Something Big...

Not gonna say what it is, but there's something big, and very cool planned for a upcoming version. No screen shots or anything, you'll just have to trust me

Looking forward to whatever it is. By the way I jumped on the game just now and I don't know if you've tweaked the physics recently but rolling/spin seems to have improved a lot since I last played. Feels much more natural.

Thanks! ya, I've been working on physics lately trying to tighten it up, glad to know it is improving instead of just changing

-Is diagonal movement a thing in this game? I tried testing it (badly) and couldn't make any conclusions. I guess I should've just done a stopwatch test but I didn't try that hard

-Restitution and powerups (including Blast) seem pretty spot on as far as I can tell.

-Weakest physics points are probably surface friction and marble torque. I say this mostly in reference to the ice (ice is hardly different from regular surfaces) as well as slopes. I'm actually okay, in theory, with the ease of ascending slopes. It makes for frustration-free gameplay. The only weird thing is that the marble can overcome just about any slope, and often in a very short amount of time.
For example, in MBG, you might be able to ascend a slope just fine if you begin the slope while rolling, but if you make a dead stop, and reapply the same roll direction to continue again, you will not make it and you will roll back down.
This game seems to have infinite torque, because you can be rolling DOWN a slope, then simply press the direction to go up it, and you will very quickly overcome gravity and the slope's friction.

-having any connection to other players seems to dramatically reduce the framerate. When I am by myself I can get 60fps on my iMac easy, but with anyone else it's like 35-50.

Regarding this last point, blueteak, does your game draw the scene only after host confirmation, or does it draw your own client marble natively and then apply the rest of the clients and their effects on you retroactively?

IIRC, when playing MBO, there was no client-native marble lag, unless of course you bumped other marbles and then host would put you in the proper spot.

Dunno really. Does anyone know the network mechanics of MBO?

@Sporlo:

1) Ice friction not implemented atm (it was at one point but then somehow I broke it)

2) Torque isn't as simple as it seems, I have a lot of hidden + and - torque additions so that starting from a standstill is responsive, but also doesn't make your marble blast off, still a work in progress.

3) All physics calculations are done on each client individually, there is no root server currently (so easy hacking, but not too worried about that at the moment). You have complete control over your marble and just send updates to everyone else on your current rotation, velocity, and angular velocity (which is a cool solution to teleporting during position updates since your velocity does the interpolation for you relatively accurately.) Specific things such as gem spawns are tied to the Master client (ie first person to log in) but other than that, there is no authoritative structure. So you control your marble natively, and any forces applied to you are actually applied by the other players Instance that is active in your client, which receives messages from other clients for things like blast.

Aug 1, 2013, 11:57pm, blueteak wrote:still a work in progress.
Totally understand and I appreciate the explanations. Just trying to be honest and since you're right in the middle of developing nothing is really set in stone yet. Overall though this is really an amazing piece of work for how short of a time you've spent on it.



Aug 1, 2013, 11:57pm, blueteak wrote:3) All physics calculations are done on each client individually, there is no root server currently (so easy hacking, but not too worried about that at the moment). You have complete control over your marble and just send updates to everyone else on your current rotation, velocity, and angular velocity (which is a cool solution to teleporting during position updates since your velocity does the interpolation for you relatively accurately.) Specific things such as gem spawns are tied to the Master client (ie first person to log in) but other than that, there is no authoritative structure. So you control your marble natively, and any forces applied to you are actually applied by the other players Instance that is active in your client, which receives messages from other clients for things like blast.
Alright then, I must be experiencing simple graphical lag then, because it's harder to control my marble without others than it is when the room contains just me. Is it normal for the network activity to affect the framerate so much?

I never really experience lag when other people join, other than high quality gems and particle effects in Hunt when another person joins. However, for this next big thing, I toned down the number of messages sent/recieved as I increased it to fix interpolation but sending velocity data did a better job of it.

Hmm loads different feeling since I last played. In general rolling physics seem much smoother, but there are definitely some issues. The slope thing Sporlo mentioned is definitely a thing, and wasn't there, or at least not as noticeable before. I had been complaining about bounces seeming too weak, and that seems to be even more true now. Air maneuverability seems way lower (too low).

In general I like the changes. It seems that before you had captured more of the nuances present in MB's physics, but far less smooth, and harder to control. Now controlling is much easier, but many of the MB-like physics features seem toned down, or even eliminated. I can't decide if that's a good thing or not, I must say I love my MB physics.


BTW nice lobby, though it really just feels like another level

@Sporlo, I don't know if MBO used the same physics as MBG, but in MBG physics are all client-sided, as well as movement of the marble. That is actually the wrong way to code it, because in reality it should have server verification with interpolation/exterpolation to make it look like your not lagging.