Ha ha. Great slides there Erin.

Derek

Unfortunately sports games don't tickle me in the nether regions.

Wow, this is pretty hot.  I'll be eagerly awaiting a trailer.

No need to wait We have several versions out there on the web. We were a demonstration for the UDK, which you can download here; http://www.udk.com/showcase-the-ball.html.

Thanks for all the cool comments guys. The best answer I can give about the name, is that it's not really up to me unfortunately. I'm just the programmer on the team and I don't really push these matters too much.

Also, I really hope you intend to follow through on the premise and have the perspective rolling with the ball, because we need more games that give you serious motion sickness.

Ha ha, while that would be cool, what you actually do is push or pull a giant ball around with a 'gun'.

My only crit would be that the visual direction seems very, well... Unreal-like.... Very hyper detailed and everything-mapped. These levels would look right at home in an FPS.

Yeah, Hourences and I had done a lot of work for Unreal. So naturally when we make a game together ... it shows After all Hourences did some of the work we see as Unreal Tournament 2004. The Ball is actually an FPS btw.

Unless of course, the ball viciously crushes creatures into a bloody pulp. Then I would say that the title should try and convey THAT more.

Yep, one of the modes I wrote is called Survival... in which you are pitted against waves of enemies which you crush with The Ball.

You can bundle everything in your own installer.

The Ball is one of the example games on the UDK website. That is just a demo however. It is a compilation level we made for Epic using parts of our real levels. The full game is six hours long, and it is entirely up and running in the UDK.

~600 Environment models, ~700 Materials, ~300 sounds, 8 large levels, +7500 Unreal light actors, +28000 staticmesh actors.

The Ball is an indie singleplay action/puzzle game, running on the UDK.

The Ball is an innovative action adventure game with six hours of singleplayer gameplay.
Playing from a first person perspective, you solve puzzles and crush monsters with a large physics driven ball, manipulated by the pushing and pulling forces of an ancient device.

As an archaeologist working on the slopes of a dormant volcano somewhere in Mexico, you get stuck in an underground Cavern. It doesn't take long before you realize this is more than just a cave. You reveal ancient ruins that have been hidden from outsiders for centuries and discover a mysterious artifact, a gold and metal shelled Ball. As you venture deeper into the volcano, you reveal some of mankind's greatest secrets...



Check out our websites and such:
http://www.toltecstudios.com/theball/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ball/151208229313
http://twitter.com/TheBallgame
http://www.moddb.com/games/the-ball/

And to kick it off after that introduction post, we have released two new screenshots today and a press kit.

We have two all new screenshots of Oztoc for you. These show the little train station where you begin your journey by train, and "the village". A big cavern with an abandoned (or is it?) village, surrounded by grain fields. A big unfinished pyramid looms in the distance. That pyramid is the entrance to Oztoc II.




We also released a Press Kit. The Press Kit contains three high resolution logos, and a presentation that is meant to introduce the game to the reader in under two minutes. This will allow us to contact magazines and websites, and quickly explain them what our game is about. It is basically about making it as easy as possible for the press to talk about us.



Also on our schedule are some wallpapers, a community kit with some images that can be used for forum signatures and such, and we still have a trailer coming up. We decided to push back the trailer a little, so we can get some new footage of for example Cahua II in. The trailer should be out somewhere in February. February in general is going to be a very exciting month for us. We are awaiting the outcome of the MSU Grand Finals and the ModDB MOTY 2009 awards.

Original newspost:
http://www.toltecstudios.com/theball...press-kit.html

It's a shame. But the only thing Nifflas can do now is to just do a better job than the clone. Copying/cloning a visual look only goes so far, as it will the substance that will set it apart.

 

neoshaman

btw  this innovation at all costs belief is a typical western culture thing ^^. if you have such fears you should look at Kaizen the japanese/asian way of producing things .

Yeah, I'm looking into that sort of avenue now. I'm working on two games right now, both are looking at older games that I enjoyed a lot in the past (Chaos Engine, Gods) and looking at reiterating those titles to perhaps make them more fun or interesting considering the hardware restrictions they had in the past.

I generally disagree that games are solely an art form. This is because first and fore most, games are entertainment. Art doesn't always have to entertain, for example, I don't see how putting the Virgin Mary in a condom is entertainment ... but I suppose it could be considered to be an art form.

Because of that 'restriction', we as game developers first and foremost try to make a game that is fun; where as artists of other forms try to create an expression.

