Status update! It is September, and we have a mere five days to go until our Gold Master delivery. Things are going quite ok. Here is an update on the list of problems we posted two days ago:

• Having trouble adding Steam DRM into the game.
  We received some help on this and managed to find, and fix, the source of the issue. Steam DRM is up and running!
• Game freezes on exit sometimes.
  We implemented a somewhat hacky solution, but it seems to work well. Fixed!
• The Save/Load menu takes seconds to open.
  Fixed! One of the widgets in the UIScene was doing all kinds of weird stuff in the background. We redid it and everything is working well now.
• No Gore still doesn’t work 100%.
  Fixed.
• Game crashes during Survival if you swim over the Ball.
  We haven’t been able to fix this, but we modified the level a little so you can no longer swim over the Ball. We have not had any new crashes since.

However new issues popped up:

• Last minute addition, we are adding a setting that will always and ever render the Ball transparent. There was demand for that, and we feel it should really be included before we go GM.
• Survival is having issues. Sometimes rounds do not end. When the player reaches the end of a round monsters stop being spawned (as they should), but the round just continues, leaving the player wandering around forever. Very bad.

We intent to have both of these issues fixed by tomorrow evening, so we got four days left to do a number of final playtesting rounds.

A special Monday update. We got Mystery Monday coming up later today but first some other news!

We got a new logo! The original logo was too simple and didn’t really do the quality of the game justice so we’ve remade it. We hope you like it.

In other news, exactly one week left to finish and deliver the first Gold Master. The build of the game we built over the weekend is the first build that we feel is a really serious release candidate. Couple of issues popped up though, but we seem to have most of those under control or expect to get them under control within the next few days:

• Having trouble adding Steam DRM into the game (Steam DRM = not being able to run the game without running Steam in the background)
• Game freezes on exit sometimes.
• The Save/Load menu takes seconds to open.
• No Gore still doesn’t work 100%.
• Game crashes during Survival if you swim over the Ball.

Those are the critical issues that we are aware of at the moment that we really need to get fixed. It will take us a couple of weeks to go from Gold Master to getting it out on Steam and in the stores, so you are looking at release somewhere in the first half of October. The exact date will be announced later!

And lastly, Tripwire Interactive will be presenting The Ball at the PAX conference later this week, so if you are going there be sure to stop by their booth!

Check back tonight for Mystery Monday!

Less than two weeks to go until the delivery of the retail GM! We only got a few very small things left to do (Steam implementation aside), we expect to have a Release Candidate ready tomorrow or on Friday. So what is up in these final days?

• Markus P. is doing Box art and the design for the DVD. Manual coming up after that for him, and he has also been doing high res art work for the PAX conference.
• Sjoerd fixed dozens of small issues found in an internal playtest earlier this week. And he just implemented new splash and loading screens. The old ones used Bink video and we had some serious trouble with that.
• Markus A. is onto Steam. We need our first full Steam build entirely up and running by early next week. We will give the press access to that build.
• James made the new transparent ball automatically fade out as soon as it attaches to your weapon.

Another week, another status update. Retail Gold Master delivery is set for September the sixth, which is (somewhat) frightening soon. We had the final external playtest last weekend and found another 30 or so issues. Our internal testing brought forth another few dozen problems. The large majority of those we’ve already fixed in the past few days, and we feel pretty confident that we’ve now found and fixed pretty much all the class A and B bugs. In other news we just added in German and Swedish voice acting, and Russian! Russian is the 9th language our game will be released in. Akella is taking care of the Russian distribution.

• Markus P. is working on a new logo for The Ball together with Sjoerd. We are redoing our logo as we are not happy with the quality of the current logo. It is too simple, and we think we can come up with something better and more polished. We hope to have it ready soon!
• Robert just added save game encryption. Our save files were quite easy to edit, and we didn’t want people to abuse that possibility so we’ve added encryption.
• Markus A. is onto fixing whatever code problem pops up, as well as finishing Steam integration, and he is also going over all the levels to improve the AI pathing and such.
• Anton is continuing to fix all the problems that are related to Kismet.
• Martin, one of our writers, is working on next week’s Mystery Monday. We intend to do something new next week.
• Sjoerd is fixing whatever level and content issue that pops up.

Getting really close to the end now, just a few weeks left before we intend to have a Gold Master ready! Steam integration is giving us some trouble but otherwise we are in good shape. Almost everything else is either done or under control. We had our sixth external playtest last weekend, and found roughly 30 new issues. Once again, mostly small things that take just a few minutes to fix. We also got our new transparent Ball in, and it is looking much better than the one we had (the old one is shown in the First Few Minutes of the game video). We will show the new one later, when we showcase the new Survival levels!

