The Ball Oztoc - Released - SP Puzzle Mod - Winner MSU Phase 1

[Hourences]

Name: The Ball Oztoc
Version: 2
Compatibility: Patch 1.3
Description: FPS Puzzle mod
Download:
http://rapidshare.com/files/15306152...Oztoc.zip.html
http://unreal.onlinewelten.com/downloads.php?id=13
http://files.filefront.com/TheBall+O.../fileinfo.html

We have released The Ball Part 2: Oztoc!

The Ball is the winner of the MakeSomethingUnreal contest Phase 1, having won both Best Gametype and Best Use of Physics.

The Ball is a first person singleplayer puzzle mod with an Aztec theme to it. The mod takes place in a mysterious Aztec temple, at the top of a volcano. The player has to use the Impact Gun to move a large steel ball around and utilize that ball to solve puzzles and get around obstacles. Impact Gun aside, the mod uses all new custom art to establish a unique, stylish, and atmospheric experience.


Oztoc is many times larger than Pehua, the first release, and features many improvements and additions:

# Meet the ruler and guardian of the temple. This king will observe the player as he progresses through the level.
# Enjoy a brand new ball with improved behavior and a simple but efficient hud.
# Puzzle your way through two new levels, together about four to five times the size of the Pehua level.
# Experience a whole number of new gameplay mechanics such as water, arrows, exploding balls, movable walls, and so on.
# An improved Pehua level, including one new puzzle and a little intro scene that introduces the simple background story.
# Dozens of bug fixes and small improvements.



Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znMp74YUCOM
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball/videos (higher quality)




Screenshots









Download - (102 MB)

http://rapidshare.com/files/15306152...Oztoc.zip.html
http://files.filefront.com/TheBall+O.../fileinfo.html
http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball/d...l-part-2-oztoc

More mirrors soon.

PS3 later, hopefully within a week.


Our Core Development 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 by:
David Green - programming
Utz - Animation
Zynthetic - Voice Acting
Manti - King skin touch up

Visit us at our forum : http://forums.beyondunreal.com/forumdisplay.php?f=588 or on ModDB : http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball/

[LtClifff]

Awesome!!!

Genesis is release candidate, the haunted has been released and now last and most definatly not least this!!! Cant F ing wait for this to finish downloading (Why Rapidshare???)

[BardocK]

Great Work! THX!

[Oliebol]

It's look much better than the previous one, thx for warning us at #unrealed

[Kyben]

I havent tried the first one. Does the release include Pehua, or do we need to download that seperately?

[Sbouby]

GG for the dev team for this nice mod.
It's very funny
Thx and good luck for phase 2

[RenderMonkey]

I havent tried the first one. Does the release include Pehua, or do we need to download that seperately?

A revamped version of part 1 (pehua) is included with part 2 (oztoc)

[Hourences]

Yes it includes Pehua too, in fact it includes an improved Pehua so this version is all you need.

Those that already had Pehua, be sure to overwrite all files with the newer Oztoc files.

[stevelois]

Congratulations to you all for winning MSUC P1

Thank you very much for providing the community this very fresh and unique mod

I wish you best of luck for MSUC P2 since I know it's going to be a very tough competition

[Cosmix]

Pictures reminds me of some good old elapsed time with UT. The atmosphere within these screenshots is amazing! Your mod raise the bar and give us a new reference. I definitely will download 'The Ball Oztoc' as soon as I have some more time. I will enjoy this for sure.
Really hope you guys will stay with UT. The community will benefit for that.

[jayoplus]

This is absolutely another winner.
The puzzles are even more fun. Great job.

