The Ball has won a number of awards in the current Make Something Unreal contest. How do you feel about the acclaim and attention the mod has received?

I am obviously very happy about that. It is an original concept, so we were pretty unsure how it was going to be received. Luckily for us, people seem to like it!

How did you first learn that Epic was planning to release the Unreal Development Kit?

I contacted Epic last summer because I wanted to know how doable it was to get hold of a license for Unreal Engine 3, and under what conditions. It turned out that they were working on the UDK, and we were basically the right project at the right time. Before I knew it The Ball was part of it.

How does it feel to develop The Ball as a stand alone game, rather than a mod that requires a previously installed game to play?

It feels awesome. Modding is cool, but there are a lot of restrictions to it. This stand alone build allows us to reach out to all those gamers who do not have UT3. And that exposure is priceless really. Other big advantages are that this stand alone build is easier to install, and is lighter on the memory since it doesn't has to load assets from two games at once.
Speaking as a mod maker do you think more people like yourself will begin to make free games using UDK rather than making mods for existing games?

Being able to make stand alone games has so many advantages. I would be surprised if many people would keep on modding games like UT3 actually. This really offers so many more possibilities and flexibility!

Finally what's in the future for yourself and The Ball? Can we expect a commercial release of the game at some point?

Yes, we are going for a commercial release. We are currently aiming for spring 2010, but that may be subject to change later on. The Ball UDK Demo is basically a 40 minute long compilation level that we made using parts from our various levels. For the full game we got about six hours of gameplay planned. The full game will take you from the surface, to the ziggurat of Oztoc, from there on to the lush golden cities of Teotl, onwards through the desert of Hueca, to finally end up in Cahua deep down at the heart of the volcano.

Download The Ball (359 MB)