Marble Blast Portable

It only gives my an option to turn on, not off. Yeah, my computer is JANKED.

Comment: Strangely, I have had to download components multiple times in order to get a full download. Could you make an alternate download on mediafire, please. This would make it easier for chrome users, and mediafire is highly reliable.

How would that make it easier for chrome users...your just downloading a program.

Apr 10, 2012, 6:02pm, mbgaddict wrote:Comment: Strangely, I have had to download components multiple times in order to get a full download. Could you make an alternate download on mediafire, please. This would make it easier for chrome users, and mediafire is highly reliable.
Yep, MediaFire's great.... But they don't allow for large files to be uploaded, so they're out. I've been looking for other free hosts that accept big files, but haven't found any good ones beside Dropbox yet. Some had a 30 day inactivity limit, some want me to pay, and some (most) don't want such huge files uploaded at once.

That tutorial definitely helped, as for mediafire, I guess I'll just have to keep clicking the download button more times than I would like to.
Edit: found a great one, www.filedropper.com/

I've updated the launcher to version 3.1. It's just a minor update that fixes a few small bugs, and adds a simple Toubleshooting section to the readme file. Extract the new version to a folder separate from your old version. REMEMBER, you DO NOT have to re-download your components!! Just move the components that are in your old version's component folder to your new version's component folder. You ONLY need to update the launcher here, since as of right now, no components have been updated.

I've also mirrored both the launcher and the components to Google Drive, now that it's finally available. So choose your download link in the DOWNLOAD section of the first post of this topic and get playing!

Enjoy,
Aether!

Quick question as to how the components are packaged. Do you use ZIP compression or some other technique? What if one wanted to, say, install custom LB levels into MBP. How would that work?

I have a theory:

Does it require one to download the mods, cause if it does, then it probably works like this: What all the game component does is find and launch the executable off your computer...which could be done in batch/c++/c#/Java/command/VB/C/ect.

or..does it include *ALL* the mods, and they are all in this special format?

Apr 25, 2012, 10:46pm, higuy wrote:Quick question as to how the components are packaged. Do you use ZIP compression or some other technique? What if one wanted to, say, install custom LB levels into MBP. How would that work?


Apr 26, 2012, 2:00pm, jeff wrote:I have a theory:

Does it require one to download the mods, cause if it does, then it probably works like this: What all the game component does is find and launch the executable off your computer...which could be done in batch/c++/c#/Java/command/VB/C/ect.

or..does it include *ALL* the mods, and they are all in this special format?

Techno babble to follow... I'm not sure how much sense this is going to make, but here goes nothing...

Each .game file is a virtual application package created by VMWare ThinApp. This means, Jeff, that the entire game - all levels, interiors, and every other file, is packaged INSIDE the .game file. So no mods are downloaded. They're inside their components. It's basically like a big zip file (in which the files are all in their correct folders), but to answer your question Hi Guy, no, it's not using ZIP compression. It's using ThinApp's compressor, whatever that may be. But I haven't ever been able to open a .game file with WinRAR or anything similar, so I'm willing to bet it's their own proprietary compression method. This is great because the virtual filesystem tricks your computer into thinking that you have files on your hard drive that actually aren't there. For example, if you use CubicExplorer, which is bundled with MBPortable, to browse the Program Files folder, you'll see several game folders that MBPortable THINKS are there, and can access and interact with, but are actually being virtually placed there by ThinApp's virtual file system. If you look in the Program Files folder without CubicExplorer, you'll notice that there's no game folders there, since they all exist ONLY within their respective .game files. When MBPortable's launcher runs MBGold for example, it's a simple command that tells the computer to run the file in C:\Program Files\MBGPortable\marbleblast.exe. You probably don't have that file or folder on your computer, but MBPortable sees it there because it's being run from within the virtual file system and can run it.

