Ballance

Chinese version / 中文版:	Ballance/zh

Ballance

MenuLevel of Ballance
Game details
Genre	Puzzle
Platform	Microsoft Windows
Developer	Cyparade
Publisher	Atari
Designer	Klaus Riech
Composer	Mona Mur
Mode	Single-player
Release	Europe: 2 April 2004 (20 years, 7 months ago) North America: 25 October 2006 (18 years ago)

Ballance is a 3D video game developed by German studio Cyparade, published by Atari and released in 2004.

In Ballance, players need to manipulate a ball of which the physical properties can be transformed to travel through large and complex mazes in space, avoid traps and solve puzzles, and finally reach the balloons to complete the level. The game provides 13 original levels with roughly increasing difficulties for players to explore (level 13 is the downloadable content, but current installation packages generally include level 13), and a score system to attract players to challenge to get better results. In addition, the very real physics engine makes the manipulation of balls feel very close to that in real life, which greatly improves the playability of the game, and enables players to fully experience the effect of gravity, eventually feeling the charm of "balance".

Ballance comes with 5 languages by default, including German, French, English, Spanish, and Italian. A fan-made Chinese version is also available in Chinese Ballance Forum as a patch.

How to play

In the interface of menus, all operations can be completed by mouse. At the same time, ↑ and ↓ keys can be used to select the option, ← and → to adjust the option parameters, Enter to set the option, and Esc to return (pressing Esc in the main menu makrs the game confirms whether to quit). While ingame, ↑, ↓, ←, and → controls the movement of the ball, Space to expand the field of view. Left Shift + ←/→ adjusts the direction of the camera by turning 90°, and Esc pauses the game.

System requirements

Since Ballance has been released for a long time, most computers today can run it.

The requirements of the configurations can be found in the documentation included in Ballance:

Hardware / software	Minimum requirement	Recommended
RAM	64 MB	128 MB
Hard disk space	150 MB	More than 150 MB
CPU	350 MHz Intel Pentium II	450 MHz INTEL Pentium III
Graphics card	Integrated Graphics Card	3D graphics card with 16 MB RAM as minimum
Driver	CD-ROM	CD-ROM
Operating system	Windows 98 (No Windows NT)	Windows ME / 2000 / XP
DirectX version	8.1	Greater than 8.1

In addition, because Ballance is largely incompatible with the configuration of today's computers, it is often impossible to run the real performance of today's computers during runtime, resulting in stalls, dropped frames, and other serious BUG. If you need to optimize the running effect of Ballance, please refer to Ballance Optimization. If you can’t run Ballance, you can refer to Q&A#非Windows XP系统打不开游戏/进入游戏黑屏/游戏内吃命卡死怎么办？ in the prompt method to solve.

Game information

Main article: Ballance level structure

The Ballance level is made up of Objects and Roads (as well as some miscellaneous elements like decoration).

Topics & activities

After 15 years' developing, currently main topics in Ballance forums are:

• Mapping
• Speedrun

In addition, new discussions have recently been produced, and good results have been achieved:

• Background: Use image software to create a new Ballance background scene.

For details, please jump to the relevant page given above to browse.

Objects

Main article: Object

In order to make the level more challenging, more playable, and more interesting, a large number of objects are provided in Ballance. In the process of making maps, the clever combination of these objects can greatly affect the game experience and map quality of a level.

Specially，the internal procedure mechanism of Extra Points and Extra Lifes is the same as that of various objects, so it is generally regarded as an object.

Background

Main article: Background

That is "background". Except that levels 4 and 13 share the same background, each level of Ballance is conducted in a different scene environment. The scene is only determined by the background texture under \ Ballance \ Textures \ Sky, and the scene will not affect the brightness of the game level. The brightness of different levels is determined by certain files under \ Ballance \ 3D Entities.

Game loopholes and level design issues

Main article: Bugs and glitches

Ballance has many bugs and glitches like other games. They may be harmful, cause the game to crash and cause shock to the player due to the sudden appearance; they may also be beneficial to the game process and be approved for use in racing.

In addition, the original levels contain level design errors, which causes inability to complete the levels, such as:

• Non possum mori: The ball is stuck in a certain area and cannot commit suicide or escape. Without a suicide device, the player has to restart the game.
• Non possum vivi: The player changed the wrong ball attribute and could not pass the level, and the logic design error of the map made it impossible to change the ball attribute even after suicide and rebirth.

Player Group

In China, currently only 相关QQ群 created by Chinese Ballance Forum and Bar Friends are active (another previous active forum 中国Ballance联盟 is closed). There are various forums scattered internationally, and only Discord服务器 established by BearKidsTeam is highly active and can receive more game resources. On the left side of this page there is a "Related Websites" column to enter these discussion sites.

History

Ballance was designed by Klaus Riech, developed by Cyparade and published by Atari on 2 April 2004 (Europe), with the music composer being Mona Mur; its North America version was released on 25 October 2006. Its offical website was http://www.ballance.org/, however, after 2006, no new news was added and this website has been shut down since 2009. (web.archive.org) Ballance Developers Homepage (archived on 20 October 2007) As of now, all information about the official Ballance is very scarce. This game mainly relies on the player group to research, support and publicize.

Related works

Ballance is one of the earliest verifiable 3D rolling ball games. In addition to this, there are other fully independent rolling ball games launched by regular companies; its excellent playability also attracts many people to imitate and create new games: this includes pirated Ballance games and games Players in the forum draw on fan games created by gameplay. Main article:

• Rolling ball games
• Category:Ballance derivatives

See also

Wikipedia: Ballance