The Ball - Indie FPS Action/Puzzle Game

We have announced part 3 some time ago: Teotl.

We have also taken in a whole lot more people, we currently have 13 people working on the mod, and we have gotten ourselves a website and a domain name, as well as a team name: Toltec Studios - http://theball.toltecstudios.com/

Part 3 will introduce enemies such as mummies (think zombies) you can kill by running over them with the ball (rain of gibs is the result - should be good fun), and we will also introduce a large gorilla boss monster. Also we are introducing a complete background story based on actual myths, and we have finally managed to replace the impact gun with our own unique weapon. Furthermore we are redoing half of the Pehua level, and a good bit of the Oztoc 1 level to further bump up the quality of the mod, make it more accesable, and introduce our features earlier on in the mod.

All of this is planned for release around may 8. We are already about 60-70 percent far in creating and implementing all of this.

Here are new screenshots:

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/theballteotl1.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl2.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl3.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl4.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl5.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl6.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl7.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl8.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl9.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl10.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://www.nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl11.jpg]

Phase 2 results announced. The Ball won 3rd Place Best Mod and 1st Place Best Use of Physics.

http://www.beyondunreal.com/view_story.php?id=12515

Combined with the results of phase 1 we are now a tripple First Place winner.

I didn't wanted to do that as that would give away the solution to one our more serious puzzles, so I usually stick to basic ones in the video. What we need however is a nicer video with several parts and all that stuff. I suck at that myself though, will look into getting help for that in 2 months or so.

We now also won ModDB 2008 Editors Choice Best Singleplay mod.

http://www.moddb.com/events/2008-mod-of ... player-mod

See end of the video - where they announce the winner.

We almost got city 2 standing visually except one big bridge, and the gorilla is now almost finished model and texture wise. Animation and implementation are left. New pics around mid to late March I think.

Thanks!

We are going strong - almost one month until the next release. The Ball is set to be released on May 7, 2009! We now have 5 large singleplay levels offering at least 4 hours of gameplay to new players!

We are implementing our own menu, we added about 15 secrets to find, and dozens of other additions and improvements. It is slowly starting to be very polished and large. We have hit the 1 GB filesize (uncompiled - so the public version will be smaller).

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl12.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl13.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl14.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl15.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/theballteotl16.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/gorilla1.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://nijnka.com/hourences/theball/media/gorilla2.jpg]

Gorilla by Pestibug and animation by Whackzero. The indoor level shot by Setheran, and the remaining screenshots are a combined effort from Hourences, Setheran, and Sklare.

We are still looking for a voice actor:

-Will be telling our story - our story is less than half a page worth of text so it is not a lot of work.

-A standard male voice with a neutral accent - think Hollywood voice over style

-You need to have a decent microphone and a recording environment with no background noise

Contact [email protected] if you are interested.

http://theball.toltecstudios.com/

It would be incredibly incredibly frustrating and unfun to play if you die all the time from the very thing you must use all the time.

Thats a weirdly shapen bit of his shoulder Dux, nothing is on his back.

Atelierz, if we do that then the focus shifts from the puzzles, to playing with the ball. That is changing the core mechanics of the gameplay. That is too late to do so right now, and I don't think it is very fun either. I much rather try to solve puzzles and explore the environment, than having to pay close attention to where my ball is all the time. Especially when dealing with mummies, you would end up paying attention to both the mummies, and the ball. That really wouldn't work out. It would be very frustrating while this whole mod is meant to be anything but frustrating. It is about soft challenges (aka non Portal Prelude type of challenges) that are relaxing to solve, and about exploring. I don't want serious challenges. I want the fine line in between boring and frustrating.