Ballmen mod for Half-Life 2

3 comments by Ennui on Sep 22nd, 2008 digg this super bookmark

Hey everyone!

We apologize for things being so quiet around here since our release of Beta 1.5 in April; please accept this small status report as evidence of our goodwill.  Our dev team is very small, and all of us have been occupied with work and school.  However, never fear - we're still very much alive and kicking, and a sizeable update to Ballmen is in the works.  You can see a few of the changes in this screenshot.  The new HUD is a bit better looking than before, and has been tweaked and expanded quite a bit.  Health and energy bars are now opaque and much easier to read, and the tick marks on the side of the energy icon show how many shots you have with your primary and secondary weapons.  A tooltips/help system has been added to help new players get the hang of the mod - don't worry pros, you have the option of turning it off.  The large red ball you see on the right is the compass, which points at different things depending on the game mode - in CTF it points to the flag, in Scavenger Hunt to the nearest teammate with stars, etc.

In addition to these GUI changes, the next version will introduce a new game-mode called "Balls of Steel" where one player is given all of the powerups and plays against the rest of the server.  The player who kills him then becomes him.  A capture the flag gamemode is also in the pipeline, but it may not be in the next release.  Besides that, we now have an in-game music player and soundtrack, with dynamic volume control (louder when you're in an intense firefight, quieter when you're on your own somewhere).  These features and whatever else we add in the meanwhile are what you can expect from the next release, which will be soon.

HELP WANTED - 3D ARTIST:  We are in need of an experienced 3d modeler to aid in the development of Ballmen, specifically with creating a new player model and a new weapon model.  Requirements are as follows; contact Ennui if you are interested.
- Advanced knowledge of modeling, from concept to in-game, and associated software
- Ability to model, rig, animate, and texture characters and weapons
- Previous game or modification development experience and/or portfolo examples
- Experience with Source development is a plus

That's it for now!