A long time since…

It has been very long since I wrote a blog post that relates to this community. So, I will try to give a quick status update on what I am doing these days. After publishing Insanity on September 1st, 2020. I needed a break, so I took one full month off just to stop my brain from thinking or solving problems. It was well worth it. Now, as many of you may know, I am studying to enter a PMP exam by mid December. I am trying to get myself acquainted with project management in order to prepare myself for real life projects, whether they are personal, freelanced or even projects to studios if I get hired. My ultimate goal at for my game development journey is to become a creative director and direct the making of games. I already have, and still building, my technical expertise, so it won’t hurt to gain some management expertise as well. So wish me luck with that exam, please! I hate exams!!

I also won a grant that was offered by our government, where I attended the Game Design and Development Specialization offered by Michigan State University on Coursera for free. The specialization consisted of 5 courses:

1. Intro to Game Development
2. Principals of Game Design
3. Game Development on Modern Platforms
4. Entrepreneurship and the gaming industry
5. Capstone Project for graduation.

It was a great experience and I completed the program on October 5th 2020. I learned a lot from this specialization especially when it came to game design. It also gave me an opportunity to attend seminars to developers, producers, designers and creative directors from the industry who work at EA, Ubisoft, Activision and Rockstar. It was eye opening and I am so glad I got through this experience.

How Insanity is doing So far?

Since I published Insanity, I have proudly made $0.53 :D. I got 1000+ downloads for the game on android and around 200+ downloads in iOS which is fine, but I didn’t make money out of it. This is okay, I was not really expecting my first game to be a hit or anything. The main goal of making Insanity was for me to experience making games, to live the whole journey from start to finish; to actually get something done and published to the public. I did that; and this is more than enough for me at this stage. I am not a person who like to take big leaps, but I always believe in a slow and steady approach to doing things. Whether I win or lose in the Ultimate Game Jam, having to build a game and get it out there, is just the greatest reward that I can get at the moment.

So… What’s Next then?

After resting a bit from Insanity, I started planning for a new project. I worked with my cousin for some time to come up with an idea for a competitive online game. We had some really good ideas and we almost finalized a High Concept Document; but then something great happened to me three weeks ago…

A friend of mine who works at a company in Egypt, called me and she was interested in the games I make and she started asking me questions about how long have I been doing this and whether I am interested in doing professional game development work and I told her that I was open for anything; and this is when it happened. She offered me an opportunity to be outsourced and work on a project that they signed with the government to create a game that raises the kids and youth awareness against COVID-19 and how can they protect themselves from the virus and stop its spread. I found myself saying, YES! One week later, I signed an official contract to lead the design and development of the game; and an NDA of course. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to share much of the development journey, but I will sure share with you all some screenshots when things start to take shape. So far, we got the client’s approval on the game idea and we are now waiting for their approval on the High Concept Document. Once approved, I will start the technical design and jump into Unity and Visual Studio. I have never been that happy! Hard work is finally paying off!

Now, my current PC can barely run URP, imagine if I want to do something on HDRP. I remember when I did Al Heck’s course on making beautiful levels, doing the level in HDRP was painful because of the processing power of my PC. So I decided to build a new PC so I can work on, and at the same time play games as well. Here are the specs that I bought:

• CPU: AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core 16-Threads (Max Boost 4.4 GHz)
• Mother Board: GIGABYTE B550 AORUS PRO AC
• GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER ROG Strix 8GB GDDR6 Graphics Card
• RAM: HyperX Fury Desktop Memory Single Stick 16GB 3200 MHz
• SSD: Sabrent 512GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive
• HDD: 1TB Seagate BarraCuda
• Case: XPG INVADER Mid-Tower PC Chassis Black
• PSU: Seasonic 620 Watt Bronze (Not the best Wattage, but it will do for now)
• Cooling: 3 CoolerMaster front intake fans, 1 XPG fan in the back as an exhaust, 1 XPG fan on the top as an exhaust. Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240R Addressable RGB for CPU Cooling.

New PC Setup

At the end if I were to give anyone reading this post an advise. It is to never give up hope and just keep doing what yo are doing and always believe in yourself and in your dreams!

Cheers!

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November 26, 2020December 2, 2020 by samirgeorgy Categories: Game Development, Gaming, Random Thoughts, TechnologyTags: Build, Game Development, games, Insanity, PC Leave a comment

Devlog 3: Insanity’s Experience

One of the things that I was thinking about when i was working on my game is its experience. Any good game, in my opinion has to make the player feel something. Some games make their players feel powerful, smart, afraid, sad or even angry! I remember playing a game called I AM BREAD… Oh, that game made me want to find the developer that made it and just punch him/her in the face! But that what makes a game good, in my opinion; even if not a lot of people like it.

