What happened to Gameplay VS Graphics?

I don't get it. Why hate on my mod because of the texturing or whatever?

You're giving me good reasons to take my mod down, hope you're all happy
Two years wasted

We're not trying to give you hate, and we're certainly not trying to give you reasons to take the mod down.

I understand that sometimes some of us can be a little harsh on giving constructive critisism to someone else in their opinion, and I've experienced it before with the whole Marble Blast Super thing, but that does not mean we're trying to encourage you to quit the mod you're working on and take down any download links. We appreciate the effort and time you've put in this mod, and I can say I'm quite impressed on how much work has been put into the mod without any contribution from the community. Congratulations.

We're trying to give you tips and suggestions on what you can improve on (texturing is one of the things in this case) so you can make MBStop better than before. I highly encourage you to keep going on this mod. I'm having a very good time with it, and I'd hate to see it die.

Nobody is "hating" on your mod from what I've seen, and I'm not sure where you're getting the impression that it's because of the textures. In fact, all of the "hate" that you've been getting is really just from people who honestly want the mod to be better than it already is. Marble Blast Stop is a good mod. There are just ways that you can make it better.

First of all, let me start by saying that Marble Blast Stop is one of the most impressive mods for Marble Blast that this community has ever seen. I'm being completely honest with you here. Next to Marble Blast Platinum, there is no other mod that adds so many new levels and ideas to the game. Starting a project this big and actually finishing it is incredibly difficult to do and requires a lot of determination. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there have been countless attempts by community members to create mods of this scale and almost none of them have succeeded. Just take a look here at the graveyard of projects which never saw the light of day . You also need to consider that Matan generally does not have much free time and rarely ever plays custom levels, but he was willing to stream your project for hours. Seriously, you should be proud of this, and I hope you are.

Next, let's get to the gameplay. You're right, gameplay is often more important than graphics are, and Marble Blast Stop certainly delivers in this department. I've played through all of the Beginner and Intermediate levels in Marble Blast Stop so far, and I really enjoyed many of them. I like a lot of the new concepts that you introduced, and it was fun seeing your own improvements on community custom levels that I have played before. Really, the only complaints that I have seen about the gameplay are that the difficulty ramps up too much once you get to the Expert levels. This certainly doesn't stop people from enjoying the other levels in the game, and if I remember correctly, Matan really liked them and said it was one of the shining points of this mod.

So now let's talk about the question you're asking in this topic. "What happened to Gameplay VS Graphics?" Well, the thing is that nothing happened to it. What you need to understand, though, is that a game's presentation is very important. Yes, a game isn't a game if it doesn't have gameplay, but games that are presented very well are more fun to play. As I've already stated, Marble Blast Stop's gameplay is actually quite enjoyable for the most part. All of the criticism that I've seen for this mod is simply because people want the mod to be presented better in order to improve the overall experience. After all, if the gameplay is solid, how much can you really improve upon it otherwise? I really, really want you to understand that people are not "hating" on your project or you personally - they're just pointing out the issues so that it can become better as a whole!

Let's ignore for a moment what everyone has said about the textures, the music, whatever. The majority of the complaints that I've seen about this mod pretty much boil down to one concept: the various parts of the game don't fit together very well. The gameplay is fine by itself, the textures are fine by themselves (seriously, there isn't a single texture that actually looks bad), and the music tracks also sound pretty great on their own. The thing is that there doesn't seem to be any sort of central theme tying them together (other than this "STOP" notion which isn't clearly defined). When you put the textures next to each other in a level, for example, there is no common graphical style among them, and this is why people are criticizing the textures. Let me show you what I mean by taking a screenshot and then breaking it down:



So, all of the textures in this screenshot can be classified into three main groups:

• Marble Blast Gold: These textures (e.g. the blue concentric circles) have a "cartoony" appearance and often use flat, vibrant colors.
• Marble Blast Platinum: Mainly just the UI in this screenshot, but noticeable nonetheless. These textures often use gradients and light colors to create a smooth and calming look.
• Photorealistic: These textures (e.g. the brick wall in the background and the skybox) look realistic and like they would appear in a photograph.

The problem, then, is that when you put cartoony textures next to photorealistic ones like this and then layer MBP's lighter textures on top of that for the UI, you end up with a weird mismash of styles that looks irritating to the eye. Look at the wood textures here: the trap doors have a realistic wood texture, but the sides of platforms have a cartoony wood texture. Why?