The launcher is also its own virtual application package, but instead of being saved as a .bin file (and then renamed to .game), it's saved as a usable executable program. When you run the launcher, you run MBPortable.exe - that's actually ThinApp running my program, say it's called launcher.exe, from a virtual folder WITHIN the MBPortable.exe. ThinApp automatically looks for any Optional AppLink files which you specify when you create the package. I have it set to look inside a folder called Components for files that end in .game. When it finds these files, it will automatically combine the virtual file systems together to create one single file system with all installed components available to the launcher.

The virtual file system stays the same all the time. You can't change the files within it. That's where the Player Data folder comes into play. That is where all changes to the file system are stored. By using CubicExplorer, which is bundled with MBPortable, you are able to interact with the virtualized files. If you wanted to add custom levels or LB levels, you'd literally do the exact same thing you would do on your normal installation of Marble Blast. The only difference is that instead of using Windows Explorer for copying and moving files around, you'd use CubicExplorer. Since CubicExplorer is run from within the virtual file system, it has access to all of the packaged files and allows you to make changes or add to them. The custom levels that you add are all stored within the Player Data folder as changes to the virtual file system.

Ah, so the .game files are static compressed directories of their respective games, and the launcher, through CubicExplorer, virtually decompresses them in the memory (or does it actually decompress it to the filesystem?) and reads them as if they had existed in Player Data all along. I see. That's quite neat. Crossover went meanface at the exe, I think I need to update my MSVS runtime components...

Thanks aether for the huge post

Is there going to be a mac version?

Aug 30, 2012, 4:49pm, alexmbfan wrote:Is there going to be a mac version?
No. I'm a Windows guy. Plus the virtualization tools that make MBPortable possible only work on Windows. If there's a Mac version, it won't be from me.

Hey everyone, I just wanted to give you a quick update about Marble Blast Portable. I've basically hit a brick wall with this program and have no idea what to do.

A while back, some updates were released to VMWare ThinApp, the tool that I use to make MBPortable possible. They claimed to be stability updates. Unfortunately, however, they were exactly the opposite. MBPortable normally runs very smoothly, as if you were running an installed version of the games. But once I updated ThinApp to the new version, MBPortable got slow and buggy. The two or three latest versions of ThinApp make portable builds of Marble Blast basically impossible to play. I've filed bug requests about this, but there seems to be no resolution in sight. So because of this, I'm forced to stay on the older, faster version of ThinApp.

That leads to a second problem. I've been running Windows 8 since the Developer Preview (or Alpha, if you prefer) was released, and I finally bought the full version and am running it as my main OS. Something that I've noticed is that sadly, programs that are packaged using ThinApp will not run on Windows 8. This same exact problem happened when Windows 7 was released a few years ago. If I recall, it took something like 14 months for VMWare to make ThinApp work correctly. I don't want to have to wait that long for a compatibility update. Besides, it's unlikely that the Windows 8 update to ThinApp will fix the slowness that has been present in the last few releases, so I wouldn't be able to update anyway.

So as of right now, I'm a bit stuck. I'm looking into other virtualization tools such as Spoon Studio, but they don't allow the same level of componentization that ThinApp does. I may have to switch back to the old method of distribution, where every game is packaged with every download, which would unfortunately make every download over 1GB. Luckily I won't have to push an update to MBPortable until some more mods are finished, so I have some time to figure out what I want to do. I'll keep you guys up to date.

Do you have a copy of VMWare Player by chance? I presume you have some Windows 7 disks laying out somewhere. May be time to build a virtual windows 7 machine. I personally have anywhere between 40 and 50 virtual machines at my disposal during any given day of the week - they're great tools to have in this field

If you're stuck with Windows 8, there may be a compatibility mode (similar to Windows 7) where you can install programs and run them using virtual memory using Windows 7 methods. It may not work properly, but it should work better than whatever garbage Windows 8 is trying to do.

For anyone else - This is a very good example where making back-ups of your work is a good idea (believe it or not). It's probably also a good idea to make a recovery disk of your version of Windows 7 and a backup of your hard disk before you convert to Windows 8 in the event you don't want to stick with it. Everyone where I work has been whining about our enterprise software not being compatible with Windows 8.

