Development on The Ball : Teotl has been going well. Our recruitment effort has paid off, we have recruited four new people, growing our team to 13 developers
- Jesse Moody - He will helps us out with some high detail environment models such as statues.
- Whackzero - Will be animating our enemies.
- Vaninadisc - He will be our new programmer, and he will also occasionally be helping out with the design.
- EvilEngine - He will be assisting us with the Unreal side of character creation.
We have also come up with a name for our team: Toltec Studios - we purchased a domain name - and we launched our very own website : theball.toltecstudios.com
We have also released three new screenshots of our upcoming third installment of our project. A screenshot of our brand new weapon (modeled by Tores and concept by Pesti), a Gorilla (by Pesti), and a screenshot of a large elevator at the end of Teotl (by Hourences).
The gorilla is a boss you will meet at the end of Teotl and it is quite large, few times larger than the player.
Both of our new levels are already about 70 percent complete and we have decided to completely redo the first half of Pehua and redo parts of Oztoc in order to bump up the overall quality of the mod and to introduce our story. We came up with a story that is based on actual myths and will explain what this ball is and why there are so many puzzles and traps deep into this volcano. Quality wise we are going to introduce enemies already in Oztoc to spread out our features a little, and we will create a few new and really cool puzzles and have those replace a few of the more generic puzzles found especially in Oztoc level 1. The original puzzles from Oztoc 1 will be moved into secret areas. In Pehua we will make the beginning of the mod much more interesting with a few large theatrical scenes and we will make the first few puzzles much more accessible. For example, you won't be required to push the ball up a ramp anymore, which is a bit too difficult so early in the mod.
The weapon, made by Tores and concepted by Pesti will replace the Impact hammer, technically turning us into a total conversion as we now got rid of all UT3 content. The wheel on the side will spin around and rapidly push the hammer and magnet at the front back and forth. The crystals in the skulls eye sockets will change color dependent on the weapon mode you are in.
Christ, you're putting out stuff better than I've seen any professional teams make in Unreal.
Gorilla looks like he's made of chocolate though, I presume it's untextured?
Thanks!
Yes the gorilla is untextured. Pesti is actually quite far already with texturing it, but we want to wait with showing that until it is entirely finished. We are trying to give it a thick layer of actual fur too.
this is some good stuff. will teotl be the last in the series? and are you going to release this in one big pack?
Yes every release also includes the prior releases, and we will also be seriously improving and changing our first two releases to bump up the overal quality some more.
There are 2 more parts planned after Teotl. The next part will take place in a gigantic cave and you will get to use a vehicle. At least that is the current idea, could still change over time.
sounds cool
Haha yah he does look like choc. Nice models.
I have been DYING to play this, but I only have ut3 for PS3. I heard you guys are going to port it. Any idea when that might start happening?
We really need the help from Epic for that as porting large mods to PS3 is not exactly well supported right now. The biggest issue is the fact that Epic didn't release the sound conversion tools, so you can't port over any new bit of sound or music. We would love to port it over though.
Yes, very nice... some impressive progress and additions to the newly named Toltec Studios guys...
That gorilla looks sexy :D Great modeling.
Love the new weapon, nice touch to the gameplay. Can't wait to try your next map!
(PS the guy who said the gorilla looked like chocolate made me project what I happened to be drinking at the time you bastard)
I'll be one of the first in line DownloadN' :D