Dev Update #4

Development on Cover has been going smoothly for the last week i have made great strides in the art department, And have brought on a talented Character Artist Adam "Massbot'' Curtis who's worked on games like House Of The Dead : Overkill for the Wii and is currently working at digi-guys you can take a look at some of his awesome work here ( www.curtad.com )

In other news I have nailed down hand painting textures. I had to learn how to paint textures properly here are the progression shots from making the cliffs from beginning to end:

(CLICK TO EXPAND)

As you can see by the the three shots I had trouble portraying the painterly style in the beginning. After throwing myself into the work, drawing in the lines and other aspects of the rock i was able to get this end result.

(CLICK TO EXPAND)

Once I finished the Rocks I cut them into modular pieces and placed them into my map as you can see by the shot below:

The environment art is not the only thing I changed, I took the old texture I made for my Triple barreled shotgun and had a second pass at it only focusing on the main features I was able to come out with this result which I am very happy with:

(CLICK TO EXPAND)

Also coming down to the end of my news post I would like to announce the winner of the contest at the end of my previous news post Congrats! to MethosPlayer for his entry BAAAM! which will be the new name for the triple barreled Combat Shotgun. Thanks to everyone else who entered ill be sure to have more contests like this.

Well that's the end I hope you enjoyed this news post and expect more to come in the near future!

- Armanguy , Project Lead

Dev Update 3

Dev Update #3 + Contest:

Overview:

Hey guys hows it going Armanguy here again, Production is going well and I have a few concept and art asset pieces to show, but before i get to that, id like to say a few words.

Ive been getting a few emails and PMs from Cover fans wanting to join the mod, currently im not looking for any help. The only place im looking for help in is Concept Art so if you are a experienced concept artist and can make concepts that look like the ones below throw me a PM.

thats all for now enjoy the media.

Concept Art:

alot has happened since the last developer update. The first thing is Art Direction Change as you can see from these Concept Images:




[Click on images to expand]

Art Assets:

The Art assets side of production is coming along nicely also ive been trying to finish off weapons and block out the level, currently the only images i can show are the following:


[Click on images to expand]





Also coming with this update is a little contest all you have to do is come up with a name for the Combat shotgun from the above image. the person with the best name for the weapon gets Half-life2 and halflife 2: episode one gifted to them through steam the winner will be contacted and announced in the next dev update.

Rules: Name the shotgun above and post your steam account name, I will contact you through PM on Moddb before i send the games over.

- Armanguy

mini-update

Works going smoothly on the mod just going over a few concepts and art direction changes expect updates soon!

Dev Blog Update #2

Production on the mod is going on smoothly no hiccups yet, Currently im working on some set pieces for my map and some other modular pieces that will populate the map and cut production time in half!


Heres a breakdown on how i completed the fountian piece from low-poly to getting it ingame:


I usually start off with a low-poly basemesh that helps me form in my Piece before i take it to the high-poly state:





Once I have that completed I start work on the high-poly having 8 gigs of ram helps at this point because i was working on the design as i was drawing in the details i had alot of freedom with the forms in the highpoly sculpt:




Having the highpoly finished I start getting the low-poly basemesh i made earlier ready to bake moving vertices around to line up with the high-poly model so that when i bake down there will be no errors:




After i get the highpoly and lowpoly mesh lined up i Uvmap the low-poly model wich basically makes it flat so i can paint on them.
At this point I bake 2 textures one AO map and one normal map. The AO maps brings out the depth and shadows of the highpoly sculpt while the Normal map brings out the details.

At this point I throw the maps into photoshop and get started with the textures, I use the complete map as a base for my Diffuse after I finish painting the diffuse I start work on the specular map that defines the highlights and shinyness of the piece.




After All the Maps are finished i add them all to my low-poly model (Note: I add the maps to the model as I paint the textures so I can see what i need to add or fix) here is the end result in 3ds max 9 viewport:




After all of that i tweak the textures a little and then get ready to export ingame you can see how i import models into unreal here:

IMPORTING OBJECTS INTO UNREAL

At this point I throw the model in-engine and tweak the maps in the material editor and i get this:



Because unreal has its own compression settings for objects I lose some of the detail and resolution.

But Im finished with the piece!

That concludes this update, hope to hear some feedback on what I can do with these sort of updates in the future!

Expect some more Weapon concepts and Models in the next update :)


- Armanguy

Dev Blog Update #1

After about two days of full production I have been able to show some fruits of my labour:

Character Concept for 3d artist

Hand grenade concept for 3d artist

currently im working on this mod Alone, as i want to get most of the weapon assets and Map work done before i bring anyone else on.

You might be wondering Why i would do this and the answer is simple:

I dont want to waste peoples time, I have been in the modding community for awhile now and know that Real life can be a cold hard bitch sometimes and people cant be working on mod projects 24 hours a day.

The best way to show people and potential Team members that im serious about this is to have Art assets completed and maps underway.

But i also want to be able to show you guys the processes i go through to make these assets so expect some tutorials and art breakdowns once every month.

As of now i really dont need any team members but i have a few Artist/ Programmer friends ill be bringing on later on in production.

Also expect regular media releases often as id like to keep potential fans of this project updated!

Hope you guys liked the update and be sure to chck out the development blog out for more information:

www.covermod.blogspot.com

Alive!

Well after weeks of planning on my part and writing up a standard game design document I have finally launched the mod on moddb and made this website.

Cover will be a third person action shooter played online with opponents.

we got some awesome media coming up soon so check in frequently!

for more information about the mod check out our moddb page:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/cover