Welcome to Verdun Online!

Thursday 21 August 2008

The Yanks are Coming

Today we introduce the United States as a faction. Firstly we have a new character model from Snipergen. It represents the "doughboy" also called "sammie", the United States soldier on the western front. Equipped with a number of eye-catching details like the Brodie helmet and the small box respirator (gas mask) slung around the neck. The United States launched their famous 'Meuse-Argonne' offensive on the old Verdun battlefield on the west bank of the Meuse river. Some fierce fighting took place during the last months of the war which reflects itself on the Doughboy.

Secondly Fabiodan and FaN have given shape to the famous Colt 1911 which most of you will recognise from the second world war. This was the primary side arm for the Doughboys on the western front.

Some hard months have passed our development, but we are heading strong with team multiplayer testing coming up next week. The game is finally pulling together and we hope to give you more frequent updates.

Friday 16 May 2008

The German offensive

With over a year of development we have got quite alot of cool stuff going on at verdun.
First our new ace character artist Baida modelled/sculpted and base textured the new German soldier and Leonidas finished the textures and added the shovel and helmet.
This playermodel represends the typical German soldier at Verdun. Very distinct for this image is the 'new' M16 stahlhelm which saw first major action at Verdun. Another typical element for the German soldier are the blackened Ammo pouches and the Gummimask bag on the front. This soldier still wears the old M07 feldrock with the typical red seams and visable buttons.

Next to this new playermodel several weapons have been made. Two German weapons will be in the news today. First we have the Gewehr 98, modelled by Streetveiter and textured by Leonidas. This will be the main rifle for the german faction and will soon be in the hands of the Landser.

A german arsenal of weapons wouldn't be complete without the P08 "Luger". Modelled by Sol1d and textured by Leonidas this pistol will be the main sidearm in the first versions of Verdun.

These assets aren't the only progress at Verdun. Behind the scenes our new multitalent Snipergen has nearly finished the rig of the poilu.
A combined effort of the artists is now working on the first map for Verdun creating a library of static objects that can be seen on the battlefields.

The efforts of the coding team, which has been reinforced by Apella and Krush now concentrates on the Network coding. Our coding ace Gunwizard has already created the solid fundations for this network code by implementing a well structured object system.

Sunday 20 January 2008

The poilus have arrived

The past two months saw intensive action on the Verdun front. To start with we have finished the French player model which has been modelled by JRDavis, optimized by Fabiodan and textured by Leonidas.
It represents a fully equipped French soldier ("Poilu") as we would expect him at the battle of Verdun. Wearing the m1915 greatcoat, the Mle.1915 “Adrian” helmet (visibly damaged and without the fabric cover). Carrying the Mle.1914 campaign pack with spare boots as well as the cooking gear and the canvas knapsack. On the belt we can see the Mle.1877 bottle and the “Lebel” ammo pouches. Obviously we created merely the standard French soldier so expect many more variations in further versions of Verdun!

Secondly, the long development of the French Fusil M1886-M93 "Lebel" rifle has finally been brought to an end with modelling from Sol1d and texturing from Leonidas. With the Lebel being finished the French arsenal of weapons for our first version(s) is almost completed. The m1892 revolver will see appearance soon.

Next to the lebel, we have another weapon that some of you might not have noticed. The French Fusil Automatique RSC Mle. 1917, which basically is the semi-automatic version of the lebel. This will be one of the French more special weapons, due to the fact that only 80.000 of these were ever produced. This artwork has been modelled by Gunwizard and textured by Saruman-23.

This past two months also saw testing on the multiplayer department, with the animation system being improved and revised by Gunwizard to be more compliant with network connections.

In this news we also want to take the opportunity to mention that we have an open position in the coding department. We are looking for someone to handle Shaders and is capable of working with the Ogre's materials and CG.

Saturday 8 December 2007

Equipment and status

A little later than planned, but today we finally present a selection of finished pieces that have been made during the last 4 months.

First of all we can show off the Fusil-Mitrailleur Mle. 1915 "Chauchat", which has been both modeled and textured by our talented artist Saruman-23

Secondly we had some ingame testing during the november month. The Chauchat has been animated by Leonidas and a thoroughly complicated animation system has been implemented by Gunwizard in order to display these propperly ingame.

More equipment has been manufactured by Sol1d, namely the German M1915 Stielhandgranate and, together with gunwizard the French Grenade Offensive (OF) Mle. 1916.

The past month was especially development intensive, we had an November 11th milestone, and we succeeded to get connected ingame and even shoot at eachother with the chauchat. Currently we are improving and improving the ingame materials, skyboxes and FX to make sure the upcoming ingame screenshots will be quality ones.

We are not there yet, especially when it comes to texturing the weaponary we are a bit behind schedual and thus we encourage every texture artist with experience texturing weapons for games/mods to get join up and help us building this game.

To conclude this news we like to show the German m1887 Feldspatenby Leonidas. This piece of equipment was not just used for digging trenches but also as an hatchet in close combat.

Wednesday 29 August 2007

Advance!

Again great news from the Verdun front!
We have made major progress since june. For a starter we got a fully running test level to experiment with the engine's beauty like normal and specular mapping.

Our senior coder Gunwizard has succesfully implemented the famous Ragdoll-Physics in our game engine. Currently we are in the stage of rigging the character so we are not yet able to show it's full potential since our test character is a small yellow voodoo-doll. Appart from this, he also managed to get the material system to work ingame. For each material the interaction with bullets will be different, bullet penetration and riccochets are working, as well as the particle effects. Progress has also been made on the GUI which is almost fully up and running. The french coder Kr00ps has reinforced the coding department and will take care of the gameplay code.

More news in the artistic sector. We will start with the addition of Pyromaniac511 and JRDavis to our the team. Besides this addition we also have some work that is not yet available for public viewing yet. During the last months 10 weaponmodels have been created. We are looking for texture artists to aid us with these weapons. Next to weapons, we have nearly finished the German and French playermodels, both will recieve two different types of character heads in the future, professionally zbrushed by JRDavis.

A rather special notion will go to StoneLion, our music composer. He has composed the main menu theme as well as win/lose music for each faction.

To add some visuals to this news Leonidas quickly modeled and textured the French M1915 'adrian' helmet which will be included with the upcoming french playermodel.

To view the historical background of this helmet Etoolmilitaria has written an article about the development of this helmet and it's use. The article can be viewed here.
Make sure you also check out his article "Wools of War" about the French uniforms used during the warhere.