The Ball - Indie FPS Action/Puzzle Game

[Hourences]

Video of the first few minutes of part 2 Oztoc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znMp74YUCOM

(Doesnt seem to start - direct link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znMp74YUCOM )

The puzzles shown are simple. I didn't want to show the complex ones as that would spoil the challenge of solving those. We now have between an hour and a half and two hour of singleplay gameplay dependent on your playstyle.

Couple of small issues left, and also the monkeys are missing. Working on those. Release is planned for this weekend.

Our Core Team:

Hourences - Environment Art, Game and Level Design, Art Direction

Rendermonkey - Level scripting

MrE - Character modeling (the king)

Tores - Character modeling (the ball and monkey)

SolidSnake - Programming

Setheran - Level design, Environment Art, Level Scripting

Additional Help:

David Green - programming

Utz - Animation

Zynthetic - Voice Acting

Manti - King skin touch up

[General Vivi]

very nice so far. i like the outdoor environment stuff. Hope you can include some lava puzzles or something ! nothing says awesome like lavapuzzles!

[Zacker]

Wow, two 1st prices! Thats quite impressive hourences, congrats with that!

[arhurt]

Yay congrats!

That view from outside of the temple is just too good, nice work man!

[Hourences]

Thanks

Also see the Oztoc thread for the second part

ModDb did a special and an interview about us:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball/feat ... is-rolling

[Hourences]

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:

[e-freak]

wow... you guys are seriously awesome

[Freak]

hell yeah, it´s just cool what you do

[Hourences]

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.

[Minos]

Congrats, the mod looks awesome

[arhurt]

Well deserved man, congrats!

[Skjalg]

It certainly looks really awesome from the screenshots, I actually bought the unreal pack on steam just so I could test the mod.

But I gotta say, after checking out the youtube video it didnt appeal that much to me at all. Maybe you should have shown one hard puzzle so you would convince me its not about just pushing a ball and running.

[Hourences]

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.

[Zooch]

I'm really loving the art direction. The color schemes and lighting are spot on.

[Hourences]

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.