"Quality Control" in Marbleland
Yo.
Im wide awake, it's 10 PM as Im writing this bit, struggling to sleep if you can't tell. Though rather than laying on my bed to try and doze off, I've decided to segment a good portion of my time into opening a discussion!
I remember this being a point of contention in the level-building channel on the Discord server , as far as I know, the general opinion is pretty concrete, the people demand quality control. I have no idea if anything changed since that discussion, to be blunt with you, I rarely have time to check the server, let alone contribute to anything. Im sure most of you are now sensing the DoxtonPink shaped void in the server, cause yknow, Im pretty important and notable.
Me aside. This is about Marbleland. Let me give context video essayist style rq.
The Context
Back in the olden days of calling shit gay, or 2008-ish, file sharing was a bitch if you weren't doing some peer-to-peer magic. Most of the levels, atleast by prominent Proboard members, were all bunched together in some FTP server. Alternatively, you could've used FileFront, Mediafire, the one that got seized by the FBI, your options seemed limitless if you ignored foresight.
Point is, level-sharing was ee-erh-heh-? unless you were in the Philosphere, but you weren't completely restricted if you knew what you were doing. The community back then thankfully had the aforementioned foresight to compile all their shit into one big archive, a Custom Level Archive . This is a good place to review what customs were like during the Proboard era, please check it out if you got the time.
Some artists use the original interiors provided to recontextualise them into unique levels, others use that as a reference to build their own interior, in turn creating their own level style, just look at some of the pre-replicated MBP Pre-Alpha levels for example, most of that shit was stitched together with 3 by 3 platforms.
Between this spectrum, from the experimental, story-tellers, puzzle freaks, you also have the chaotic artist scattering interiors, hazards, and powerups all over the level, a good portion of them exist in the CLA believe it or not. These are called Level Editor levels, they're notable for showing you the author's definition of a level, and also their mental age. Sometimes they're just lazy edits on the original level, other times it's just whatever the artist constitutes extreme difficulty, one glance at the latter and you can tell what original level they used as a base with no fail, that's a skill you can develop.
There is no doubt that those lucky enough to have uploaded their LE levels were ridiculed by the old members, which is expected, it's like trying to pass off a splattered canvas as art, except you're doing it for the love of the game instead of laundering money. This feels like another case of certain people thinking that the Matan era community were civilous and noble, they weren't, trust me, this can be a whole subject in itself.
That's the extent of my miniscule research, told you I'd do it video essayist style, even threw in an unwarranted opinion in there.
Now that you have some context, let's move into present day and the crux of this discussion!
Welcome to Marbleland
To SummerArmy's dismay, we moved on from Mediafire and direct uploads on the forum, instead being granted a more central place to keep all our levels in: Marbleland , created by Vanilagy
This is, by far, the most accessible way to upload and play custom levels, especially with PlatinumQuest and Vani's own Webport being attached to this service. It's an impressive feat! The website itself is far from perfect, but hey, atleast someone is still working on it...
Unfortunately, it's also where we witness the consequence of Marbleland.
Let me give you an idea to how accessible this shit is, the CLA had only 1850 levels.
Meanwhile, as of Febuary 9th 2026, Marbleland has 5388* levels uploaded on the site, almost three times as big as the CLA!
* The amount was deducted by the CLA, which are uploaded in its entirety in the website.
This greater amount of levels emphasised a gradiant of quality, the consequence comes from the rampant amount of LE levels in contrast to the handful of levels that respected level artists consider "high quality." It reached a point where certain users in Marbleland grew to infamy for their constant uploads, leading respected artists to bitch about them in the comforts of the Discord server, and maybe under their comment section.
All this culminated into a discussion for a "featured" section dictated by user ratings, all this to highlight more notable artists, while the low-effort shit some kid made can just sit somewhere out of sight. The idea being that it could maybe incentivise those kids to try harder? So that one day they could make it up the podium?
Why wasn't this implemented? Vani thinks it's unfair. He doesn't assign a value to most custom levels, seeing all of them as equal to one another. A featured section would only benefit the prominent artists, who will more likely remain on the front page compared to potential newcomers. He also thinks a rating system could discourage users from uploading, but that's in the context of a upvote/downvote system. There's also the thought of this being worth his time, given that the levels are always ordered by newest in most of the games, meaning all this featured stuff would be relegated to the website only.
Believe it or not, there has been valid cases for spam from time to time, Vani chucked in moderators to deal with those on the quickness.
But in terms of featured and ratings, there are some thoughts for an implementation, but nothing on code yet.
What's in it for DoxtonPink?
You've made a Level Editor level at one point, or maybe you made a bunch. I've made my fair share of LE levels too. It probably resided in your oldass computer, later lost to the fabrics of time.
This ease of accessibility makes it so this shit's no longer an issue, if you're conscious enough to make an account and upload a file. The joke might be on them because their embarassment is permanently online, if that gives you any gratification, you sick fucks.
Maybe my sympathy is my weakness here, it's funny to see what some dude passes off as a level, it's more endearing than it is rage-inducing honestly. I think it's awesome that anyone could upload a level regardless of their quality. I see it on a case-by-case basis, if someone intends on trying to be a level artist, I think it should be expected for them to improve and branch out from using the Level Editor, or maybe try to be more creative with it, that's also possible!
Saying this, it doesn't absolve Marbleland's lack of features, there's still potential for something beyond being an archival project.
Where do you stand in all this? Do you enjoy Marbleland's offerings? How do you think it could improve? Do you gravitate more towards the higher quality levels? Or do you just play whatever's uploaded on the website?
I'd like to hear your insight about Marbleland in general, share your thoughts in this thread, the last thing I'd want is for this to end up being the subject of the hour over on the Discord server. Let's put our thoughts somewhere more permanent yeah?
