Least Favorite In-Game Things About Marble Blast

Marble Blast has a crap load of upsides to the game. It also has a crap load of downsides as well. What are your most hated things about Marble Blast?
...and no, don't say Jeff's butt. It's very pretty.
Just a reminder, it has to be something in-game, so something like Skyscraper, levels with a BUNCH of gems, or the [strike]shoutbox[/strike] level editor..

The shoutbox isn't in game.

Better?

/jerk
PQ was never released
/unjerk

In all seriousness, my biggest complaint about MB (and MBG, in particular) is that the game is just dated. The graphics are awfully outdated to the point where it just looks horrible in some cases (no proper AA, mipmapping looks terrible, low-resolution textures), and a lot of features which are taken for granted in games nowadays, such as proper controller support, are missing. Furthermore, the game runs horribly on Linux unless you can get it working in WINE, and the game also has issues in general on a lot of systems (sound glitches, etc.). The frame rate used to be locked at around 63 FPS until I recently came up with a patch that reworks the timing system. Not to mention that I also hate TorqueScript, but you can ask Jeff about that.

It would be amazing to see the game be rewritten in a modern engine, but unfortunately doing that would probably require access to the source code for the game's physics engine. People have grown so used to the quirky physics in MB that nothing else just feels quite right.

Of course, I can rant on and on, but what matters is that regardless of all that, the game is still fun to play. I think the fact that we're still talking about a game that came out in 2002 says something pretty significant.

quirky physics in MB

The physics in mb are actually really good. Yes there is that weird quadratic effect on powerups that affect your velocity, but in general this game's physics are really good.

One thing I dislike about the game is long levels with enough TTs to basically make them IC levels.

Airwalk from MBG.
Lag + deafening.

Alex Swanson plz

Kalle29 wrote:

quirky physics in MB

The physics in mb are actually really good. Yes there is that weird quadratic effect on powerups that affect your velocity, but in general this game's physics are really good.

Well, Jeff, Whirli, and I tried implementing similar physics using Unity's physics engine once, and there's a lot of special cases you need to account for. Jumping and air control are the first two things that come to mind.

But don't get me wrong, yeah, the physics are very well-suited to this type of game.

I've tried about a dozen times trying to replicate MBG's physics using PhysX 2.x, PhysX 3.3.x, Bullet Physics, and Torque's Stock Physics. I haven't yet come close to MB. MB's physics are not realistic at all as physx and bullet are realistic physics engines.

With that said, MB has good physics for this type of game. But, that is one issue with this. If there was ever a chance to remake marble blast in a new engine, very few people in this community would have to be used as a target base as everyone is too brainwashed into thinking mbg's physics are the only thing there is in making a marble game.

Hell, look at blueteak's marble game he was doing. If you play MBG for 10 years and jump to that it feels like crap, because you are used to mbg. Once you start playing a game like mb its hard to change. I guarentee that if he spent months working on that game, very few people here would be satified with the results and would make him give up trying to please everyone.

I know I would.

Kalle29 wrote:
One thing I dislike about the game is long levels with enough TTs to basically make them IC levels.

Yes please. Recoil Ultra Course for example - completely ruined. The long levels should've been like Bouncing Fun - TMs spaced out enough so that if you're amazing you can barely let time go by, but it's still a challenge of how fast you can complete the level rather than how fast you can catch the first TM.

Everyone just got super drunk with the power of checkpoints and made so many friggin huge hour long levels that aren't even that hard.

Also why is arch acropolis so laggy.

J@ckrb wrote: Airwalk from MBG.
Lag + deafening.

Alex Swanson plz

What are you talking about I get a solid 30+ FPS on my eMac G4 and keyboard has volume control no problems