OpenMBU's Past and Lack of Future
With the activity on the OpenMBU Discord completely devolving, my confidence for OpenMBU's future has completely diminished. The circumstances behind the project are understandable, I can't say the same for its community. What led us here?
For transparency and archival sake, I'll be detailing the story leading up to the present.
Note: Most of this is my personal recollection that I've built through skimming around the forums, Github, and Discord servers. Unless corrected by the involved parties, there could be inaccurate or missing information.
How did we get here?
Prior to the project's creation, the only way you could play Marble Blast Ultra on PC was through InstantAction, a website created by GarageGames. MBU under this service was referred to as Marble Blast Online to avoid confusion.
InstantAction was a unique concept, the ability to play full-on 3D games directly through the browser was ahead of its time, it says a lot about the Torque Engine's role in this period. But with features this unique, InstantAction thought about offering this service to other websites rather than keep it to themselves. This led to the closure of their gaming sector, rebranding the site as a service. As time moved on, InstantAction would become obsolete and cease operations all together.
Barring InstantAction, Marble Blast Ultra was never officially released on PC.
While the website was now gone, the setup files still existed for whoever visited the page, which will prove useful for what comes next. The next component at play is the MBO Editor, a development software used to build and test levels in-game. As it's known, Matan Weissman (IsraeliRD) was the only person outside the company to be trusted with this program. If you ever seen any MBO speedrun, they were most likely recorded in the MBO editor, this is indicated by the GarageGames watermark on the left side of the screen.
Save for private distribution, these files were never made public out of fear for legal repercussions.
The remnants of MBO (not the user, the game) would form into the unofficial PC port, Marble Blast Ultra PC, which began its development right after InstantAction's rebrand in 2011.
The MBUPC team consisted of lead developer Matthieu Parizeau (Human Gamer, cooldudepoke) and a few of his close friends: NeoTheLynx (Neo_Lightning), tomysshadow, Davive, davidjl123, and James Rudolph.
Most of the files they needed were already present in the editor. The only thing the team had to work with was transforming it into MBU, which is easier said than done.
But they didn't just stop there, the team thought about implementing more features into the game. By the time the last build was released, the game came packed with ton of custom content. Between the official team's developments were derivatives, either created by completely different teams (Evolved) or because the devs wanted to do some revolutionary shit. But everything would come to a close after MBUPC was canned.
The part where OpenMBU happens
Rather than continue to develop onto the outdated MBO files, the team decided to reverse-engineer the entire game.
The OpenMBU project had a new condition: they won't do the shit they did at MBUPC, no more unnecessary bloat. Everything they implement from this point on has to be one-to-one with the Xbox Arcade release, the only exception were Quality of Life improvements. As for custom content, it was left up to the player to deal with.
As of this thread, the only way anyone can download custom OpenMBU content is through their Discord server.
The new team began with just Matthieu Parizeau, with NeoTheLynx joining later as the only returning developer. Other contributors are listed on the Github project, but their involvement consisted of occasional work and giving advice.
Terry (thearst3rd) would be their first new developer on the team, followed by RandomityGuy and AJ Ferguson. Hailey Eira is assigned as a tester, but is later updated to designer and community manager to their own volition. Her only notable contribution was providing official development builds to the team.
As of this thread, polyrain is the latest OpenMBU developer.
The development process ran as intended, they had a clear scope, they knew their limitations and worked with what they got. Whatever major features they wanted to implement can take its time, their focus was mainly on fixing bugs and optimising the game.
But motivation can be a bitch. Despite the narrow scope, it didn't mean they're immune to burnouts. The team could sink so much time into a project before their priorities are put into something more important.
At the end of the day, OpenMBU is just a preservation project. The objective behind it is to make a delisted game playable again, to make it accessible for modern machines. Anything beyond this is solely to guarantee longevity rather than sell a product.
And yet, there was still a tick on the back of their heads, one that pleaded for this to be much more than a preservation project, a means to capitalise on the past and reminisce on a memory long gone. But none of this matters, the developers are still humans, they moved on.
The Github page is updated one last time, a plea for new developers to join the project, as everything finally comes to a standstill.
What's in it for DoxtonPink?
I've been sitting at this thread for a while, spent a whole Friday writing the original draft.
The draft added context to what happened behind the scenes, but a majority of it consisted of infighting, petty garbage, and conspiracies. While reading through the draft, I realised the other half was mostly emotional rants and baseless assumptions. I got angry over what I read and ended up being biased, which is why I've removed that section entirely. For reference, the draft had an additional 2.6k words in it.
Maybe once I stop being a spineless coward, I'll revise the draft and release it in a new thread. Understanding the past would help us avoid repeating it, but it can't be through someone's biased, emotional rants and conspiracies.
Putting the draft aside, let's look into the OpenMBU's future.
The Platinum Team intend on creating a derivative of OpenMBU, which will moves away from being faithful to the original release. This means maintaining another game, albeit with a reduced amount of developers, but I'm sure this will change later.
I feel like we're setting ourselves up to be the mecca for all things Marble Blast, which while I understand that's our purpose (the website is literally called marbleblast.com), I don't know if Im confident about our team shouldering this title. I don't believe a derivative is enough to completely erase OpenMBU, it didn't with MBUPC and Evolved, I just feel a bit irked about substituting someone else's work for our own. This is putting aside our problems with the current community manager.
