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[mamoniem]

Hey everyone

It's Muhammad, mostly knows as mamoniem.
I was working in this game for a while now, and kept posting in FB and my blog, but when I really start to getting close, I found keep posting here will be for the good of my game, I want developers opinion too, not only player opinion So, I'll be posting in here.

The game core made for a small gameJam in march2013, but after few weeks I found a huge feedback for the game, in fact I did not imagine all the feedback I had. Also it won the "technical" prize.
Anyway, I've been developing the PC full release for a while now, may be since April or May 2013 till now. It is a puzzle game, maze type which is rare to see nowadays, but my game using different mechanics which made the mazeness more interesting. I will be talking more in different posts about design & technical decisions because this game taught me A LOT, I used to be a good and smart programmer/developer (according to my colleagues and bosses, I'm my self still bitching and will keep bitching) . but this game taught me lots of stuff far from programming side, some stuff about design, monetization, localization, ....etc.

And Here is a quick list of my targets from last year:
- 50 levels single player [different galaxies]
- multiplayer [up to 4] split screen (I'm poor and can not offer a server)
- different arenas for the multiplayer [one per galaxy]
- not only one multiplayer mode
- in game shop
- localize it to lots of languages and make my easy localization system
- add some cheats and funny tricks in the game [people in TGS and GDC-China liked the tricks in the previous game]
- add cool achievements
- make some tools for the game if I wanted to
- try to make it catch the eyes
- try to have leaderboard [try..try..try...]
- make a nice website for the game
- put it for Ouya(canceled), Windows, Mac & Linux
- Try to get it in Steam (My last game still rotten in the green light  )
- Try to make it catch my son'e eyes (he fall in love in the previous game, even if he can not play it, but he loved the creatures and the music )
- Try not to lose money as before (lost 15k$ without selling 1 copy   )
- Learn something new !

That was almost the list I wrote in googleDocs when I started making the full release. What have been achieved, cancelled or still in progress, will show it in the following posts.

I hope to get some feed back. The game and me really welcome/appreciate any feed back whatever hard it will be, as long as it is in my & mygame's good I would love to hear it. And also I hope to give some advice as well about how things organized and done, it is not AAA game, but this game have lots of code and assets which organized in way make anyone can develop in the project very easy !

Feel free to play the Jam demo here, it is old but will give you an idea now.

Enjoy and keep an eye here  


Updates Log:
Post[1] : some work inside the menu & UI
Post[2] : localization current status
Post[3] : Finish flags functionality
Post[4] : Some Multiplayer
Post[5] : On The Greenlight

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[Udderdude]

I tried out the game jam demo, it felt a bit trial and error as I wasn't able to see exactly where to go in the maze ..

[mamoniem]

@ Udderdude:
It was the main idea to wrap the maze on a sphere. to add a mystery factor. how come to play a puzzle while you are seeing all the level in front of your eyes, then you draw you illusion line and then play it quickly.
But when it is wrapped on that spherical surface, you will need to use your memory part inside your brain to save&remember. so I would say it depends on memory factor more than trial and error. The other thing was how to manage a game around sphere, starting from building levels, collisions, controllers, scatter objects...pretty much everything.

As we still in the May holiday, I'm trying to push the game as fast as I can, so I can hit the deadline. Today I was working mainly in the menu, and kept adding functions and connecting some other functions to make the menu almost working fine in the singleplayer & multiplayer sub-menus.

While sharing my updates, you will find that the game is totally different, it is better and bigger. I hope you people see it like that too   I'm still working in the menu for another few day, just to keep everything working 100% fine. I've added two funny things in the menu, that is not related to the gameplay, but will show it in the next update.


The menu background will change to match the selected level's galaxy


be able to select not only a name for each player, but a different color and country flag. and keep this data saved for another gameplay session. it is not that big thing to make. but saving a scroll list selected item, that was a bit complex.

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[mamoniem]

I kept updating my menu, it still missing the sub menu of options and achievements. but I'm happy for the current result. I kept working in the game localization & updating some texts and fixing some little issues in my localization framework.
Anyway, I've mentioned before I wanted to localize my game to so many languages, and sounds that I'm going to achieve more than what I have planned for. but why ?

If we go back few years in the past, all the games I've worked for companies was always localized for 2 languages, but used to be mixed. So some times English&Arabic, other times English&Chinese and may be English&Russian in some cases. But I never had the chance to localize a game for 5 languages like AAA games or some indie games, and that was my hope in this game. I hoped to make something new I never done before, I hoped to make a solid way/framework I can use to handle localization very easy and put in my game ~5 languages including Arabic & Chinese, as sort of challenge for my self to use 3 different alphabetic in the game, specially Arabic, because it is written Right->Left and it is not supported in 99% of the applications ! it will be handled Left->Right.

After working for a while & communicating all the good people I knew from different countries & cultures, I ended up with 15 language in my spreadsheet   and even I've extended it a bit more and got 3 new friend from a facebook group to help me localizing the game to their language.

So yea, the game running now with 18 language, may be they are all not ready yet, I keep adding new texts everyday, and not everyone responding quickly for me as it is not paid and they are helping me in their free time but yea, there will be a version that will contain all of them one day. It may looks crazy, but come on, it is not all about making game and make people play a nice experience or gain some money. I've to learn something new to feel some progress or at least figure out something was not clear for me.

Here is s shot from my google docs. Columns for languages & rows for words:



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[mamoniem]

As there is no more holidays  I'm not working that much [again], just ~7 hours daily, which will not give a huge impact on the game progress. Anyway, most of this past few days I was working in some bug fixing reported by my testers/friends. And preparing the game posters, Icon, some work in the video. But the most important thing I did in the game logic is a rough multiplayer full arena [running in all 4 multiplayer modes], it still buggy, but a good start.

Another good thing I'm happy to finish, is the flag dropping feature, or in another meaning the anti-frustrating feature. I talked about it before, But it was just rough. Now it is finished and working specially in Galaxy 4, where the planets are rotating and I should save the correct coordinates between sessions.

The foot step feature will still working in parallel with flag dropping, I believe that each one on these have a different usage, even if they have almost the same effect on the gameplay experience.



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[mamoniem]

I was quite busy this past few week finishing some of the multiplayer functionalities. But my huge portion of free time was directed to record/edit the UnrealEngine4 2d game tutorials, if you are interested, you can have a look. It shows some nice tricks Anyway, I was working in the multiplayer, and as you know the game have 6 MP arenas, and each of them can be played in 4 different modes. I will be talking in a coming post in the best way to handle such a situation with the less amount of resources as possible as you can. But tell then, you can have a look t the "Bombers" mode, where just one should stay alive !

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[mamoniem]

Glad To announce today that the game almost finished, and I’m just adding some fine tuning inside. The game running perfect on all the platforms and I’m happy with the result. I decided then to put it as well with Coated on the greenlight for voting, it will be good if it can be punished on steam. More platforms mean reach more people and let them have the experience. I hope you vote for the game so it can make it quickly to a steam launch  

The Greenlight Page



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[Scott]

- localize it to lots of languages and make my easy localization system
...
- Try to make it catch my son'e eyes (he fall in love in the previous game, even if he can not play it, but he loved the creatures and the music )

These are truly awesome goals. I can totally relate to the "son approval" test. And localization is usually so overlooked but makes such a huge difference to anyone who's mother tongue is not English.

Cool stuff man!