• Markus A. is multi-tasking like mad. Doing Steam implementation and various other fixes and features at the same time.
• Arthur is working on finalizing the achievements.
• Mario just finished work on our 4th Survival level Amini today, Sjoerd will take over tomorrow to do the final polish and cleanup.
• Markus P. is doing all kinds of artwork. He is currently doing next week’s Mystery Monday piece, and is looking into touching up our The Ball logo.
• Sjoerd just finished fixing all new issues and bugs found in all levels. He is now moving on to Amini, the manual, and he is going to try and fix two very time consuming bugs.
• Robert is finishing up, and polishing, the interface.

We had yet another playtest this weekend by someone from outside the team. It was our fifth external playtest session, and we found about 80 issues. More than last week’s playtest, but the large majority of these were “I can get stuck between some rocks” kind of bugs, so really easy to fix! We also implemented more aggressive culling of geometry, giving the perfomance an additional 5 to 10% boost.

• Markus A. is working on implementing Steam features into the game. Achievements and such.
• Mario is wrapping up the new Survival level. Just the big bird left to add.
• Markus P. has made or reworked a couple of meshes in the game. We got new lamps for the last level now, and we now finally got proper Survival pick-ups rather than abusing the Secret model for Survival.
• Sjoerd just fixed all of the bugs found in the last playtesting session and is going to start a few playtesting rounds on low end hardware from tomorrow on.
• Robert is fixing a few UI things and improving our stat system.

Last weekend we had another very fruitful playtest. We invited someone over who had never before played anything “The Ball” and watched him play through the entire game. A great way for us to get a fresh look on things. We found about 40 new issues during that playtest, and another ~40 from our own internal playtests.

• Markus A. is working on Steam implementation, and he is adding a charge attack to our armored Tlalocs. Hongman is working on the charge animations, and Theodore is doing a few new sounds for it.
• Markus P. just had his birthday! He turned 28!
• Kevin is done with his work on the new Survival level “Amini” and Mario has taken over. He is adding a big new cavern around the level, and he will start scripting the level in a couple of days. The level will probably be finished by mid next week.
• Sjoerd is working on fixing the majority of those ~80 new issues.
• Robert returned from vacation and upgraded our save game system a bit. The save/load menu now shows a unique screenshot for every checkpoint.

Something new! Another weekly event! Every Wednesday from today until release (and most likely beyond), will be Workaholic Wednesday, where we will give you an insight into a small selection of the things that are currently going on in our team. What we are working on, changing, adding, or fixing!

• Kevin is almost done with his new Survival level “Amini”. As soon as he is done Mario will take over and script the traps and waves of enemies. Since we try to give every Survival level its own unique element, we are currently looking for something cool and memorable that can we can add to the level. The new level is our 4th Survival level, and it is set in a Teotl style golden city environment.
• Arthur did further fixes to our installer. There were some trouble with getting the installer to run properly when you weren’t logged on with an administrator account but we believe we now fixed that.
• Markus A. has been working on hard on fixing up and redoing our AI code. Mummies now attempt to evade the Ball for example.
• James added support for gradually increasing the glow of the Ball in the last level. The closer you go to the end, the more the Ball glows.
• Anton fixed a few dozen small and big level problems.
• Sjoerd and Markus P. are working on artwork for our Steam pages, and Markus is redoing our loading screen.

And in the category “Nice Bugs”, we just reduced the size of the game by a whopping 190 MB by simply moving one small piece of the interface to another package! That little thing actually referenced the entire game! Since it was part of a “Startup Package” (a package that is always loaded – high priority content), it had a major impact on everything.

Roswell, GA, July 13, 2010: Tripwire Interactive is delighted to announce that it will be publishing Teotl Studios’ first person puzzle-adventure game, The Ball, through Steam and in stores world-wide. The Ball won multiple top prizes in Epic’s latest “Make Something Unreal” contest and is now following in the footsteps of Tripwire’s own Red Orchestra in making the leap from mod to full commercial release. Providing an experience far beyond what the mod offered the commercial release of the ball is highly enhanced and expanded featuring a full 6 hours of single-player gameplay.

“Tripwire Interactive is a perfect match for us” says Sjoerd De Jong, founder of Teotl Studios. “We are thrilled to work with them and are confident this deal will help us maximize the potential of our game.”

“When we first tried The Ball we knew this was exactly the type of game we would like to publish – fun, creative and a blast to play” said John Gibson, President of Tripwire Interactive. “This is all the more exciting for us as the winner of the previous ‘Make Something Unreal’ contest to have the opportunity to help a winner from the latest MSU contest take their game commercial.”

