I did it. It’s over. I made a game that was kind of fun, looked great, and was bloody laborious to produce.

I learned a lot while making Dead Metal. I can’t believe how much I have improved over eight months of relentless work, sleepless nights and no breaks. 

I couldn’t have done it without the help of:

Liam Duncan - Lead Programmer
http://liamjkduncan.com/

Simon Bramwell - Programmer and Producer
http://simonbramwell.com/

Andrew Johnson - Level Design and SFX
http://aj-johnson.co.uk/

Thomas Turner - Level Design and Environment Art
http://www.tommyturner.co.uk/

Jonathan Dunn - Sound and Music
https://soundcloud.com/dead-metal-music

Some of the promotional material for the game I knocked up, with parody reference to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly and Django Unchained. 

This is an early draft version of our teaser trailer. I’m hoping to get the game online for you guys to play. Keep you posted.

http://youtu.be/7l-MmRPUeUI 

I finally got a spare 30 minutes in between all the texturing and dissertation research to start modelling a weapon design I knocked up a few days back. This is mainly silhouette mapping, I will refine the geometry more when I next get chance. 

As my first attempt at a hand-painted texture, this went all right.

I realise the metal is horrible and just… wrong. So I’m going to spend some time looking into methods of painting for metal. Unfortunately, hand-painted texture tutorials seem to be pretty scarce online.

I can’t wait to try out this style again and design some more weapons.

Quick wip for an axe weapon I’m working on. 

I’m going to attempt to hand paint this.

I’ve no idea.

So I thought I would test out some environment art, while testing out tileable textures, while testing out Marmoset Toolbag. 

The two rocky textures are designed for our game - again, hello Borderlands - and the brick texture was just for a quick test. 

I was surprised at how easy these turned out to do, once I got into the swing of things. I’m sure there is a better workflow process that I need to look in to, as I manually textured each of these, instead of generating them in 3d and baking their normals. 

Another update on some of the environment assets I’ve been texturing. Unfortunately, because of our blocky poly style, I think some of these assets are suffering. 

Credit to http://rektolisk.tumblr.com/ for the models. 

Because our games doesn’t already look enough like Borderlands, we thought you ourselves, “You know what our game needs? More Borderlands!” So we made these vending machines where you can buy perks and buffs, real-time styley.

Model courtesy of tommyturner.tumblr.com

Weapons! You need to shoot them with the pointy end.

I actually made the rifle a month or so ago for the flying robot enemy, but, because of the size of the gun, the character couldn’t hold it. So I kept it on the back burner for the ranger to use. The texture with the hazard stripes is for the alter-ego ‘boss’ version of the ranger.

Taking some of the components I’d made for the fembot’s gatling gun, Tommy Turner created the turret trap, which can be activated when you pay X coins. Tommy also create the UV layout for that piece and I simply textured the model.

Over the past week, I’ve been tasked with texturing some of our environment and prop assets. Texturing is one of my favourite parts, I love to hide jokes in the maps, which are usually always something to do with Futurama.

These models, and some of the UV maps (dumpster, metal awning and wooden/metal support) were all created by Tommy Turner and Andrew Johnson. Check out there Tumblr’s to see more of their stuff.

http://tommyturner.tumblr.com/

http://rektolisk.tumblr.com/

This is the final player character class: Hastings - The Ranger. 

I’ve been dreading this character for a while because we’re going to have to implement cloth physics for the coattails (current cape is temp. and just to demonstrate the concept).

I really don’t like how this character has turned out. To quote Mr. Drippy, “proper kickers that, en’t it?”.

Old Rusty, he’s rusty and he’s old and, well, that’s about it really. 

Big influence from the TF2’s Heavy because the internet seems to be sparse of good gatling gun reference.

As expected, I had to adjust the handles slightly, as her towering hands couldn’t hold such puny handles. I also managed to cut out almost 50 polys.

Rendered in Max, screenshot from UDK.

Textured! I’m thinking, too much orange. Way too much orange.

Work in progress for the fembot’s gatling gun. I’m a little worried as to whether she can actually hold this, as there might not be enough space to get her fingers in. So I’ll leave it on the back burner until she’s rigged and I can test whether they make a perfect couple.

Set to work on the third playable character for our game.

Her body shape was ridiculously difficult to model, so I made quite a few alterations from the concept to make her look nice in 3d.

This is Dakota, she’s a female personality core trapped inside a manbot’s body, making her an unusually mix of wanting to rip out your circuit board just because she finds you too damn cute.

Quick update, as I’m still working on the model, need to accommodate for animating at some of the joint areas.

I’m not entirely sure of the conventions for demonstrating ZBrush projects, so here are some things. 

Meet Leon. I drew him at work, based on the lilting tones of a customer I had on the phone. This is my first go at creating a character in ZBrush. And my second go at ZBrush ever.

I don’t know how I got here, what I’m doing here, or where I’m going, all I know is I like it.