So, what do I want the player to feel when playing Insanity? I want the game to be challenging, fun and at the same time to make the player feel unstoppable. Now, the important question is: how can I convey this feeling to the player? The first thing that I thought of was the Music. Music can set the mood for any game. It can turn a glorious winning scene into the saddest scene you have even seen. For now, I am using the Mjolnir mix track for Halo 2; it is fast, using high keys and the progression of the music makes you feel that you just want to keep going forward. Now, I cannot just use that track in the game I am planning to release, but this track helped me in knowing what kind of music I want to include in my game. I want the music to be badass!

What else can I do to enhance the experience of my game? The Controls? Of course… the simpler and more efficient and responsive the controls are to the player, the smoother the game is, and the player will focus more on the game rather than having understand a complex controlling system (of course that case if for Mobile gaming). At first I was thinking of just using a joystick and put it on the left of the screen and the jump button would be on the right; something like Pubg’s controls. But I thought that this will be too complicated for my game; besides, the player will never have to do upwards or downwards in the game. So I decided to create the control system in buttons. A button that you press so the player moves forward and another for backward movement and a jump button. The movement buttons are close to each others to make movement for the player easy. The jump button is located to the left as most players have a muscle memory of jumping using the right hand.

The controls of insanity at the bottom of the screen.

The plan for Insanity goes beyond music and controls, but also through game play. The player has to finish the whole game before he/she can unlock two additional modes for the game:

1. Time Trial: Where the player can select a level and do it within his/her time. The player can break his/her own record by playing the level again and finishing it in less time.
2. Insanity Mode: The ultimate mode of Insanity. This mode’s challenge is to finish the whole game in a single run. Which means that you have only one health point through out the game. If you die at any level, you restart the game from level 1.

I am thinking of incorporating the game with Google play games, and introduce trophy system to the game in order to make the game more rewarding to the player, but I need to think about it. Not sure if this will be available in version 1.0

For now, these are my thoughts when it comes to the Insanity Experience. I am sure, I will come up with more ideas along the way; after all, this is my first game ever. and I can’t wait to get it released!

January 20, 2020January 29, 2020 by samirgeorgy Categories: Devlogs, Gaming, InsanityTags: 2d, Game Development Projects, gamedev, Gaming, Insanity, platformer, unity Leave a comment

Devlog 2: Level Design

One of the challenges I had when creating the levels is art. It is a skill that I am working on improving but at the same time I need to be productive and take a fast run in order to finish the game on time. I had to find a solution that can make my life a bit easier when it comes to the arts.

To start, I used the sprites that Jonathan used in his course “The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Game Development” and I used the skills I learned in that course to build a tile-map for the first level. Now I have a simple level where I used the dungeon sprites that were provided in that course. Then I decided to build another level with the same tileset, but I was thinking that I shouldn’t have all the levels having the same dungeon-y theme. I need to create levels with variable themes so that levels won’t be boring.

Level 2 of Insanity

Thankfully a friend of mine, who is a graphic designer, referred me to a website called Freepik. This website has a big set of sprites that you can use to build your own 2D game varying from 2D characters with their animations to tilesets to GUI items and a lot more. Basically what I did is that I downloaded almost all the tilesets from that website and I had to find my way through Adobe Illustrator to extract those tiles, make a sprite sheet with the correct sizes so I can slice them properly in Unity and create the tilemaps. I have to admit, the results turned out to be great! So if you are a game developer who is not good at art like me, I recommend that you use this website as a good start.

Then it came the time to decide which traps should I implement to make the game challenging and at the same time fun. The idea that I have is that I wanted the player to advance through the game bit by bit. I don’t want level one to have tough traps and tricky jumps, otherwise, the player will get bored from the game; but rather, let’s start with an easy level and get tougher the more the player advances through the game. The traps that I am initially thinking about are the following:

1. Spikes (of course)
2. Circular Saws (stationary and moving).
3. Fire (bring the heat!)
4. tracking missiles? (not yet sure whether I should include this or not.)

