 30% of Withdrawal and the Brazillian Fee (also the currency conversion).
For all these reasons, I decided to sell my own game on my own website. This site is 100% safe, as it uses SSL Encryption by Let’s Encrypt and the payments are processed by Paypal. The purchase process is very simple, there is no need to even register on this website. Just click on the buy now button and you will be redirected to Paypal Checkout Page. You login to your paypal account and make the payment. After the payment is completed, you will receive on your email (registered at Paypal) a download link for the game you purchased. This link is temporary, and expires after 3 download attempts, or after 24 hours.
I know you cant avoid piracy, and whoever wants to pirate my game will do it, regardless where I release it. Its very easy to buy a game on steam, then just change some files and configurations, make this game a non steam game and distribute it free arround the web. I mean, steam does not avoid piracy. I personally don`t worry about piracy, because I know here on this community are awesome people who are going to support me by purchasing my game (it will be VERY CHEAP :D).
So, there is no reason for me paying all these fees to steam, whenever I can pay only 5% for paypal for selling my game, and nothing more.
Sorry for this long post, however, I hope you all understand me and stay HYPED with my game 
Cheers and until next update (Jenin, the Camp of Resistance).
Fursan al-Aqsa Dev Blog #12 - Performance Optimization for Consoles
https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/28-Fursan_al-Aqsa-_Performance_Test_PS3.png
In this article I explain the new changes I made to my custom UDK/Unreal Engine 3 to fix textures streaming on consoles and make the game run and render as intended on both PS3 and Xbox360.
Hello guys (and girls)!
After one intense week of work, headaches, distress, and almost throwing everything (my PC and my consoles) out the window :), I finnaly got that last map, Camp Filon, running smoothly on consoles, the way it was intended to run, as you can see in this video below:
Until now, all the gameplay features I implemented on my game, like Knife Kills, UI, Pause Menu, Game Over Screen, HeadShots Counter, and so on, if you see, I tested them on debug maps, empty maps, merely blocks, without texture, particles, or any effect. I mean, these scenarios did not represent how the final game will run.So, whenever I compiled the last map, Camp Filon, to run on PS3 and Xbox360, I discovered another bug, which I did not observe before. All the textures on the map were terrible blurry, I mean, indeed blurry to such extent that the visuals became horrible!!!
I know that consoles have much limited RAM memory than PC, and specifically PS3 and Xbox360, in rough terms, they have 256MB and 512MB of RAM, respectively.What was driving me nuts is the fact that the game run fine on PC, just on consoles the textures got extremelly blurry. After searching on legacy UDK Engine forums (UDK - Epic Games Forums) and on UDN Network (UDN | WebHome), I began to learn more deep about Unreal Engine 3 on Consoles. The good of developing a game alone, is that it can be a true classroom for anyone. I myself, learned a LOT on this project. Specially, whenever I began developing this game, I did not know too much about Unreal Script Programming. Now, I learned a LOT, and I am able to do many things I could not do before.
Coming back to my journey, I discovered about Texture Pool in Unreal Engine 3, which, in rough terms, is kinda fixed memory space used for loading (streaming) textures to the screen. From what I understood (I may be wrong, but what matters here is that now it is working), Unreal Engine 3 throws all the textures currently loaded (which can be seen by the player view camera) inside this texture pool, and then it loads the mipmap of these textures as it is needed. The mipmaps here are kinda different versions of the same texture in different resolutions, to be loaded according the camera view distance, like, the closer the player view camera is to a texture, it will load a higher resolution of the texture, the further, it will load a lower resolution version of the texture. This is essential for performance.
So what was happening? The texture pool was filled up in consoles, so it was only loading the lowest resolution of each texture (16x16). The default Texture Pool Size in UE3 is 140MB, so I increased it to 200MB and voila! Problem solved! Not yet…
Again I compiled the map and did run on PS3 and Xbox360. It run beautifully and smoothly, with the textures on it`s full resolution, and the mipmaps loading correctly. However, another problem happenned, whenever I added the enemies on the map, it simply crashed the game on consoles with the error OUT_OF_MEMORY.
I was already entering into despair because this problem, however, my last try, was to compress all the TGA textures of this map in photoshop using the RLE algorithm. I created a small photoshop action script to batch compress all the 465 TGA textures (diffuse, normal and specular), and was able to reduce by almost half the total size of the textures. Before compression they were 576MB, and after they turned 278MB!!!
