Posts

Showing posts from 2016

Tokyo Game Show: The Dos and Donts - Part 1: Preparation

Image
Hello everyone! It’s been so long since the last post! The problem is, one does not simply feel how much time has passed unless he starts writing again. Doesn’t feel to assuring eh? But all that aside, today’s blog is a little bit different to what we normally post about. Though in the end, it’s game-related and – hopefully – educative and useful to the game developers out there. So a few weeks ago, 2024 Studios was able to participate in the Tokyo Game Show with the game “Keys to Success” (yaaaaay!) and it was definitely an educative experience. Briefly, Tokyo Game Show (TGS) is – as stated by Wikipedia - “is a video game expo / convention held annually in September in the Makuhari Messe, in Chiba, Japan.” TGS is one of the biggest gaming events that takes place for 4 days; 2 business days and 2 public days. Since Egypt and primarily the Middle East doesn’t usually hold or organize such big events, we got to commit some numerous mistakes due to our inexperience. As notin

Keys to Success Development Diary - Log #3

Hello everyone! Wow, it’s been a while since the last log. I would like to apologize for this, but one moment it’s January and the next thing you know it’s June! It’s amazing how time can flow so fast. In the past log, we had discussed creating the story synopsis/summary, which is the beginning for something much bigger getting cooked. But for it to grow, there’s another major pillar that requires some attention too. Characters! Characters – to me – are what make stories interesting; they determine the flow, the view in which the player sees the world and much more! If the game’s characters – especially the main character – are boring, not much people would be around for the story development. To create a character, there are a few questions you need to answer first (they are – of course – not the only questions to be asked. For deeper character design, start asking the character more questions for better design). - Who is he/she? - Do they have major characteristic

Keys To Success: Greenlight Post-Mortem

Image
Hello everyone! Starting off, after 22 days, we are happy to announce that Keys To Success was greenlit a few weeks ago! We’d really like to thank everyone who supported us, either by voting or spreading the word around or showing us support! We are really grateful for that! Though we are not experts, we felt we wanted to share the little knowledge we have about Steam Greenlight and some ways to getting greenlit. Since we struggled to find online information about tips and tricks to it, we thought we should share our experience in case anyone found it helpful! So, starting off in case you’re not familiar Steam Greenlight, you can check   here   for Valve’s description and FAQ’s about it. Briefly, it’s the community in Steam help pick new games to be released on Steam by voting for it. When a game gets enough votes, it gets greenlit and gets to be published on Steam. Sounds easy enough? Sadly, that’s misleading because the amount of submitted games every day is huge and the

Keys to Success Development Diary - Log #2

Image
Support Keys To Success on Steam Greenlight! Does the game inspire the creator? Or is the game inspired by the creator? I suppose the logical answer is: “Of course the game is inspired by the creator! Without the creator, you know.. there will be no game!” Well, technically true. I can’t argue with that. But can’t it work the other way around as well? Have you ever thought of that? But I believe that in both cases, it affects powerfully the way the game is shaped in the end. If a game inspires you, it’ll bring out the best in you. You’ll find yourself working on it creatively, with so much hunger for work. Largely it depends on the way you’re adding to it and trying to make it grow. If it stops inspiring you, then you’re doing it wrong. Stop, backtrack to where that started and start again. This sums up the core of the game design process in my opinion. For Keys to Success  (K2S for short),  the backtracking showed me that a story is a necessity. The game design out

Keys to Success Development Diary - Log #1

Image
Hello!  Welcome to Keys To Success’ first development log. I have been thinking about starting one for a long while now ( Recording everything must be fun!)  and to try and share the little bits of knowledge I gather along the way. So finally, I decided to write down the very first log. I feel like once the first has been written down, the rest will surely follow. I am hoping to find the creative and technical  approaches to making good games through Keys to Success, and convey them through a development diary.    So, Keys To Success is about to meet its first birthday; it was initially created during the Global Game Jam in January 2015. Looking back, I never thought of having the game grow to what I want it to be at the moment. Back then, the prototype was made for the jam, with an idea to offer and that was just it. But when the game won “Microsoft’s Best Game Award” and got the Imagine Cup Golden Buzz, I decided to try exploring the game more. I feel grateful for that.

Why you should use "Advanced texture type" more part 2 - Unity3D

Image
Hey again, Last time we talked alittle about what advanced texture type is in Unity. This time I will go deeper into the types of texture compression. But before we jump in xD I just want to say that this post is meant as a basic entry guide to the big world of texture compression, which I'm still beginner at and I'm exploring it with you. So let me know your feedback and what you think! And again this isn't meant to be detailed explanation of every thing. - if you want more details, I will add references below. All the textures compression discussed here you will find them in Unity "advanced texture type" , with more detailed names. In order to make it easy for you to understand these names, I will add a little section at the end for that :) . Let's start with what the need for texture compression is for. For example, you can open any png image on your pc (let's say it's a 1024x1024 size) you will find it around 1mb that's not bad, righ