J

[Staward]

I just completed these two parts and i gotta say...THAT WAS JUST AWESOME!! This mod in fun as hell, the puzzles are very well done, i had to stop to think how to solve them, Very good...
The only complain i have is *SPOILER* the fire ball part, it was pretty hard to make it with the 2 balls, but i was able to make it to the end. Also, this part scared the hell outta me hahaha i ran inside the room backwards, then all the sudden, when i turned myself, the fire ball was burning right in my face, i was like WTF!! RUN!! lol

[wael]

Tried it out, i loved the atmosphere in the map, and some of the puzzles i found extremely impressive, hats off to the LD (Hourences) and the monkeys were a great touch, makes the mod seem a lot more real.

[stevelois]

Just finished the 2 parts (Pehua + Oztoc)

The puzzles are very simple & fun. It is very well made, the atmosphere, sounds effects, the monkeys & others things are simply great.

A big THX

[jabo1SFH]

i dont know if i did something wrong, but when i treid to play the ball, the game crashed to desktop.


followed the directions in the readme on where to place everything, but.....




any ideas?

[Sfred]

Now what it seems from video, you really deserved MSU phase 1. Congratz.

I can't wait to play this creative job on ps3. Cook is coming, right?

[Oliebol]

Getting stuck on several places. (level 1 )

Maybe test it a bit more and some blocking volums could prevent it.

[LtClifff]

Bloody awesome mate!!! The two best mods i have ever played both releaed on the same day!!! Good lord...

(the haunted is the other one)

[xtremexp]

First question: where does the music of this mod come from?
This is great mod, this remembers me the good "old unreal 1" days as well as Operation NaPali atmosphere .
That would be nice to make this mod work online so their would be more possibilities (e.g.: team based puzzle/2 balls/teamwork).
Keep up the excellent job.
Can't wait the next part of this mod (part3 ).

[RenderMonkey]

Oliebol: None has reported this before. Can you be more specific where this happened since you say it happened "in several places". When you say you got stuck I'm guessing you mean physically so that you can't move since you suggest using blocking volumes? We have worked very hard and we try to fix all bugs, but ofcourse that is very hard to do there will always be something that we haven't caught. If you really got stuck and you are able to reproduce this, please tell me where this happened and possibly send a screenshot to wrathfox@hotmail.com

extremexp: Glad you liked it. The level music is actualy normal UT3 music, but with a modified pitch We have custom music as well, some of which is played during encouters with the king. About online possiblities, I wouldn't rule it out, but it is not our focus and there is a lot of technical problems (mainly physics) with online play.

[coolcat22]

great game type it work good at my pc and nice puzzles the thx

[Hourences]

Thanks all!

I would love to have online play, coop and all, but we got a whole number of things that don't work well online, so there is a technical problem there.

I have written a walkthrough for those of you who get stuck: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=180946

I also wrote a small mapping guide: http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showp...09&postcount=2

PS3 coming but none of us are very at home with PS3, also as far as I know PS3 does not support custom sounds? And we got a whole lof of those. So it may not be that easy to do. Epic offered their help though, some time ago, hopefully they haven't changed their mind yet.

Tried it out, i loved the atmosphere in the map, and some of the puzzles i found extremely impressive, hats off to the LD (Hourences) and the monkeys were a great touch, makes the mod seem a lot more real.

And Setheran, he did a lot of awesome puzzles in Oztoc Level 2.

[black_star]

PS3 doesn't support custom sounds, but I heard there is a workaround to get it to work. It has something to do with textures. I'll look into it.

[wael]

And Setheran, he did a lot of awesome puzzles in Oztoc Level 2.

Bravo to him too, and I just wanted to add that you nailed that unreal atmosphere. An alien world that manages to be intriguing and a bit frightening, and excellent (and i really mean excellent) work on the audio on the first run through i was focused on the gameplay and i completely missed the audio, but it makes the world feel so alive.

[bigCman123]

Woah, this is very well done, and it looks like alot of fun. I love the art style. Awesome job, and can't wait for a PS3 cook!

[Iron Chef]

Great mod! lots of fun! keep it up!

Thanks for your hard work!

