tripwire-interactive posts

It's a game that combines first person shooter elements with exploration and puzzle solving. Nope, it's not Portal or Portal 2. It's The Ball, the game that started out as a Unreal Tournament 3 mod and has now been adapted into a stand alone and full commercial project (a stand alone demo using the Unreal Development Kit was released last fall). The full game from developer Teotl Studios is to be published by Tripwire Interactive. The Ball will be released via download and in retail stores later this month.

Big Download got Teotl Studios' creative director Sjoerd De Jong to give us some more info about The Ball including some hints about future downloadable content for the game and more.

When developer Tripwire Interactive first announced plans to release a sequel to its cult hit WWII shooter Red Orchestra Osfront 41-45, the company titled the game Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad. However the company has apparently gotten input from fans and the media who have asked Tripwire if the new game is a sequel or a mere expansion pack.

The game is, of course, a sequel, so Tripwire decided to end the confusion for some folks (personally we were never confused about the game's format but that's just us). So late on Friday the developer sent out word that the new official title for the game is Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad. We hope that makes everything clear.

Editor's note: We kept ourselves from suggesting Red Orchestra 2: Electric Boogaloo to Tripwire.

A former Unreal Tournament 3 mod is one step closer to becoming a full fledged stand alone commercial title. Developer Teotl Studios has announced that the first person action-puzzle game The Ball has now "gone gold". The game is now set for release via download and in stores in mid-October from publisher Tripwire Interactive.

The web site has also posted up word about how the developers have been working with creating the look for the transparent ball in the game. You can play the game with an "always on" transparent ball or one where the ball is always solid. The default mode is for the ball to be solid by itself and will turn transparent when the ball is attached to the game's weapon.

Those looking forward to Tripwire's Red Orchestra sequel have a lot to be excited about. Shown off at PAX, this solitary trailer shows off several of the new systems Tripwire has promised in the Soviet-focused World War 2 shooter. Some of the coolest include body dismemberment and usage of cover. Vehicles are also making a return, and if this trailer is made using in-game assets (which it appears to be), it's also a significantly more visually stunning game than its predecessor. If you're in need of a World War 2 fix, it looks like Tripwire has you covered for 2011.

Download HD Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad 'PAX 2010' Teaser Trailer
Check out all Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad downloads

It's been a little while since we have reported on the progress of The Ball, the fun first person action-puzzle game from developer Teotl Studios that began as an Unreal Tournament 3 mod. However the game's official web site has been giving regular weekly updates on the upcoming full commercial version of the game which will be published by Tripwire Interactive.

The latest updates states that a release candidate version of The Ball could be ready by tomorrow or Friday and a full gold master for the retail version is still planned for sometime in early September. Earlier updates to the site indicate that a new logo for The Ball is being made, with the site saying that the current logo " .. is too simple, and we think we can come up with something better and more polished." Art for the game's retail box is also being worked on and a Steam version of the game is being worked on that will be made available to the press.

Download The Ball UDK demo (359 MB)

Tripwire Interactive is beginning to make a name for itself as a true supporter of independent gaming. It has already published Zeno Clash to retail stores and will also be the publisher for the upcoming mod-turned-commercial title The Ball. Now Tripwire Interactive has revealed its plans to publish a very different indie game, the casual title Dwarfs.

Created by the two man dev team called, appropriately enough, Power of Two, Dwarfs is all about helping and guiding a group of, well, dwarfs, through randomly generated environments as they dig for gold and treasure while keeping them out of harm's way like having them hit water or lava pockets or dealing with monsters. Tripwire Interactive plans to release Dwarfs in retail stores and via Steam later this fall.

The Ball, this year's overall runner up in the second Make Something Unreal mod contest, has been in development as a stand alone commercial game from its developer Teotl Studios. Today, it was announced that Tripwire Interactive would publish The Ball as both a downloadable and retail game later this fall. The commercial version of the game will be a six hour single player action-adventure game as you control a mysterious "ball" through a cavern filled with puzzled to solve and enemy creatures to fight. You can download a stand alone UDK version of The Ball here at Big Download.

Tripwire Interactive got its start by first winning the Make Something Unreal mod contest with the UT 2004 mod version of Red Orchestra. The developer released the mod as a stand alone game to great success and then turned another UT 2004 mod, Killing Floor, into another successful commercial game.

Recently you announced a rather unique program for the game's first expansion pack, Rising Storm, where members of the Red Orchestra mod community will be in charge of developing the expansion. Can you tell us why you wanted to do this?

John Gibson: Given the way we got our start as a mod team we've got very deep ties to the mod community, and believe some of the best innovation comes from the mod community. Over the past few years we've also developed a really symbiotic relationship with the mod community for our games. We've held several mapping competitions where we've put up prizes to reward the best community mappers. We've even taken some of the best maps and mods and included them as official content for our games. This is good for us as it keeps our games in peoples minds and keeps them selling, it is good for the modders as they get to hone their game development skills and possibly get jobs in the industry (we recently hired two developers out of our mod community), and most importantly the fans win because they get a lot of additional free content. The modders for our games have created some really great stuff with a lot of it being professional quality. Right now for instance 30 percent of all the players playing the original Red Orchestra are playing one of the mods called Darkest Hour. That says a lot for the quality of work coming out of the community.

