MarbleBlast Mercury - Not your average user mod, coming in 2022-23!

[/b]Introducing MarbleBlast Mercury!


"There are so many new user mods being released these days, why should I care about Mercury?!"

I intend for Mercury to not your average mod, it doesn't having any ground-breaking, game-changing features like PQ etc... Mercury is meant to be is a modern-looking mod with new, beautiful levels for both first-time players and for expert players, a new easy-listening soundtrack and much, much better looking graphics. However, Mercury's big point is that it can run on older computers. PQ requires semi-modern hardware to run at a decent speed. I intend for the minimum specs to be somewhere around the PowerPC G4 or Pentium 4 CPU, 768MB of RAM and OS X 10.4.11 or Windows XP. I will be doing ALL testing on an iMac G4 from 2003 and a Windows XP system from 2002.

Edit: The demo build next year and final releases will be compatible with both PPC and Intel Macs + Windows 10 and maybe 11.

A good amount of new mods that come out from the community are simple "Add a few levels, slightly change an icon and colour or two" semi-mods. Mercury rewrites most of the UI from the official scripts, while keeping hints of the classic cartoon look that we've all come to love. It will look modern, a mix between my own tastes, O.G Platinum (1.0 - 1.7) and Ultra. Like PlatinumQuest, Mercury will have a function to easily swap audio packs and UI packs too.

That's all I have for now, I will be posting updates to this thread when updates come out. This mod will not have a 1.0 full release this year or most of next year.

Thank you for reading,
theMarble

Definitely like the sound of it! Do you have any teasers of levels that you can show? Or maybe any levels that you've created in the past so we can have an idea of the kind of stuff you've built before?

Wow, those are some very old supported OSs! I wonder if anyone even still has machines that old that they use on a regular basis. I have an iMac G5 but almost never use it.

Also will it run on Intel based Macs or just PowerPC? Because if it's just PowerPC Macs/Windows XP then I doubt very many people are going to play. Still, I'm interested to see where this goes.

I Cant Wait Until 2022-2023 To Play This Mod

@Nockess - Thanks! I will be releasing a video trailer by the end of this year and a demo build next year. I've made lots of MB-LE levels before and have some experience in Constructor, however I've given myself enough time from now to release to semi-master it and get some good levels made. Textures/Interiors have been finished recently

@NF - I do, and know a good amount of people who do use PPC systems (some still as daily drivers). Beta testing is currently PPC only on the Mac side however there will be a stable Universal version finished before release date so none is left out. PPC Only would definitely limit the userbase

@Puppydog415 - Thanks for the support! It will most likely be around this time next year, maybe into January but it depends on exams...

I Would Like To Play It In January

I honestly cannot wait to see where this mod goes, and who knows, I might make videos on it once the demo is released. Just to see if this mod has potential. Also I'm quite surprised that you'll be tackling the PowerPC iMacs in your development as well, considering that PowerPC hasn't been used in years. (And yet, I still have a few Power PC eMacs laying around.)