Concept-Art

The chain-wielding coffingeeks infest barren places on Qubus’ Island. Players will eventually encounter them while venturing for building materials. It is rumored that coffingeeks are the restless souls of deceased marauders, sick of just pushing daisies. The real reason for such undeadish activities on the island remain unknown though.
The image here shows an attacking coffingeek. The nocturnal coffingeeks cart around in their protective caskets, which only opens when they attack. During that split second coffingeeks are most vulnerable.

Another mechanical contraption gone mad: beware of the drillbots. They are the working-horses of Dr. Qubus’ little workshop of Horrors. Equipped with a razorsharp drill head and a turbine rotor, they relentlessly hover the island’s caverns and shafts to mine for ore and powerplants. The loot is stashed into their belly-bowl and then transported to Qubus Mansion, to fuel the island’s many machines. Unfortunately the majority of drillbots seemingly didn’t took notice of the absence of their master, so they can still be met invariably in subterranean dungeons.
While drillbots are not considered as inherently dangerous, their programming makes them stubborn and chunky. They especially dislike co-drillers to be robbed of their cargo and thus are better left alone when encountered. 

Qubus’ Island is a prime destination for adventurers and settlers, but also a magnet for the mysterious, as proven by the lot of unworldly hivelike structures pocking the island. Explorers who visited these sites tell tales of menacing encounters with nightmarish, manlike creatures. The rubbery beings are known under the name of Bogeymen. Their origin is unknown, but it is obvious that they are a fiendish race and tend to attack everybody who dares to approach their hives. Rumor has it that players themselves can be turned into bogeymen by a curse.

Those who like to learn more about the Bogeymen should meet Ben the mad banker, a hermit who has his permanent encampment somewhere near the Shattered Temple.

Cursed & Co were mentioned for a few times already, it’s high time to show some of Coobico’s adversaries. Let’s start with Steambots. These half-sentient, half-moronic contraptions were build by Dr. Qubus’ as his first attempt of creating robotic assistants, but eventually discontinued due to their obvious deficiencies in favour of the Q-Bots. Mark 1 Steambots are not inherently evil, but bad-tempered, ignorant and quite the opposite of a helpful servant. They tend to attack everybody standing in the way of their pointless duties. Unfortunately, their rugged design provides them with a seeemingly endless life expectancy. Steambots are therefor met all over Qubus’ Island, especially in dungeons.

Upon request, here is a more detailed description of how Coobico’s isometric graphics are being produced – most work on the imagery is done by Stefan and me (Lutz) and starts with collecting mood-material. Personally, I find myself greatly inspired by steampunk-anime like ラストエグザイル Last Exile (outstandingly detailed vehicle-designs and a quite dark setting), Otomo’s スチームボーイ Steamboy, as well as the works of Hayao Miazaki. Films and literature serve as inspiration too, like Metropolis, french Vidoq or writings of Lewis Carroll.

Pencil-Scribbles are then made according to the mood-material to capture the general steampunkish setting of Coobico. Creating a MMO takes quite some time, so it does not come as a surprise that these conceptual designs were already finished about a year ago.





Afterwards, realisation in 3D is being done directly, without delving deeper into details and color-schemes. Such production step would be preferable but can’t easily be accomplished by a small development-team under high time-pressure. Fortunately, with a small team, communicating the creative vision is comparably easy. Modeling, texturing and rendering of finished models is pretty straightforward and can be achieved with every available 3D-solution – we do not need to keep a big bag of tricks here (like low-poly-modeling and so on), as all graphics are pre-rendered. Four images are rendered for each building for example: a view from the left and right, as players are able to choose the facing of a building when it comes into play; and two different levels for most structures (except for unique sites like the Shattered Temple or the Haunted Mansion). These rendered high-definition images are already nearly the final draft. They are then retouched by Stefan in Photoshop. 





During the final overhaul, details are added and shadows and any rough edges fixed. The final images are then resized to fit the scale of Coobico’s maps and get documented in our tile-catalogue. Whatsmore, Stefan acts as Coobico’s leveldesigner too, and implements finished graphics into the game’s maps with our leveleditor.
Any further questions or remarks? Please just drop us your comments.

Alright, all blogs on socnets talk about Bebo and AOL today, but we would like to go on with more examples from our Coobico-production-pipeline here: in part one, we presented examples of floor-tiles, and as a follow-up we gathered a few elements which you’ll encounter especially indoors and in in dungeons.

Work keeps piling up, that’s for sure, but here is at least a quick and short sneak peak into some graphics we use as Coobico’s terrain. As a classic 2.5D-game, the world of Qubus’ Island is made of tiles, put next to each other neatly to form a seamless map. Each of the several hundreds of tiles is modeled in 3D and then graphically retouched to achieve its final looks.

More examples to come in the next part, stay tuned…

Another type of spooky location which might affect the overall wellbeing of settlements if appearing close-by are graveyards. Settlers keep telling stories about grizzly sightings near such cemeteries – don’t forget to bring armament if you like to visit them.
To counter loss of wellbeing due to graveyards, a scholar can be settled nearby. Scholars also offer protection against certain types of events and are generally a good resource when looking for in-depth information about certain places or species of Qubus’ Island.

Hive-like lairs emerge all around on Qubus’ Island every once a while. Such hazard-spots are prone to curses, form trail-heads for wandering critters and ultimately take their toll on a settlement’s wellbeing when appearing close by. As a counter-measure to avoid loss of wellbeing, a monster-hunter can be settled at the settlement. At a monster-hunter’s useful adventurer’s gear is on display, too.

Qubus’ Island is peppered with eerie places like forlorn ruins, villains’ dens and even quite alien dwellings, breeding with dangerous creatures. Some of them offer opportunities for dungeon-exploring or mini-games, while all of them have a negative impact on surrounding settlements by lowering the score of general wellbeing. For each hazard-spot in Coobico there will be a counter-structure though, which players can build to avoid deductions. 

The above depicted hive-like structure is one of the strangest sights on Qubus’ Island. Its shape resembles the Shattered Tower. They seem to have the same otherworldly origin. Players will eventually be able to find out more about these sites and their stories by gathering clues throughout Qubus’ Island.