About the game:
The Ball is a first person action-adventure game featuring a full single-player experience built on Epic’s Unreal™ Engine 3 technology. As a swashbuckling archaeologist working on the slopes of a dormant volcano somewhere in Mexico, you get stuck in a cavern. It doesn’t take long before you realize this is more than just a cave. You reveal ancient ruins that have been hidden from outsiders for centuries and discover a mysterious artifact, a gold and metal shelled Ball. As you progress towards solving the mystery of this amazing place you must unlock the secrets of The Ball and learn to control this ancient artifact. You will also start to encounter not just puzzles and traps, but also various strange creatures – the guardians of this mystery. These creatures also have to be overcome, using only The Ball to defend you. Venturing deeper into the volcano, you reveal some of mankind’s greatest secrets…

Key features:

• Six hours of single-player adventure
• Game mechanics that are very simple to pick up, immersing the user in the physics-based gameplay right from the start
• 8 huge levels to explore
• Includes bonus Survival game mode, with 3 additional levels
• Wide range of enemies to overcome, including mummies, an undead gorilla and boss characters
• Unique vehicles – an underground train and the mysterious “Ball Chariot”
• More than 30 secrets hidden away to be discovered, as well as multiple achievements for the player to earn
• Steamworks™ features including achievements and leaderboards

The game will be available on Steam and in stores from Fall 2010. For further information on the game, visit the game website: http://www.theballthegame.com/.

About Tripwire Interactive
Based in Roswell, Georgia, Tripwire Interactive is an entertainment software developer and publisher founded in 2005 by the award winning mod team and winners of the 2004 edition of the “$1,000,000 Make Something Unreal” competition. Released in early 2006, Tripwire Interactive’s debut retail title Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 achieved both critical and commercial success garnering several awards including “Multiplayer Game of the Year” and “FPS of the Year” for 2006. Killing Floor, Tripwire’s second title, jumped straight to the top of the Steam best-seller list and instantly became one of the top-ten most played FPS games in the world. With some of the most played PC Multiplayer games on the market and over 1,000,000 units sold on PC, Tripwire Interactive have proven that with hard work, determination, and great distribution partners, independent game developers can still make a big splash in the games industry. For more information visit Tripwire Interactive’s website at www.tripwireinteractive.com.

About Teotl Studios
Based in Vittinge, Sweden, Teotl Studios is a game development start-up focused on creating quality and immersive single player experiences. The staff is a unique mix of seasoned veterans and talented enthusiasts.

The studio’s first title, The Ball, started out as a critically acclaimed mod. It came second in the 2010 edition of Epic Games’ “$1,000,000 Make Something Unreal” competition, and also secured ModDB’s “Best Singleplayer Mod of 2008″ award. Recently the game was awarded funding by the Nordic Game Program, an initiative from the Scandinavian governments to promote and support regional game development. With the full version of The Ball, Teotl Studios aims to continue this success and present the world with an atmospheric, memorable, and above all fun experience.

The last day of our screenshot special! We hope you liked the screenshots that we’ve presented in the past one and a half week!

A mummy storming at the player in one of the golden cities of Teotl, with blood covering the screen from previous kills!

As added bonus, we have also replaced all of the old screenshots on our media page with brand new ones! Have a look at our refurbished Media Page.

And there is more… Soon!

IX!

A Tlaloc accompanied by a couple of mummies on the roof of the Tower of Cahua. Complete the Tower of Cahua to gain accesss to a raft, and travel deep into the very heart of the volcano!

# 8!

A cool action shot of Survival, showing the worm towering in the background, and a bug attacking upclose.

7/10!

A new shot of our undead gorilla! This massive beast guards the Waterfall Bridge at the end of Teotl, ensuring that only the worthy can set foot in the sacred drylands of Hueca.

Six!

An unfinished room in the final level of the game. The construction was abandoned when the civil war broke out. Little trains used to deliver the raw material to the construction site, as workers excavated caves deep inside the “Pico del Miedo” as the volcano is known nowadays.

The fifth day! We are halfway.

One of the fearsome worms that guard the three pyramids of Hueca. This is the first place in the game where you get to use electricity to kill things!

Day four, six more to go!

An atmospheric shot of “The King”, taken in the basement of one of the three massive pyramids of Hueca. This mysterious ruler follows the player throughout his journey. Who is he? Why does he follows the player?

Developer Friday tomorrow.

Day three!

Two armored Tlalocs battling fire in the final level of the game! These fierce beasts are the guardians of Cahua. To solve the riddle of the Ball you must defeat these vicious overlords!

Day two of our ten day screenshot special.

The Nail Room in the Oztoc level. Charge up the Ball with nails, and release them to temporarily turn it into a giant frag grenade, instantly killing any mummy that was unfortunate enough to be within range!

Over the next 10 days we will be posting one cool new screenshot a day!

An environment shot of the revamped Teotl I City Square. The lush cities of Teotl were once the heart of this hidden world, but beware, for the beauty of this place hides horrific perils. Destroy the crystal and tremble as the city comes back to life!

As promised, a new video! Last weeks video was mainly about setting the mood and giving you an idea of the atmosphere of our game, this weeks video is all about action and killing mummies.

It also gives you a first look at some features we’ve never shown before, such as the Nail Ball and the Oil ball.

Tomorrow we will kick off new weekly event Developer Friday!