So this compression of textures compensated the increased texture pool size, allowing the game run, without crash, and with the mipmaps working flawlessly, as you could see on the above video.
Finnaly, I can use this new map as a template whenever building my other maps, as I know now that I need to optimize the maps as much as I can, and keep the maps size small, just like this, for the sake of performance, and gameplay.Cheers and until next update.
Fursan al-Aqsa - Demo Coming Soon…
Finally, after a lot of hard work and polishment, I am finishing, for the next few days, a free demo for “Fursan al-Aqsa”, so anyone will be able to test the gameplay, learn the combat mechanics and prepare for the big battle, which comes on Episode 1.
**بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
وصلى الله وسلم على نبينا محمد وعلى آله وصحبه أجمعين
May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family and all friends
السلام عليكم
Peace be upon you**
This is the Free Demo of the game Fursan al-Aqsa - Knights of al-Aqsa Mosque. The main objective of this demo is to let players test the Combat Mechanics, give me a feedback, and enjoy killing some zionist soldiers
Download PC Version:
Download PS3 Version:
Download Xbox360 Version:
This is just a testmap which does not represent the final game’s visuals, it was just projected to focus on gameplay and urban warfare (kinda training scenario), simulating the combat situations players will face on the final game, Insha Allah (God’s willing).
The enemies A.I is very smart and dynamic, the enemies can feel your presence, if you get too much close to them, or if you shoot at their direction. They also will hunt you untill death
I tried to make the game very realistic, yet, keeping it a videogame. So, dying is very easy, also killing enemies is not very hard. I placed many healthpacks arround the map to help you recover your health.
You need to plan each shot, you need to be very strategic and try to avoid the enemies bullets as much as you can. You need to jump a lot and use the crouch button, to manually deviate from the bullets, to take cover behind objects and walls. I tried to avoid implementing a cover system like Gears of War, instead, I opted by a manual cover system, because it feels more realistic, organic, and challenging. By pressing the pause button (ESC key on PC), you can see the Controller/Keys Configuration with all gameplay commands.
You can kill any enemy with just one certain headshot, and the more headshots you perform, you get a higher ranking.
Inside the demo’s download package I added 3 Readme files (English, Portuguese and Arabic) with complete information on how to install and configure the game, how to use gamepad with PC, the list of some known bugs, and other informations. Please read it before playing.
So I hope everyone likes this demo and enjoy playing it. This is just a glimpse of what awaits you on the final game.
Cheers and until next update!
P.S: I need to take a break some days to recharge my batteries
hey It does not work… what am I supposed to do to run it ?
Strange mate!
I got a friend which even run the game on Mac OS using a windows emulator.
Try to download these VC++ Redistributables, as another guy was running windows 10 and got an error, and this solved his error. But you need to download the X86 and X64 versions of the VC++ Redistributables
People is just lazy for it, just like me, try to make use of the installer of UDK ?
GUYS, MY GAME STAYED THE ENTIRE SUNDAY (YESTERDAY) ON NUMBER 1 POPULARITY ON INDIEDB.COM!!!
Now it is number 2.
I am so happy, but so happy that I think I will even blow up myself out of happiness
This is a dream coming true for me, people on twitter loved the game, and are still playing it.
My friends from brazillian press are already playing it and will make a review for me, like this guy (he got Rank A):
He even compared my game to Max Payne’s Gameplay Style :eek::eek::eek:
I just have to recompile ad recook the PS3 Game because it seems to be going over memory on some Consoles Models.
But the PC and Xbox360 are working flawlessly.
Here I have a friend who made a small gameplay video on xbox360 (he does not like shooter lol):
https://img.youtube.com/vi/imyS5B-iKSQ/hqdefault.jpg
So my dear UDK Brothers, today is a Day of Glory and Victory for me, I did not give up regardless all the restrictions and backlash I received, but I am steadfast on my journey, and I already began to harvest the fruits of success.
For me this is a BIG THING getting my game TOP POPULAR GAMES on INDIEDB, as this is my first real game project, working on it from since 2017.
I will stay this entire week promoting the demo, now I will promote it on the Arabic Gamer Community, as I already published on Brazillian and International Sites / Forums.
Cheers!