[teeming]

Perhaps Derek, like many creative people, we sometimes just get stuck and fall into a rut. Some game developers that spend a lot of time playing other people's games get scared into thinking that they may steal an idea. I suppose it's the idea if your game turned out being like someone else's game you could safely say "I never played his game, so I didn't copy it!". But I think it's a shame that if a game developer doesn't play other people's games, then it can lead to a lack of growth in creative development skills (i.e, I might still think that the best method to do x is always x and will always be x ... till of course someone else comes up with y.)

Anyways, back onto topic, I suppose sometimes we sit on our chairs and just sit their tapping our pens on books and get frustrated as to why that blank page is still a blank page. We used to be teeming with ideas, but now that we've got the skills to develop a game why is there no more ideas? In part, I think for me personally it has to do with me spending so much time sitting down and learning how to develop that I no longer exposed myself to games, movies, music and books which of course started the desire to make video games to begin with. It took a while for me to realize this, but I've gotten back into playing other people's games, watching movies, reading books and listening to music ... and I think the creativity juices are starting to flow again (I expect this to be taken out of context).

To be honest, it was like when I played Spelunky. I and wondered why I didn't make this before you did (since I loved most of the themes and ideas you presented).

As a quick tip, I don't think you can establish formal relations with the "Big Companies" with a home address. Eg, you can't get a dev kit delivered to a house (last I heard).

This is quite correct. Most companies will demand a secure location before they send you a SDK.

See, ill register a bussiness name to promote my game and get oficial license developer for a big company (Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony)

Certainly once your company gains a reputation for developing good games will a company name help its sales; but before then it is just another name. Just remember that those three companies can pick and choose who they will give their Software Development Kits to, and even then it is likely to cost you a certain amount of money. They don't just give it to anybody, even if they have registered a company name. Companies should be formed to protect the owners from certain liabilities. For example, if you plan to outsource some work then you probably want to sign using your company name and not your personal name. Also, spelling and grammar is going to be important. Who ever is going to read your emails is going to think your some 12 year old kid.

Can i register my name with my Home Address?

Depends on your state, but I don't believe company registration depends on a commercial zoned property. After all, you have people who work from home as their normal day job.

Will this affect my Home Ensurance?

It can affect insurances. For example, if you were to seek for any insurance or liability against lost of data or theft, you may need to install house alarms and fire extinguishers. It depends on your insurance policies which you will need to discuss with your insurance agent. Then there's the aspect of figuring out what belongs to you personally and what belongs to your new company.

Oh snap, that's a Monday. I should be able to be there. Will confirm when I calculate times and sleep patterns.

Did you mean the 1st of Feb, or the 2nd of Jan?

Technology:
Being developed for PC using the free Unreal Engine 3.

I simply don't see why you would need a C++ programmer for this project. UDK mainly supports Unrealscript, thus C++ knowledge will not help you guys at all [Yes, you could use DLLBind, but it wasn't designed to replace Unrealscript]. 

Maya and Blender for the 3D models, exported in .md5 format

Why are you exporting to formats that Unreal Engine 3 can't understand?

I also don't see how you will receive funding. I mean, you might through donations, but how much were you expecting to 'make' from donations?

I suppose if we were all communists then everything would be free.

Cool, I think I might use FastSpring in future.

If the game is fun, then it can potentially sell. But the problem is convincing people to buy it. So the game does need to offer something more than selecting a bunch of characters and fighting with some other players or AI.

I'll try to look for games on UDK (hopefully open source Smiley), if you can name any it could be great as a start point.

The udk has only been around for a month or so.

I have used Unreal Engine for the last ten years and it can make many games that people would want to make.

However, what is important here is that you simply have to become accustomed to the way they have designed things. Many people have argued that it is a bad way of doing it, while people like me think it is alright. At the end of the day, it is a straw man issue.

The syntax of Unrealscript is not particularly hard or difficult. What is hard is understanding the existing source code that already exists. Unrealscript is very different from C++, in that with C++ you have to create pretty much everything yourself. Unrealscript comes with a lot of core libraries that you must learn and understand how it works. Until you understand the core libraries and how they work, it can be an exercise of frustration.

Kismet is designed to be an elaborate trigger-event-action system. While it could be used to create level specific games with, I wouldn't try to make a Kismet only game with it.

Engines are not totally generic tools that will suit every kind of game. We all have to remember that Unreal Engine was developed for Unreal Tournament and Gears of War in mind. Epic can't make technology to suit every other game out there because they wouldn't use them. That's not to say that it can't be used to make something other than a FPS or Third Person Shooter ... but it will be 'harder' to since you have to find work arounds to make things work.

Awww, I'm one of those who came from the Unreal modding community. Here's nicer though. People ask less stupid questions.