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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Does this mod save your progress? I'm going to bed but I'm scared to exit out since there's no save option. I'll just leave it on all night :D
I'm about a little ways into Teotl (played through the first 2 again - love the improvements!) and enjoying myself so far.
hey, sorry to be commenting so much, but i cant seem to hit last ball switch in teotl 2 that's on the pillar that lowers down. i read about someone else having this problem as well. i am able to walk over it and everything but when i try to get the ball on the switch it hits a blocking volume. it's not the little edge either since i've used the 'hammer' to hit it up into the air and i can clearly see it hitting a wall. i've reproduced this every single time i've tried it. i've tried doing the puzzles in different orders and everything. i dont know what to do.
Yeah that happened for two other people. It is the wonderful joy of Kismet scripting. Works 10 times, and then it just entirely random gives up. We will script it in a different way in the future. Right now it is a timer, there may be subtle variations in time on different hardware, fps dependent etc, and thus it is likely missing the input by like 1 milisecond...
If you reload the level, it should work though. Did so for the other person. Try to complete the 5 puzzles in a different order.
You can fast forward that level by typing in "ghost", fly to the beginning of the city, type "walk", and make sure the cutscene is triggered at the city entrance (checkpoint), then type "suicide" and you will respawn there with the ball. If you do respawn at the beginning again, suicide again until you are at the right spot.
Can use "fly" to quickly complete 3 out of the 5 puzzles.
im gettin a huge problem with this game i select a level and it constantly loads dosent do anything just the ball rolling ive left it like this for an hour and still it dosent get the the game please help
This seems to happen to a select few. We have no idea why right now and are working on trying to find the cause.
Can you give us some info?
-Windows XP or vista, 32 or 64 bit?
-Regular UT, or Steam?
-Is your UT heavily Mod?
-You did install patch 2.0 or above right?
-You have uninstalled the previous versions right?
-Is your UT install English or another language?
-Could you email me launch.log file found in the log folder in the UT3 folder in your documents to me? Me@hourences.com
massive stuff
played it yesterday, almost finished it
just plain fun !
i demand more levels
sorry but do I nead to download all the 3 "episodes" ??
No you only need this latest version. It includes the previous releases, and they have been improved considerably even.
ty for helping me it seams to be a verry good mod .
You do know that the ball is pretty large, don't you? lol