Alright, just finished playing it( got a rank C for COOL :rolleyes: )
The damage you receive is very punishing.I mean even counter strike doesn’t punish you like that.I know that bullets kill, but I was forced to go back and forth for health packs a lot of times.I know that this is the idea but maybe make them take a little less damage on the player.Slightly less, like 5-10 % less than what it is now, as i kind of get little frustrated getting killed.(I did got better when I replayed it a few times though) The stairs in front of the tank that go to the right have a strange cut collision as the player reaches the end of the stairs and there is still room to go to the fence but you cant.If someone tries it ,it gets buggy and may stuck the player.These stairs are also at the end of the level with the same problem.
Maybe make the music slightly louder or have a option to make it loud( i know that this kind of sucks to make in UDK, but it is possible in kismet).
So yeah, I had a very Aladeen experience
Hello my brother, finnally you played my game hahaha!
Thanks for the feedback!
Let’s go in parts.
First of all, level design. For my game’s maps, I dont use BSP, only 100% Static Meshes modelled in 3dsmax and exported to UDK. But for the demo, I had to make something fast in UDK using BSP modelling, just to focus in gameplay, kinda training arena, so because this the level design is not flawless. However, as for the Camp Filon, that military base I showcased here before, it does not have these collision bugs, as everything was planned and modelled in 3dsmax then just assembled here on UDK:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/core/image/gif;base64
Second, about the level of difficulty. What you played on the demo, is the Challenges Mode itself, HeadShots Challenge (even though I named it Training Mode, for the sake of the demo).
Yes, the Challenges Mode is meant to be ****ing hard 
https://forums.unrealengine.com/core/image/gif;base64
, Survivor Mode, and many others (I am stil searching some inspirations).
As for the Campaign Mode, yeah, the difficulty will be a bit easier, because there will be less enemies on the map, and the marjority of the missions will be focused on stealth, like the Camp Filon Mission. Just to have an idea, you spawn outside the base and needs to find a entrance to penetrate the base without being spotted, then you need to kill the guards with a knife untill you find a silencer weapon, then you need to turn off the security spotlights, then find a pilot disguise, then talk with the Camp’s Chief Commander disguised as a pilot to get the helicopter key, then you need to assassinate the Chief Commander, and escape with the helicopter, then… I WONT SPOIL THE SURPRISE HAHAHAHAHA
That’s exactly my game design phylosophy, make the player frustrated, mad, but when he learns how to play the game, and finnaly beats the game, he feels himself as a F****NG BAD *** ARABIC TERRORIST
https://forums.unrealengine.com/core/image/gif;base64
, and maybe will cry out “ALLAH AKBAR, I DID IT” hahaha
This is the same design phylosophy of many famous indie games, like Hotline Miami and Katana Zero.
I read too much behind scenes articles and developers interviews to get some inspiration.
Cheers my brother!
I am waiting to play your game soon 
https://forums.unrealengine.com/core/image/gif;base64
WHY DID YOU GET FRUSTRATED WHEN DYING MATE! REJOICE, YOU BECAME AN ISLAMIC MARTYR!!! YOU WILL ENTER PARADISE MAN!!!
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p:p
Frieeeeeeeend , get me a UDK installer i wanna play :eek:
Hello Neongho. Just click on Binaries\ًWin32\FursanAqsaGame.exe
There is absolutely no reason it can`t run on your pc, because your pc can run UDK, so it already have all which is needed to UDK (VC++ Reditributables, DirectX Runtime, and so on).
Do you receive some error message when clicking on the game’s executable?
If you want you can click on UDK.exe, which is also in Binaries\ًWin32. Just click and the game will run.
Arlgith I could play but there was no mission to play on the menu it did not head to any level or mission.
Hello mate! Good news!
You just need to select the game mode Training then Select Mission Eliminate All.
It’s already set by default so you only need to click START/INICIAR > PLAY MISSION/JOGAR MISSAO
Hello friends!
The PS3 Demo was buggy, it was not working on PS3 at 1080p, neither 720p, only 480p.
But I already fixed it, as you can see here:
So tomorrow I will launch an updated version of the demo, including the working PS3 Demo, and this new freaking awesome feature, Bullet Time with all its glory :
Fursan al-Aqsa - Demo Updated
Lets kill some Zionist Soldiers in the best Max Payne Style!