Chef

[Oliebol]

I mailed the problems to rendermonkey, (i didn't have those problems the second time i played the lvl btw.)

[qoute]Loading Files
Make sure that the editor is able to locate all files it needs. If the My Document setup gives you trouble, simply move all UPK files into UnrealTournament 3\UTGame\CookedPC\ and then any folder. I personally just use Environments for everything. Next have it load the U file by default. Look for the file UTEditor.ini, either in your game dir, or in My Documents, and locate [ModPackages]. Add this: ModPackages=TheBall.
You should now be able to open up the levels we made. [/quote]

I added the sentence in the uteditor.ini (didn't remove anything)
I pressed load map in the editor, and went to the map. It said it was only looking for upk files. To i put it on all files. I loaded the .u file and my editor crashes.

I really want to be able to open this, since i have some nice ideas which i can get working in the editor. I want to help with some nice ideas for a next level.

got already 4 new puzzle ideas things.


If someone can tell what i do wrong?

[RED-FROG]

I love it!

[usepinlove]

looking forward for the PS3 version...

Please, dont leave us without that jewel

Thanks guys

[RenderMonkey]

looking forward for the PS3 version...

Please, dont leave us without that jewel

Thanks guys

As soon as the PS3 cook has been done it will be released, we haven't forgotten about you guys

[usepinlove]

As soon as the PS3 cook has been done it will be released, we haven't forgotten about you guys

Thanks a lot man

And if you can't find the way to use custom sounds... i prefer to try it without them than not to try it at all...

Of course, if there is a way to do it (i read something about changing something on some textures... :S), fo for it!

Thanks again

[Odedge]

Great work everyone involved with this mod. I finally got to play it and it was worth the wait. I really like the atmosphere and the cool ball with lights on it. Pretty much everything in the mod is great. Though, I do have a few suggestion that will make it better in my opinion.

1. Some of the music really sounds bad. The ambient sounds are very clear and crisp. But most of the music sounds like my headphone speakers have a loose wire in it.

2. It would be nice to have the hammer have less effect on moving the ball when you tap the mouse button. I can fine tune the movement of the ball with the right mouse button, but not the left.

3. I am running the game maxed out, which is probably not the best idea for my computer. The game runs fine most of the time, but the big fireballs of death really kills my FPS. Don't know if this can be optimized better?

4. Is it possible to add the sound of the ball rolling on the ground. If my hears server me well, I can hear the ball making a nose, but it would be nice to hear that friction between the ball and the ground.

5. It would be great to have more diverse footstep sounds. You basically hear one type (terrain), but will all of the stone and wood present in the levels, it would be nice to have some variety.

Out of my suggestions #1 & #5 are the most important and seem like they should be easy fixes. Either way, I look forward to chapter 3.

[Hourences]

1. We will have new music later on though I do think that our current music is awesome and entirely fitting for the atmosphere. Maybe it really are your speakers

2. Yeah it is hard to get the weapon behaviour perfect, we will continue to work on this.Giving prim fire less power wouldn't work tho as it should feel like a brutal slam, and also sometimes you just need to be able to fire it rapidly, with considerable force. We are looking at adding a second weapon mode now tho where you can mark a spot and then the ball rolls to the marked spot.

3. Yeah they got a milion bilion particles and that is the problem. We couldnt get them disabled in time. We will certainly fix this later, easy to do.

4. There should be on but the code for it is unfinished, on the to do list to fix later tho.

5. I can look into this.


_____________________________________


ModDB has done a special about the mod - with a big interview attached to it : http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball/f...all-is-rolling

[Ronja-Star]

this is fun! will you release one chapter each phase of the msuc?

[Odedge]

1. We will have new music later on though I do think that our current music is awesome and entirely fitting for the atmosphere. Maybe it really are your speakers

I am not commenting on the style, just the quality. Is it possible to open a .upk package to check it out outside of the game?