~Aayrl

Nov 9, 2012, 4:10pm, aayrl wrote:Do you have a copy of VMWare Player by chance? I presume you have some Windows 7 disks laying out somewhere. May be time to build a virtual windows 7 machine. I personally have anywhere between 40 and 50 virtual machines at my disposal during any given day of the week - they're great tools to have in this field

If you're stuck with Windows 8, there may be a compatibility mode (similar to Windows 7) where you can install programs and run them using virtual memory using Windows 7 methods. It may not work properly, but it should work better than whatever garbage Windows 8 is trying to do.

For anyone else - This is a very good example where making back-ups of your work is a good idea (believe it or not). It's probably also a good idea to make a recovery disk of your version of Windows 7 and a backup of your hard disk before you convert to Windows 8 in the event you don't want to stick with it. Everyone where I work has been whining about our enterprise software not being compatible with Windows 8.

~Aayrl

Whoa whoa whoa, I sense some Windows 8 hate here

You misunderstand... I love me my virtual machines. I have 15 at the moment and in fact, MBPortable is and always has been built from within a Windows XP VM. And I love Windows 8. It's the best OS ever! The problem isn't compiling on Windows 8, it's that anybody who also has Win8 will be unable to use MBPortable. Compatibility mode doesn't work with this type of program, unfortunately. It's an issue with ThinApp, not the OS itself. Win8 is essentially just Win7 with a fancy new Metro GUI laid over it. So normally it wouldn't cause many compatibility issues. Most Win7 drivers still work on Win8 because of how similar the OSes are.

My main point is that ThinApp has gone from being a great virtualization tool to a slow, buggy piece of software. I need to find something else that works better. Otherwise, MBPortable might not work well for everyone. I could continue using the older version, but anyone who buys a new PC will be unable to use it. Or if I update ThinApp to work on new PCs, the game will go too slow to even play. I've been playing with Spoon Studio all day and I think I can actually make it work with only minor recoding of MBPortable. So this may only be a minor speed bump in the development of this program.

And lawls, backups... I've lost several hard drives, so I know all about making backups. Besides, I still have Win7 installed as a secondary dual-boot OS (plus as five VMs) in case I ever need it.

See, I had a good feeling you knew exactly what you were doing with your backups.

Have you ever considered writing your own packaging tool using Java? It's a little complicated to learn at first, but you may find the payout to be very beneficial. I haven't played around with packaging applications enough to understand how they work (which, from what I understand is what ThinApp is doing, yes?). I'd be willing to lend a hand if you start leaning towards something that requires a new packaging client.

~Aayrl

Yes, I think that porting it to Java would be very helpful.

Hey everyone, I know it's been a while since I posted anything about MBPortable, but I've been extremely busy lately. Now that I finally have some free time I'm going to continue development!

Sadly, the problem I posted about a while back is still there: The new versions of VMWare ThinApp are no longer usable for this purpose. That's what made most of MBPortable possible. I would just keep using the old version of ThinApp, but that's not without its issues. As someone who runs Windows 8 on all of my computers, I know how annoying it is to not have compatibility for that OS.

Not to worry, I've got a plan! Spoon Studio, another virtual app program, works great! The only problem with Spoon is that it won't allow me to split MBPortable into smaller components. I'll have to go back to the old packaging style where you need to grab one huge download with every game included. No big deal, I guess. I'll leave the old version uploaded for people who favor small files and upload a new version for Windows 8 users.

But that just leads to another issue. With PQ and MBP1.5 coming soon, MBPortable will only get larger over time. I know for a fact that I wouldn't want to be downloading such huge files all the time. So that's what I wanted to ask you all. Since all the MBGold levels are included with MBPlatinum, would you all be OK with me not including Marble Blast Gold in MBPortable? After all, having duplicates of all the levels seems redundant and I could shave off a ton of file size that way. What do you say?