The Ball UDK Demo
Nov 05, 2009 Demo 2 commentsA 40 minute long stand alone demo of The Ball made for Epic Games' UDK Release. Running on the latest version of the Unreal Engine, this demo features...
The Ball is a singleplayer action and puzzle mod for Unreal Tournament 3. It competes in the MakeSomethingUnreal Contest, and it has won three first prizes in so far (Best Gametype - 2 x Best Use of Physics), and one 3rd place (Best Mod). Additionally it has won the ModDB MOTY Best Singleplay Mod of 2008 award.
The Ball offers an adventure that puts you in the boots of a geologist who gets stuck in a cavern and bumps onto an ancient and Mesoamerican complex holding a mysterious ball. While making your way through the internal workings of ancient ziggurats, golden cities, and huge caverns, your only companion is a giant gold and metal-shelled ball, a mysterious artifact in its own right, that you use to make your way through a series of rooms and caverns, and to crush enemies with. As you progress through the mod, slowly the real purpose of this gigantic complex becomes clear, and you are sucked into a thousands of years old story of betrayal and secrecy.
The mod is episodic in nature, and knows a release every three to six months. So far two parts have been released: Pehua, and Oztoc. Part 3, Teotl, is set for a release in May 2009.
The Ball is designed and directed by Hourences and has a 13 people strong international team working on it: Toltec Studios.
28 comments by Hourences on Nov 5th, 2009 digg this super bookmark
Over the past few months we have been working on porting The Ball over to Epic Games' Unreal Development Kit. That means a stand alone build of The Ball, running on the very latest version of the Unreal Engine! We'd like to thank Epic Games for the great opportunity! Check out our page on their official UDK website.
We built a demo that contains two levels. One brand new and awesome survival level with dozens of traps (by Mario Marquardt). And 30 to 45 minutes long singleplay compilation level. It contains parts of Pehua, Oztoc, and Hueca and gives a good presentation of all the features found in our game. If you have played a recent version of the mod, there is likely not much new for you in this demo. If you haven't had the chance yet however to check out our game, or you don't own UT3, here is your chance really!
This also means that we are going to port over the entire project to the UDK, and go commercial (albeit in an indie way) with the game. The full release is set for somewhere in spring 2010.
Minimum
Recommended
The demo is free and does not require a copy of UT3 or the UDK!

We have a thread on our forum with some tips if you are having perfomance issues.
We added a FAQ to our website today as well. Check it out.
We are also bumping up our community efforts! Check out our newly formed Facebook fan page. We will now begin posting weekly updates and keep you people in the loop!
A 40 minute long stand alone demo of The Ball made for Epic Games' UDK Release. Running on the latest version of the Unreal Engine, this demo features...
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i would say one of my best mod for ut3, but god damn, why so many cutscenes, can't skip 1 single cutscene. you enter a room cutscene you leave the room cutscene :D nah it's not like that but it got me mad enough i quit the mod 10mins in.
UT does not offer the functionality to let people skip a cutscene. We can't do it. And if we have fewer cutscenes we have people complain they don't know what to do. Impossible battle.
aye we spent ages doing cutscenes for planetstorm - nobody cares, they just want to shoot things :)
This mod really is the shit!
But it need some kind of coop or multiplayer...
no, no it doesn't. Well, that's my opinion, but I feel it's too talored to single player now that you can't really make it multi. But that's just me
Are there working PS3 versions...?
Ok I have no idea how to make this work, never really used much UT3 mods. I installed it and I click on The Ball shortcut, it looks exactly like the UT3 menu, am I supposed to select some map or something?
My guess is you need to patch your UT3.
It does not save progress in a level, it only saves progress per level. We can't do the first thing technically since UT is a multiplayer game and does not offer a save game system we can abuse for the mod.
So as long as you are at the beginning or the end of a level, you are fine, you can just select that level again in the menu later and start.
Figured as much - oh well.