Im wide awake, it's 10 PM as Im writing this bit, struggling to sleep if you can't tell. Though rather than laying on my bed to try and doze off, I've decided to segment a good portion of my time into opening a discussion!
I remember this being a point of contention in the level-building channel on the Discord server , as far as I know, the general opinion is pretty concrete, the people demand quality control. I have no idea if anything changed since that discussion, to be blunt with you, I rarely have time to check the server, let alone contribute to anything. Im sure most of you are now sensing the DoxtonPink shaped void in the server, cause yknow, Im pretty important and notable.
Me aside. This is about Marbleland. Let me give context video essayist style rq.
The Context
Back in the olden days of calling shit gay, or 2008-ish, file sharing was a bitch if you weren't doing some peer-to-peer magic. Most of the levels, atleast by prominent Proboard members, were all bunched together in some FTP server. Alternatively, you could've used FileFront, Mediafire, the one that got seized by the FBI, your options seemed limitless if you ignored foresight.
Point is, level-sharing was ee-erh-heh-? unless you were in the Philosphere, but you weren't completely restricted if you knew what you were doing. The community back then thankfully had the aforementioned foresight to compile all their shit into one big archive, a Custom Level Archive . This is a good place to review what customs were like during the Proboard era, please check it out if you got the time.
Some artists use the original interiors provided to recontextualise them into unique levels, others use that as a reference to build their own interior, in turn creating their own level style, just look at some of the pre-replicated MBP Pre-Alpha levels for example, most of that shit was stitched together with 3 by 3 platforms.
Between this spectrum, from the experimental, story-tellers, puzzle freaks, you also have the chaotic artist scattering interiors, hazards, and powerups all over the level, a good portion of them exist in the CLA believe it or not. These are called Level Editor levels, they're notable for showing you the author's definition of a level, and also their mental age. Sometimes they're just lazy edits on the original level, other times it's just whatever the artist constitutes extreme difficulty, one glance at the latter and you can tell what original level they used as a base with no fail, that's a skill you can develop.
There is no doubt that those lucky enough to have uploaded their LE levels were ridiculed by the old members, which is expected, it's like trying to pass off a splattered canvas as art, except you're doing it for the love of the game instead of laundering money. This feels like another case of certain people thinking that the Matan era community were civilous and noble, they weren't, trust me, this can be a whole subject in itself.
That's the extent of my miniscule research, told you I'd do it video essayist style, even threw in an unwarranted opinion in there.
Now that you have some context, let's move into present day and the crux of this discussion!
Welcome to Marbleland
To SummerArmy's dismay, we moved on from Mediafire and direct uploads on the forum, instead being granted a more central place to keep all our levels in: Marbleland , created by Vanilagy
This is, by far, the most accessible way to upload and play custom levels, especially with PlatinumQuest and Vani's own Webport being attached to this service. It's an impressive feat! The website itself is far from perfect, but hey, atleast someone is still working on it...
Unfortunately, it's also where we witness the consequence of Marbleland.
Let me give you an idea to how accessible this shit is, the CLA had only 1850 levels.
Meanwhile, as of Febuary 9th 2026, Marbleland has 5388* levels uploaded on the site, almost three times as big as the CLA!
* The amount was deducted by the CLA, which are uploaded in its entirety in the website.
This greater amount of levels emphasised a gradiant of quality, the consequence comes from the rampant amount of LE levels in contrast to the handful of levels that respected level artists consider "high quality." It reached a point where certain users in Marbleland grew to infamy for their constant uploads, leading respected artists to bitch about them in the comforts of the Discord server, and maybe under their comment section.
All this culminated into a discussion for a "featured" section dictated by user ratings, all this to highlight more notable artists, while the low-effort shit some kid made can just sit somewhere out of sight. The idea being that it could maybe incentivise those kids to try harder? So that one day they could make it up the podium?
Why wasn't this implemented? Vani thinks it's unfair. He doesn't assign a value to most custom levels, seeing all of them as equal to one another. A featured section would only benefit the prominent artists, who will more likely remain on the front page compared to potential newcomers. He also thinks a rating system could discourage users from uploading, but that's in the context of a upvote/downvote system. There's also the thought of this being worth his time, given that the levels are always ordered by newest in most of the games, meaning all this featured stuff would be relegated to the website only.
Believe it or not, there has been valid cases for spam from time to time, Vani chucked in moderators to deal with those on the quickness.
But in terms of featured and ratings, there are some thoughts for an implementation, but nothing on code yet.
What's in it for DoxtonPink?
You've made a Level Editor level at one point, or maybe you made a bunch. I've made my fair share of LE levels too. It probably resided in your oldass computer, later lost to the fabrics of time.
This ease of accessibility makes it so this shit's no longer an issue, if you're conscious enough to make an account and upload a file. The joke might be on them because their embarassment is permanently online, if that gives you any gratification, you sick fucks.
Maybe my sympathy is my weakness here, it's funny to see what some dude passes off as a level, it's more endearing than it is rage-inducing honestly. I think it's awesome that anyone could upload a level regardless of their quality. I see it on a case-by-case basis, if someone intends on trying to be a level artist, I think it should be expected for them to improve and branch out from using the Level Editor, or maybe try to be more creative with it, that's also possible!
Saying this, it doesn't absolve Marbleland's lack of features, there's still potential for something beyond being an archival project.
Where do you stand in all this? Do you enjoy Marbleland's offerings? How do you think it could improve? Do you gravitate more towards the higher quality levels? Or do you just play whatever's uploaded on the website?
I'd like to hear your insight about Marbleland in general, share your thoughts in this thread, the last thing I'd want is for this to end up being the subject of the hour over on the Discord server. Let's put our thoughts somewhere more permanent yeah?
If you can read this, fuck you!