When it comes to the behavior of those traps, I tried as much as I could to make the behavior of those traps modular. So basically I have built a universal class called TrapDamageBehavior. This class is responsible for killing the player if it collides with the trap. This class can work with any trap that I can think of. Now some of those traps are not stationary. For example, The Circular Saws tend to move back and forth in their tracks at the level. For this scenario, I wanted to do some OOP. Basically, I have created a generic parent class called MovableObject that Inherits from MonoBehavior. Here is its code:

public class MoveableObject : Monobehavior
{
    #region Private Protected Variables

    /// <summary>
    /// The object's point A
    /// </summary>
    [SerializedField] protected Transform pointA;

    /// <summary>
    /// The object's point B
    /// </summary>
    [SerializedField] protected Transform pointB;

    /// <summary>
    /// The movement speed
    /// </summary>
    [SerializedField] protected float _movementSpeed;

    #endregion
}

This class has two points, A and B, where the object can move between and a movement speed variable. Now I can create another class called OscillatingMovement that defines the movement of any object that needs to move between two points. That class will inherit from MovableObject and use points A and B and the movement speed variable. This class has a function called Movement where the object is moved from one point to another back and forth. The code of the function is this:

public void Movement()
{
    //positionToMoveTo is initialized in start to pointA

    transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position, positionToMoveTo.position, _movementSpeed * Time.Deltatime);

    if (transform.position == pointA.position)
        positionToMoveTo = pointB;
    else if (transform.position == pointB.position)
        positionToMoveTo = pointA;
}

I was able to use this class to move all the circles saw traps as well as the moving platforms in my game; I even used the same class to move the level target which is the gem in the same manner. All that I have to do is to reference PointA and PointB for any moving object in the scene and define a movement speed and the object will move between Point A and B right away. The reason why I thought of building the movement of those objects in this way is that I am trying as much as I can to reuse the parent class with multiple objects. For example, If I am to implement the missile that I may need to create a child class that only uses point A for example as a spawn point and point B be the player last location upon spawning and the missile can then move towards point B but not in an oscillating movement but rather a one-directional movement.

There is still a lot to consider and to think about when it comes to the traps and I also see opportunities for optimization; but for now, this is how I approached my trap behaviors.

January 17, 2020April 22, 2020 by samirgeorgy Categories: Devlogs, Gaming, InsanityTags: development, Devlog, Game, Gaming, Insanity, passion, unity Leave a comment

Devlog 1: Insanity

Hello, and welcome to my devlog where I will be documenting my journey in developing my first game, Insanity.

Insanity is a mobile 2D platformer game that is inspired by a game called Super Meat Boy. I am planning to publish it to the play and app stores by the end of 2020. At the beginning I had no idea what game I should be doing. I downloaded some free assets from the asset store and tried to build my own Third Person Controller, then I tried to animate that character and play around with it, but I didn’t really have a solid idea that I can work on from the beginning and take it all the way to release. At that time I was playing Super Meat Boy, and i thought… why not start with something similar to it. 2D and 3D Development are pretty much the same with few differences as per my knowledge with Unity so far. So I decided to start with developing a 2D Platformer game similar to Super Meat Boy but for mobile.

I developed my first level in that game and experimented with the character controller to try to make the player move. Thanks to the course “The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Game Development” that Jonathan Weinberger offered on Unity, I got familiar with tilemaps and with the basics of level design for mobile games, and this is where it all started. I had my notebook with me all the time to write down any idea that I may have for that game. The game is supposed to challenge the player where he/she has to go through multiple levels with obstacles and traps and make it all the way to collect the sacred gem in each level. When I first thought about Insanity, I thought that it should include the following:

1. Lots of traps that the player has to overcome.
2. Power ups that can help the player overcome some complex traps easily. The power ups that I thought about so far are an ability to dash and freeze time for the environment.
3. The game should give the player a feeling of having to push forward. So the over all atmosphere of the game is drive the player forward to try and pass all the levels.
4. The music should convey that feeling to the player. For now I am using as a pilot the soundtrack of Halo. I still need to work on its soundtracks, but this will do for now.

When you unlock all the levels the game will unload a mode called “Insanity Mode” where the player is challenged to finish the whole game in a single run. No checkpoints, no lives, no mercy. If the player dies, he/she has to start the game all over from the beginning. I am not sure yet if this is a good idea to make or not, but I guess things will be clearer towards the end of development.

One of the levels in Insanity

One of the challenges that I have when developing this game is the art. When it comes to art, and designing good looking environments and animations I am not that skilled, so i tried as much as I can to get myself comfortable with Photoshop. I also found a great website where you can file some really good tilesets that you can use in your 2D game. The website is www.freepik.com you can find a lot of good sprites over there.

I am also using Unity Advertisements to play ads to the player. I will be talking more about the my approach towards the ads in later posts.

So far I have built only 4 levels, and I keep on expanding on the game’s features. Once I finish all the features that I have planned, I will continue on creating more levels.

Level selection menu in Insanity

I will be sharing more insights on my development journey of Insanity. If you like to give it a try, you down download the apk file from this link and give it a try. This is an initial version just to test how things are going when building it for android. Go ahead… Give it a try!

January 16, 2020January 29, 2020 by samirgeorgy Categories: Devlogs, Gaming, InsanityTags: development, Game, Gaming, Insanity, Mobile, passion, unity, Unity 3D Leave a comment