Welcome to our series on “How developers game”. Today we’re talking with Space Crescent the creator of Hamad & Sahar – sharing a little about how developers both play and make their favorite games!
Before we start we would like to thank the Space Crescent Team for participating in our interview and for answering all our questions! Thanks!
/// Thanks for taking the time to talk to us about Hamad & Sahar and your gaming setup. First things first, are you a PC person or a Mac person? And more importantly, why do you prefer using what you do?
Well, this is actually a tough question. I use both because we can’t release any iOS products without using a Mac. We also target PC, Android and other devices in which Windows OS is more accessible for deployment.
Besides that, for my gaming platform, I am currently a Nintendo Switch person. Because my time now is short, unlike before. And Nintendo Switch seems more indie/casual friendly to play on the go.
/// Can we have a list of your top 3 gaming peripherals when playing and making games on your PC or Mac.
The most opened software in my Windows PC are:
- Affinity Designer – for cutting, editing and resizing images to use in our game projects.
- Unity3d – To develop our current game projects, We no longer use Game Maker Studio for mobile.
- Game Maker Studio – Only for web game projects or to fix our older games.
But when I open my Mac, I always use Unity 3D Mac version to continue the development of our project, I use Xcode for iOS submission, and Pixelmator pro in case I need to design mobile icons or to resize splash screens for our iOS games or apps. It’s always time-consuming to meet recent apple changes.
/// Is there anything weird or unique to the work you do about your setup that you would be willing to share with us?
That sounds interesting, I always try to keep my smartphone away or put it on the charger, and I always make sure to have a cup of coffee or milk tea (We call it Karak in Qatar), To keep myself focusing on working on our projects.
To keep myself motivated to work on our projects is tough, I always take a little break to watch some YouTube videos for inspiration, or I go to hang out with my friends. Especially my friend and our team co-founder Abdulrahman Al-Thani which always ends with us discussing our game projects.
/// Moving on to your smartphone, iOS or Android? And why?
I am an iOS user because it’s more stable to use than other mobile OS.
/// Top 3 games on your phone other than Hamad & Sahar!
I always like to play retro games, so I am recently enjoying Beyond Solar on iOS, which is one of the most excellent shmup games with bullet hell elements, easy to grab and play. COREGameDev is the developer behind it, he is also one of my best friends in Qatar.
I like to play Flappy Fighter occasionally; I believe this game is one the best fighting games for smartphone, the developer is always active to add more characters with every update.
Sometimes I play the Trap Adventure 2, which is one of the hardest platformer games for iOS, Simple and easy to control.
/// Last questions, for all the newbie developers out there, what do you actually need to buy in terms of hardware in order to start making games? What is your advice?
There are many options out there; each device has its pros and cons. There is no one solution that helps everyone. But luckily, if you want to focus on developing 2D games like our team, in most cases any gaming laptop can get the job done.
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