The Ball - Teotl - Released!

Yes of course it is in the right dir C:\Users\Szabó Sándor\Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\
That's where the UTGame, Binaries, and HauntedGame folders are.

Well, my game is localized in hungarian language, but I change it everytime I reinstall UT3 in the UTEngine.ini ("Language=INT").
So yes, it's english.

Well my PC isn't the flagship in the fleet, maybe it has to do something with it:
Acer Extensa 5620G
Intel Core Duo Processor T5550 (1,83 GHz, 667 FSB, 2 MB L2 cache)
1 GB Ati Mobility Radeon HD 2400 XT HyperMermory
2 GB DDR2

I have Wista 32 bit. Yes it's exactly 358 MB.
I tried deleting the shader file. It took the game to load a bit longer, but BEFORE the Toltec video.

Initial install did not go very well. Probably because I had an older version of the ball still installed, it made everything an ambiguous package, and crashes start-up at the splash screen. I've tried removing everything related to the ball in both the game's install directory and the my games directory, re-installed it, but it persists, referencing to ghost folders that don't exist.

Maybe consider an automatic uninstaller of older versions next time around. It looks like I'll have to reinstall UT3 from scratch here at work to be able to get this mod running.

Meh. Turns out I had the very first release in my 'my documents' folder substructure, even though the unreal warnings said they were in my install directory.

Managed to get to Oztoc 2 in my lunchtime. Initial thoughts:
- Decent re-work of the old levels.
- I like having the secrets to look for, though I suck at finding them.
- Not being able to skip through cutscenes with a button is terrible, detracts from the pace I want to have.
- The narrative VO sounds awkward, like the person was forcing himself to speak neutral English which didn't entirely work out.
- Combat works, somewhat, though almost the tiniest bit of momentum will kill the zombies.
- Slideshow loading screen.
- Quite like the music/ambient stuff.
- Improved the cube physics, thankfully.
- Killing monkeys is fun.
- Am hoping the additional levels give me a different colour palette or at least more variation.
- Dodging the lava-rock thing into water is still lame.
- Nice main menu.

Those just sort of came to mind while writing this. Am hoping for more puzzles that actually require puzzling though, so far the puzzles have largely been press arbitrary button to open arbitrary plot progression door. More feedback after tomorrow's lunchtime session. Decent improvement on the last version so far.

I don't need to force myself to speak neutral English, since it is pretty neutral already. So far you and one other person are the only ones I've seen complain about it out of all the sites where people are discussing it. Both on BU. Go figure.

Bersy said:

I don't need to force myself to speak neutral English, since it is pretty neutral already. So far you and one other person are the only ones I've seen complain about it out of all the sites where people are discussing it. Both on BU. Go figure.

Click to expand...

Yeah, not really. I'm not saying you are forcing yourself, it just sounds that way. Your pronunciation is definitely not neutral English, you have a light non-native accent. The VO simply doesn't sound natural. (as in, it sounds like it was recorded for a mod, not like genuine narration).
Of course, I have no idea what to suggest to improve that, and you may very well think that it's fine. I'm not complaining about your voice, I'm simply pointing out that the narration sounds unnatural/canned.

I understand what you are trying to say. All I can say is the way it was read was intentional and IRL my accent is very neutral, I am a native North American english speaker.

My 2 cents

Actually, I disagree, I thought the voiceover was nicely done, but then again, opinions are like /bad thing here/...

On the other hand, any hope for some hints? I'm just after the square columns and the elevator / magnet puzzle, the Ball is under the floor, and the teleporting maze has me stumped. I can get to within a bit over 400 units to the Ball, and then get teleported back to room #2 (next to the only symbol equipped center column)...

All in all, I have really enjoyed the mod, so much so that I didn't mind the jumping puzzles over the lava. I really hate those, so it's really a compliment, honestly!

Ah-

Ah~ I feel silly. Thank you for a great afternoon, I did the first two ep's yesterday. The boss startled and scared me- Love it! One question... The fur texture seemed shimmery, on a radeon 9850, maxed ingame settings. Have you seen this? I'm off to check the UT3 board to see if that's a known issue...