2. Yeah it is hard to get the weapon behaviour perfect, we will continue to work on this.Giving prim fire less power wouldn't work tho as it should feel like a brutal slam, and also sometimes you just need to be able to fire it rapidly, with considerable force. We are looking at adding a second weapon mode now tho where you can mark a spot and then the ball rolls to the marked spot.

To clarify, when you tap the alt fire, the ball will respond just a little bit. It would be nice for the primary fire to do the same. I like the fact that if the hammer is "charged up" and you hit the ball, it goes flying.

As far as the second weapon mode, unless it's going to be mandatory to pass some puzzles, I would suggest not having it. It's nice to only have one weapon and having to interact with the ball up close. Without sounding weird, I think a bond is made between the player and the ball the more time you spend with it. Think companion cube!

[Hourences]

this is fun! will you release one chapter each phase of the msuc?

yes thats the idea

I am not commenting on the style, just the quality. Is it possible to open a .upk package to check it out outside of the game?

We are simply using the music that comes with the game, but we slow it down to make it sound weirder. Thats it.

To clarify, when you tap the alt fire, the ball will respond just a little bit. It would be nice for the primary fire to do the same. I like the fact that if the hammer is "charged up" and you hit the ball, it goes flying.

As far as the second weapon mode, unless it's going to be mandatory to pass some puzzles, I would suggest not having it. It's nice to only have one weapon and having to interact with the ball up close. Without sounding weird, I think a bond is made between the player and the ball the more time you spend with it. Think companion cube!

Yes but if you push the ball only a little bit by tapping the primary fire button, you cant spam the ball around anymore, and that takes away from the gameplay speed, plus it makes certain puzzles a lot harder. It will as I already said also hurt the atmosphere as it is the brutal feeling of the weapon that fits the primitive setting of the world.

The second weapon mode is needed for enemies, there must be a way of getting the ball onto an enemy in an easy way, something that is easy to do even in the middle of a battle. Something that doesnt frustrate you. So our idea is to shoot a projectile that marks the spot, or the enemy, and the ball will go after it. So the second weapon mode would be meant for enemies, not for the regular puzzles. I agree that you should go close to the ball, adds to the primitive feeling.

I would like to stick to just 1 weapon mode as well, but I am breaking my head atm on how to implement this targetting system without adding a second system. If you got any ideas..


PS3 update: I have asked Epic for help, they are looking into it. Waiting... I haven't forgotten about it!

[Odedge]

I would like to stick to just 1 weapon mode as well, but I am breaking my head atm on how to implement this targetting system without adding a second system. If you got any ideas..

If it's going to be needed for enemies, I have 2 quick suggestions.

1. Have it you so you can switch weapons, but instead of switching to a different weapon, have something visually different on the hammer. Lights that change color on it would be the most subtle indicator that your using the targeting system. This way it seems like the hammer is in a different mode rather than being a different item you are carrying.

2. The other idea is to have a separate button (would be best if it can be assigned by the player) to activate the targeting system (I am guessing something similar to a laser pointer). Make it toggle-able. Press the button once, the laser turns on, press it again, it turns off. While the laser is on, if you press the primary fire button, the ball will go to the spot.

Food for thought. Good Luck...

[usepinlove]

Thanks a lot man

And if you can't find the way to use custom sounds... i prefer to try it without them than not to try it at all...

Of course, if there is a way to do it (i read something about changing something on some textures... :S), fo for it!

Thanks again

Still waiting the PS3 version.

Looks wonderful.

[Hourences]

Epic is still looking into it. We cant do this correctly without their help so as much as I would like to release a PS3 version, I can only sit and wait at the moment.

We will have a media update on Teotl - Part 3 in a week or less.

[Setheran]

Anyone care to give some more feedback on the puzzles in this release? I'm working on some ideas for puzzles to include in my contribution to part 3, so I'm interested to know how the existing ones went over with players. Were there any that were particularly annoying/satisfying?