The Ball - Indie FPS Action/Puzzle Game

[Spellbinder]

Awsome stuff Hourence! And really gratulations!

[Furyo]

Only just heard about the ModDB editor award reading about it on Kotaku ! Congrats Sjoerd !

[Steppenwolf]

Congratulations! Well deserved from what i have seen from the mod.

[Hourences]

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).

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 me@Hourences.com if you are interested.

http://theball.toltecstudios.com/

[cincinnati]

hey

i bought ut3 when it was super cheap just so i could check out the ball. though i'm much more of an multiplayer gamer, i enjoyed the mod a lot.

though it definitely seemed like an evolving game (and the new screenshots bolster that assumption), the one thing i really remember wishing was different was the player/ball interaction insofar as the ball does no harm to the player.

there were so many instances when i would be pulling the ball toward me from some far off corner where it would, just for a second, suddenly appear (coming down an incline, for example) and scare the crap out of me. this would be very short lived, of course, when i would realize that the ball wouldn't hurt me as it barreled toward me. i think the mechanic would work so much better if the ball could also be your enemy and do damage to you if not used with thought. the immersion is lost for me to an extent without this feature.

good stuff, though. looking forward to the next release.

[Hourences]

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.

[cincinnati]

well, i don't know what sort of new mechanics or puzzles are involved in the levels you're working on, but i actually played the mod for a bit, back when i originally downloaded it, to see if i could avoid touching the ball in any way that would cause any significant harm. it was a little challenging at times, but not frustratingly so, and certainly added a new layer of awareness to the game.

also, i wasn't suggesting that it kill you...at least not always.

[dux]

Is there something on the apes back in the last screen? There's some sort of black outline on him.

[Hourences]

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.

[dux]

I mean there's a black mark around his shoulder like someone edited something out in photoshop. Brighten the picture or your monitor an you'll see it too.

[Hourences]

Seriously bright monitor you got

The shoulder was too blocky, I smoothed it in PS. Shoot me

[Sentura]

i really think you should accentuate a yellow or other mellow accent to the lighting, or perhaps desaturate the lighting. i'm thinking it is confusing for players to navigate with such strong colors everywhere. right now i just get the feeling of over information whenever i look at the screens.

[RA7]

Sweet work, great job!!

[Hourences]

One week from release!

We just got a final beta out and we are well on schedule.

Final media update:

The screenshots show our mummies (Modeled by Elusive, Textured by Manti, animated by Whackzero, coded by Lango) and our level selection menu with the worldmap integrated (Menu by VaninaDisc and Hourences, worldmap by Elusive and Hourences). The worldmap shows the lay out of our mysterious world, and what is left to come.

[Pericolos0]

very very nice =)! Can't wait to play it!