Bersy said:

I don't need to force myself to speak neutral English, since it is pretty neutral already. So far you and one other person are the only ones I've seen complain about it out of all the sites where people are discussing it. Both on BU. Go figure.

Click to expand...

It's not bad or anything, but it did sound a little... odd, to me. Just the intro VO on the very first level. Though I think it was more the actual dialogue itself more than your voice.

Yes, the first part is a bit tricky. I am sure some adjustments will be made for the next release.

I just finished the mod and I'm really impressed at the level of polish that you guys have in this thing....

I can see the final version going retail for sure!

Had to reinstall windows yesterday, so I gave The Ball another try...and it's working now I have absolutely no idea what was my problem, but no matter, I'm just happy it's fine now

I just had to register to express my thoughts on your project:

This is Sick! It has a level of polish and professionalism to it that you usually don't find in Mod content. The Game got me hooked from start to finish, I was addicted to the ball! Yes, coming to the ball... what a lovely gameplay element you introduced here. I don't know if I'm the only one who felt like a close relationship growing between "it" and the player. "Portal"'s Companion Cube would come into mind. I found myself talking to it "Where are you?", "Look what you've done to those poor mummies!", "Are you tired?", "I know you like me, and I feel the same. But a safety distance would be advised or I will end up sticking to you like a pancake!", "What are you doing down there?!"... (no need to phone the doc, i'm already taken good care of...). Just to say how powerful such a device can be both on the player and on carrying on the story. In this hostile world it's the only companion you can actually trust, a valuable friend more so than having 20 guns in your inventory.
I could continue iterating on it but i will just bore you to death(or scare) with my ball fetish

The Puzzle elements were straight forward, I managed to solve them with relative ease. Therefore I wouldn't mind some tougher ones, those who'd give me headaches . The mixture of puzzle and combat elements are revolving around the ball, the balance between them was done well to be honest and I didn't mind the occasional Mummy making me run for my life while I couldn't access the companio... ehh Ball XP

Ok, telling you that all's well wouldn't exactly be helpful for developers though. Would it?
About Save-System: Checkpoint based is fine. But the possibility to load a checkpoint instead of replaying the whole Level would be neat. But you said that UT3 doesn't really support a feature like this, so I don't count on it being fixed (I played the mod in one sitting though).
Puzzles... I can just see how much work and thought went into them... So I would just suggest keeping it up, they should always get a special treatment. Trickier ones involving the player to go back and forth in a Level (sort of puzzle boss) would be welcomed.
Maybe expanding the game menus, like having your own Pause Menu (nitpicking at best!)

Not much I disliked. The pace is excellent, smooth gameplay nice use of physics.

Good job, keep it up and I wish you good look for your future endeavours

No problem. I didn't post about 2 minor issues I had encountered (I will try to get pics on my next playthrough): 3 cutscenes resulted in some corrupted lines all over the screen, and there was one part where you could get stuck. The part where you had to guide the ball through magma while the player being a level higher. With the ball you must hit a button to open a sliding door which lets the player go on but makes the ball unable to pass. At first it was all fine but in the end I somehow managed to lock myself out lol. No way to reach any button nor the ball, because it actually rolled behind one of those doors before it begun sliding. Sorry for the precaire explanation, but the thing is I had to suicide to actually reach the ball again.

EDIT:

*About the screen corruption, here's a shot of it happening in the Level "Oztoc II":
Just before the Cutscene:



During the Cutscene:



Not sure what could be the problem, I noticed it happens when the player is near a "fluid source" (water, magma)...

*About the part where I said one could get stuck (also encountered in "Oztoc II"):



I think you can see the problem (I used "ghost" mode to get a better overview shot), the Ball is basically out of reach. The only button working at this point is the "ball button" beneath the blue one. But without the ball it's somewhat a hopeless situation.
Beginning from the "Entrance" when you activate the ball button of the 3rd compartment and don't pay attention to it because you're heading for the blue button in the 4th compartment, it is possible for it to roll back into the second compartment. Once you activate the blue button of the 4th compartment, the door of the 2nd compartment succesfully looks out the ball and as a consequnce the player itself. This may be done on purpose though, you just have to make sure it actually stays in the 3rd compartment to be able to continue.