As we were developing Heroes of Stalingrad we came up with some ideas on how we could take these concepts even further. So we came up with the idea for a crazy experiment we called the "All Star Mod Team." We would reach out to the mod community for Red Orchestra and the modding community at large and try and assemble a team of the best modders in the industry. We would then offer them the opportunity to work on a project under the guidance of Tripwire Interactive with an opportunity to actually earn some real money for their work. These guys would get early access to the modding SDK and actually be developing the expansion in parallel with Heroes of Stalingrad. One problem that often plagues mods is that it takes so long to make a quality total conversion mod that they often don't get released until a couple of years after the original game is released. This means a lot of a game's player base has moved on to other games by the time the best mods get released, and a lot of really great mods get overlooked (Mare Nostrum, NeoTokyo, Insurgency, Carpathian Crosses just to name a few). So we wanted to engage a mod team early on so that they can get something out the door while Heroes of Stalingrad is still fresh.

Alan Wilson: We wanted to be able to expand on the original theater for RO. We also wanted to get behind the modders who have done so much work on RO over the last few years. This way, a bunch of them get a great opportunity both to show what they can do AND earn money – and we get extra material for Heroes at a reasonably early stage. Most good mods for games take a year or two to make and we wanted this material available a lot sooner than that.

Why set the expansion in the Pacific Theater of WWII?

John Gibson: We have been itching for a while to branch out into a different area of WWII. While I won't say we won't ever do it, the whole Normandy setting is well trodden. The Pacific Theater has been done a little bit, but we think it is still fresh enough that it is a good setting to do a Pacific Theater game the Red Orchestra way. And for me it is also a bit personal as both of my grandfathers fought in the Pacific, one in the Navy and the other in the Army.

Alan Wilson: Because it is another theater that hasn't been explored from both sides. It makes a change from the European theaters – and it was, like the Russian Front, very brutal, in-your-face combat – which suits the RO style of game.

What can mod makers who want to join the Rising Storm team expect in terms of compensation?

John Gibson: As I mentioned earlier this is all new territory for the games industry and a big experiment for us. We really wanted to give a mod team an unprecedented opportunity. So this is what we are offering the mod team. If at the end of development Rising Storm is just a pretty good mod, we'll release it as an official mod for Heroes of Stalingrad the same way we've done for a couple of the mods for Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45. With an official mod we distribute it through Steam as essentially free DLC that anyone that owns the base game can get for free. We did this in the past for the Darkest Hour and Mare Nostrum mods for Red Orchestra: Ostfront and Defense Alliance 2 for Killing Floor.

Now here is where the real opportunity comes in for the mod team. If Rising Storm turns out to be really great then we'll actually turn it into a full paid add-on for Heroes of Stalingrad. This could very well involve us bringing the expansion in-house to give it additional QA and professional polish. The kicker is if we release Rising Storm as paid DLC we'll be sharing a percentage of the royalties with the mod team. This means that if Rising Storm does really well each member of the mod team could pocket a significant amount of money. And to ensure that the mod team gets something out of it, we're going to pay the mod team a completion bonus whether it becomes DLC or not. As the lines between the fans and the developers blur we think projects like this could be an all new way of making games. Of course it is an experiment, so we'll find out in the end how it all turns out.
At the moment what's the status of Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad and of Rising Storm?

John Gibson: Heroes of Stalingrad is deep in production and on schedule for a 2011 release. We'll be doing some semi-public beta testing later this year so fans should keep an eye out for announcements about that. Rising Storm is just getting started with a really solid core team shaping up. Tony Gillham (formerly of the Darkest Hour and Carpathian Crosses mod teams) is heading up the project, with Mark Dittman of After-Hourz/Minion Workz fame heading up the level design team. The team is still taking applications, so if you think you have what it takes, head on over to their website and apply.

Finally we have to ask about Killing Floor. Are there any plans to add new content to the game and are there any plans for a sequel?

John Gibson: We're cranking away on a new free content pack for Killing Floor right now. The content pack will feature some more of the best custom maps from the Grindhouse Mapping Competition polished up for official release. The content pack will also feature something new for the Firebug (although probably not something people will expect). We've also been listening to the community, and have a whole batch of balance changes we're working on for the release. Regarding plans for a Killing Floor sequel, well I would say something but there is a Fleshpound with a glowing red chest and spinning arm blades behind me threatening to grind me up if I say anything.

Developer Tripwire Interactive started out with just a dream to make a Unreal Tournament 2004 mod called Red Orchestra. That mode won the first Make Something Unreal mod contest and got the team access to a full Unreal Engine contract. It then turned the mod into a full stand alone game.

However the team has never forgotten its roots in the mod community. It turn the UT2004 mod Killing Floor into a full game as well. And for their next major project, Red Orchestra: Heroes of Stalingrad it is giving mod makers a chance to earn money by making a mod for that title called Rising Storm. Big Download got a chance to ask Tripwire's head men John Gibson and Alan Wilson some questions about the new game, their mod plans and more.

Developer Tripwire Interactive started out as a mod team and now the company says it plans to give mod makers a chance at developing a commercial title. This week the developer announced plans for Red Orchestra Heroes of Stalingrad: Rising Storm, an expansion to their still unreleased WWII shooter. The expansion will move away from the European theater of the war to the Pacific region with the US fighting Japanese forces. The game will let players play as both US and Japanese soldiers and there is the promise of co-op in the campaign as well as multiplayer modes.

What's interesting about this announcement is that Tripwire plans to work with "the best developers from the Red Orchestra modding community and the mod community at large" on this project. Tripwire will give the mod team early access to its development tools and will work with the team to create Rising Storm. The game's official web site is now looking to fill spots on the team and while they are not full time salaried positions the site states, "financial compensation is involved." The final product will be released as an expansion to Red Orchestra: Heroes of Staingrad sometime after that game is released.