Trailer: Fursan al-Aqsa Bullet Time Showcase video - Indie DB
PC: Fursan al-Aqsa HeadShots Demo - PC file - Indie DB
PS3: Fursan al-Aqsa HeadShots Demo - PS3 file - Indie DB
Xbox360: Fursan al-Aqsa HeadShots Demo - XBOX360 file - Indie DB
Pretty good pretty good But there are needs for this nice kebab ( I love kebabs ) to work! After all games are like fast food… Mine is a pizza I guess haha. (GOTA)
Well so, so far this are my critics and opinions and feedback:
Fast food main assets
-First the menu, I hate it, You should just click to play you click something and you are not playing. It’s counter intuitive. Make one from scratch
-Needs easy normal hard options…
-Training mission? Where I fought zionists already and so far nobody taught me to do it, I mean It’s a good thing that it’s already playable without tutorial but a nice tutorial would be good.
Gameplay:
Why don’t you make a first person shooter system ? with ironSights and all, that would be awesome…
I don’t see health pickups and it’s hard or you deal with stupid AI …
So far I could play alrready aand have fun but, It should have a easy normal hard.
that is it,
Thanks bro for the feedback, it’s very important to hear other people’s opinions.
1- About the menus. In the final game, the player will choose which mode he wants to play, like Campaign, Training, Challenges, and for each game mode, he needs to select the map. It’s not that hard, in your case it may have not worked because you choosed campaign, and campaign game mode is empty, so there is no map. In the final game all modes will have a map to play, so this wont happen.
2- Sorry, but I want my game be the Dark Souls of Third Person Shooter, and many people said they loved my game because it’s hard, it invites them to learn, to train, to play, die, play, die, untill they win. And whenever they win, they feel themselves as a badass arabic terrorist
3- About tutorials, I have made like Nintendo has done with Zelda Breath of the Wild, leave the player to learn everything by himself, it’s more challenging and rewarding for the player. Whenever you pause the game (ESC), you can see all the game commands, and this is enough as a tutorial.
4- Sorry bro, I got bored from FPS Shooters 
5- Yeah, there are enough health pickups for the player, and they even regenerate after a while, you just need to explore the map a bit.
Cheers and again, THANKS FOR YOUR FEEDBACK!
Fursan al-Aqsa - Demo feedback and player’s reception
In this article I made an analysis of the feedback I received for my game’s demo and general player’s reception.
Hello my friends,
Today two weeks have passed since the release of Fursan al-Aqsa Training Mission, the free demo of my game, and I came here especially for saying a BIG THANK YOU ALL FOR PLAYING MY GAME, IT HAS BEEN A HUGE SUCCESS WHICH I HAVE NEVER IMAGINED IT COULD BE!
It even topped the list of popular games on IndieDB, as you can see from this screenshot below:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eafxy-pXgAIOQ7K?format=jpg
Also the number of downloads is almost reaching 500, and each day there are some new people downloading my game (5 to 10 downloads a day). For some people this number maybe very small, however for me, this is indeed a milestone for my project. For someone who is doing everything alone, and manually, I think I have done an excellent job marketing and promoting my game arround the web.
Despite the strong political and religious content of my game, people simply loved it, especially the gameplay mechanics. My game is being called as “An Islamic Max Payne with the violence of Hotline Miami and the difficulty of Dark Souls”.
WOW, having my game compared with some of the most important gaming franchises of all times is simply and honor for me!
I am very optimistic now and I am sure that my game has potential to be one of the best indie game of 2020, Insha Allah (God’s willing)!
Other important step I have taken, and I am sure this will help my game to receive even more visibility, is that I sent thousands of press releases for thousands of gaming websites and youtube channels, from small to big ones like IGN and Gamespot. I also submitted my game to many indie events, like BostonFig, IndieCade, Independent Games Festival, Brazil Game Show, Brazil Independent Games Festival, PAX, Bit Summit, and many others.
Until now I received two positive answers, from BostonFig and IndieCade, even though they said my game is still being analysed by the event judges, to decide wether it will be showcased or not. Anyway, I hope they will acept my game, and until these events, I will be able to finish the full game (Episode 1).
So, thanks to Allah (God), and for all this wonderful community, my game is simply kicking ■■■■■ 
My game also received many reviews from Youtubers, even though the marjority of these are from Brazillian Playstation Scene Members, but any review and feedback, for me is VERY IMPORTANT!
So here follows some of the reviews so far.
And here follows some screenshots of another map I am working on, Jenin - The Camp of Resistance:
https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/jenin_1.png
https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/jenin_2.png
https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/jenin_3.png
https://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/73/72158/jenin_4.png
Again, THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR AWESOME SUPPORT!
Cheers from Brazil and untill next update.