As it stands right now, PlatinumQuest is being threaded together by a dude from South Asia, I'm not sure if we're ready to bear another project. Hopefully my mind changes once I start noticing other developers pulling their weight.
For transparency and archival sake, I'll be detailing the story leading up to the present.
Note: Most of this is my personal recollection that I've built through skimming around the forums, Github, and Discord servers. Unless corrected by the involved parties, there could be inaccurate or missing information.
How did we get here?
Prior to the project's creation, the only way you could play Marble Blast Ultra on PC was through InstantAction, a website created by GarageGames. MBU under this service was referred to as Marble Blast Online to avoid confusion.
InstantAction was a unique concept, the ability to play full-on 3D games directly through the browser was ahead of its time, it says a lot about the Torque Engine's role in this period. But with features this unique, InstantAction thought about offering this service to other websites rather than keep it to themselves. This led to the closure of their gaming sector, rebranding the site as a service. As time moved on, InstantAction would become obsolete and cease operations all together.
Barring InstantAction, Marble Blast Ultra was never officially released on PC.
While the website was now gone, the setup files still existed for whoever visited the page, which will prove useful for what comes next. The next component at play is the MBO Editor, a development software used to build and test levels in-game. As it's known, Matan Weissman (IsraeliRD) was the only person outside the company to be trusted with this program. If you ever seen any MBO speedrun, they were most likely recorded in the MBO editor, this is indicated by the GarageGames watermark on the left side of the screen.
Save for private distribution, these files were never made public out of fear for legal repercussions.
The remnants of MBO (not the user, the game) would form into the unofficial PC port, Marble Blast Ultra PC, which began its development right after InstantAction's rebrand in 2011.
The MBUPC team consisted of lead developer Matthieu Parizeau (Human Gamer, cooldudepoke) and a few of his close friends: NeoTheLynx (Neo_Lightning), tomysshadow, Davive, davidjl123, and James Rudolph.
Most of the files they needed were already present in the editor. The only thing the team had to work with was transforming it into MBU, which is easier said than done.
But they didn't just stop there, the team thought about implementing more features into the game. By the time the last build was released, the game came packed with ton of custom content. Between the official team's developments were derivatives, either created by completely different teams (Evolved) or because the devs wanted to do some revolutionary shit. But everything would come to a close after MBUPC was canned.
The part where OpenMBU happens
Rather than continue to develop onto the outdated MBO files, the team decided to reverse-engineer the entire game.
The OpenMBU project had a new condition: they won't do the shit they did at MBUPC, no more unnecessary bloat. Everything they implement from this point on has to be one-to-one with the Xbox Arcade release, the only exception were Quality of Life improvements. As for custom content, it was left up to the player to deal with.
As of this thread, the only way anyone can download custom OpenMBU content is through their Discord server.
The new team began with just Matthieu Parizeau, with NeoTheLynx joining later as the only returning developer. Other contributors are listed on the Github project, but their involvement consisted of occasional work and giving advice.
Terry (thearst3rd) would be their first new developer on the team, followed by RandomityGuy and AJ Ferguson. Hailey Eira is assigned as a tester, but is later updated to designer and community manager to their own volition. Her only notable contribution was providing official development builds to the team.
As of this thread, polyrain is the latest OpenMBU developer.
The development process ran as intended, they had a clear scope, they knew their limitations and worked with what they got. Whatever major features they wanted to implement can take its time, their focus was mainly on fixing bugs and optimising the game.
But motivation can be a bitch. Despite the narrow scope, it didn't mean they're immune to burnouts. The team could sink so much time into a project before their priorities are put into something more important.
At the end of the day, OpenMBU is just a preservation project. The objective behind it is to make a delisted game playable again, to make it accessible for modern machines. Anything beyond this is solely to guarantee longevity rather than sell a product.
And yet, there was still a tick on the back of their heads, one that pleaded for this to be much more than a preservation project, a means to capitalise on the past and reminisce on a memory long gone. But none of this matters, the developers are still humans, they moved on.
The Github page is updated one last time, a plea for new developers to join the project, as everything finally comes to a standstill.
What's in it for DoxtonPink?
I've been sitting at this thread for a while, spent a whole Friday writing the original draft.
The draft added context to what happened behind the scenes, but a majority of it consisted of infighting, petty garbage, and conspiracies. While reading through the draft, I realised the other half was mostly emotional rants and baseless assumptions. I got angry over what I read and ended up being biased, which is why I've removed that section entirely. For reference, the draft had an additional 2.6k words in it.
Maybe once I stop being a spineless coward, I'll revise the draft and release it in a new thread. Understanding the past would help us avoid repeating it, but it can't be through someone's biased, emotional rants and conspiracies.
Putting the draft aside, let's look into the OpenMBU's future.
The Platinum Team intend on creating a derivative of OpenMBU, which will moves away from being faithful to the original release. This means maintaining another game, albeit with a reduced amount of developers, but I'm sure this will change later.
I feel like we're setting ourselves up to be the mecca for all things Marble Blast, which while I understand that's our purpose (the website is literally called marbleblast.com), I don't know if Im confident about our team shouldering this title. I don't believe a derivative is enough to completely erase OpenMBU, it didn't with MBUPC and Evolved, I just feel a bit irked about substituting someone else's work for our own. This is putting aside our problems with the current community manager.
As it stands right now, PlatinumQuest is being threaded together by a dude from South Asia, I'm not sure if we're ready to bear another project. Hopefully my mind changes once I start noticing other developers pulling their weight.
Im the best baby