Hi Nidal! (How do you pronouce this?)

First and foremost I would like to show my support. I was also born and raised in Brazil, so I understand the freedom you are used to when you talk about the situation in Palestine and all related. Brazil is one of the few places on Earth still relatively free of the ridiculous amount of prejudice the arabs suffer due to the terrorism hysteria. I don't have any connection with Palestine myself, but the distortions and manipulations against Palestinian people told worldwide by some media groups causes me a strong empathy and solidarity. I even have a kaffieh =)

Second, I would like to say you are very brave! I live in a different place now and if you talk about your game over here, you might lose some friends. Bringing a theme like this to the light of day demands huge courage!

I'm glad to read your game is not supporting terrorism or any violence against innocent people. You are dealing with sensitive grounds here. I know it is unfair. Companies can launch games such as Carmageddon or Grand Theft Auto, promoting absurd violence and crime against innocents and everyone cheers, while you make a game about soldiers fighting oppression and all the fingers are pointed to you, just because you touched a tabu. I bow to you.

Brazuca Greetings ;)

An IDF campaign would make the project more interesting.

Good luck to you. Don't envy what you may face, in terms of publicity, the distortions and the heat of your message.

Gameplay question: I think of games like Red Faction as well as your setting. Combat is not healthy for ruins, sacred sites, etc. Can there be damage to the environment? Could there be repercussions in terms of gameplay? After all, all combatants value the surroundings (perhaps more than their opponents' lives).

I would like to thank all my friends for voting in my game on @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:

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 for selecting the top 10 games from these 100!

Please vote again for this second phase: http://tiny.cc/18blhz

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

http://www.moddb.com/games/fursan-al-aqsa-knights-of-al-aqsa-mosque/videos/13-fursan-al-aqsa-ahmad-al-ghazzawi-making-off-mocap

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.

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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:
http://tiny.cc/18blhz

Cheers and until Next Update!

New Updated Model for Zionist Soldier - Work in Progress

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Today I began to sketchup some ideas of Maps for Fursan al-Aqsa Training Missions. Besides the Campaign Mode, I will add a Training Mode for my game with a LOT of Cool Missions, inspired by Metal Gear Solid 2 VR Missions (Kill All, Stealth, Weapon Shooting and Variety).

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I decided to change my custom camera to make it look more similar to MetalGearSolid4. I am happy with the final result, so now my game has more of that MGS feeling! Next step will be add the iconic solid snake's crawling animation!

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