Again, let me emphasize: the textures on their own are fine. The problem is that putting cartoony textures next to photorealistic ones doesn't flow very well and harms the game's presentation. Therefore, if you wanted to improve this mod's textures, the most important thing you could do would be to pick a style and stick with it. I'm serious. If you made every texture in your mod be photorealistic or every texture be cartoony, then I don't think anybody would mind. You don't have to redo any of them. Just make them more consistent with each other.

I can also discuss how this applies to the music and the story, but I'm short on time right now. If you're interested, I can elaborate further on those topics for you later. But the bottom line is simply that Marble Blast Stop is an amazing achievement, and because of that, people want it to be made even better. You would be doing yourself and the community a very great disservice by taking it down, and nobody is asking you to do that. While it's ultimately up to you to make that decision, I would encourage you to take everyone's advice to heart and think about what you could do to improve next time around.

Finally, remember that we're all just here to have fun. Marble Blast Stop is fun to play, and that is ultimately what matters.

"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." - Bertrand Russell

Jiquor wrote: I see. I still don't know why graphics over gameplay... It's stupid.

Let me rephrase to you just in case you missed few points in Derpkings post
We are not saying that gameplay should be focused on less than graphics or that graphics come over gemplay.
We are trying to say you have done really good job on the gameplay in levels and that it is perfect time to start on improving graphics. So far you've done nothing wrong. You focused on gameplay first and graphics second which is all good and nice and we all appreciate that (and i think you got fair amount of respect from many community members). It's just at this point the gap between gameplay quality and graphics quality is so wide to point were it is just irritating to eyes because your mind says gemplay is right but graphics shows that it shouldnt.
Here's a good comparison, you know there is a rule when making a bicycle that you should never put a new chain on old worn out gears or versa because bicycle isn't going to roll smooth that way. Same rule applies to pretty much anything you make. If you buy a worn out chain you better get worn out gears or if you get new chain get new gears, end result should be better that way or in other words Have a balancebetween things because The chains is as strong as it's weakest link. At this point if you plan on working further on mod you should start improving them and picking some general direction of art style to make your mod even better because as Aron said, your art styles are conflicting too much and is not matching the quality of gameplay you offer.

At this point best thing you could do is be as open minded as possible. I know it's hard to have years of work being ruined by few lines of criticism, and it only depends on you how you take this constructive criticism and apply things you think were right to yourself. You will never satisfy everyone but it's good to take at least some of most common criticism and maybe improve things.

edit: another analogy regarding textures. You have 2 different art styles in single level. Realistic and cartoonish. Separately they look perfect, if you blend them together they just look wrong. It's like blending sugar together with salt, separately they are perfectly good ingredients but together they make complete mess and taste terrible.

Gameplay and Graphics are weighted the same for me. But if one aspect isn't done good enough it can really hurt a mod. For example, the game may be very fun to play but nothing is visually appealing...it's going to suffer. Marble Blast Stop, like Derpking said, is really impressive and one of the best mods we've seen in a while. Saying "it's two years wasted". That's two years of hard dedication and work ethic that you put in, which, surprisingly, actually came together. Compare mods, such as Marble Blast Fubar, to all the dead noob mods out there (Marble Blast Mega huehue). All of the good mods out there put lots of thought into how to balance the gameplay + graphics.

Think of it as a balance scale. Gameplay on one side, graphics on the other. If one side gets to heavy and the other side is too light, that's a problem. I 100% agree with what RD said, just take your criticism and improve on it. Trust me, I've been on forums other than this, there are way too many people that when they get the slightest bit of criticism, they just go "screw you guys I quit". That is the difference between a sucessful attempt and a failed attempt. From the replies I've seen from you towards constructive criticism, this is what I see your thoughts being: "If I get criticism, that means nobody cared for my mod." again, you delivered something really astonishing for us and you shouldn't feel that down.

Onto the actual mod, the graphics/textures them self aren't that bad. It's mainly just the overall feel/atmosphere of the levels that lacks for me. The gameplay is pretty nice. Not very many frustrating tightrope-like sections, even in the Expert levels I think you did a great job, in full honesty! It's just the way the textures combine with each other, it's just...I don't know...it doesn't flow well as a whole. Like the combinations of MBG cartoon textures, realistic trapdoor/wood textures and some of the skyboxes. RDs.empire worded it way better than I ever would, but basically the combination of cartoonish and realistic usually won't contrast in the best way. Having a more clear theme/idea for the levels could help with things like this.

So, concluding, don't feel down about your hard work for this mod. Sure, it has some bumps in the way, but finding a way to get past those bumps is what could turn this mod into the fantastic mods we all love to this day.