Project Revolution [CANCELED]

So we will not get MP? Sorry if this was stupid question.

Nonononoonononononono you'll get it.

Jeff was just saying that you won't get the source (at least for a while)

OH!!! that clears things up!

In other words, you can't modify MP.

Basically what MBGaddict said, except you can if you use packages and know the functions to our protocol, so yes, you can modify it, but you'll have to hack around our hacks! If that confuses you, I win, if it doesn't, I still win.

Bump: are there gonna be any more PR goodies?

Nope, what you got is what you got. the only other thing is the hacks package now...when i quit being lazy...

For now, multiplayer is on the least of my worries. I have mbp/mbelite to work on by the way. i'll get to it eventually...

You AND HiGuy promised mod-mods to the community. Now, all we have is a buggy main menu GUI. And you saying that nothing else is going to be released. And furthermore you say I will finish MP when I stop being lazy.. Wow.

Jun 10, 2012, 4:05pm, mbgaddict wrote:You AND HiGuy promised mod-mods to the community. Now, all we have is a buggy main menu GUI. And you saying that nothing else is going to be released. And furthermore you say I will finish MP when I stop being lazy.. Wow.

Do you understand the phrase self-entitlement?

You do make a point. I just want some of the teams work not put to waste.

Why don't you get your priorities straight. We've already waited for multiplayer long enough, and now you're doing all this other crap. Which do you think is in higher demand? The long-awaited multiplayer that's been gone for several years? Or a bunch of boring bug fixes?

Obviously, the former is the more important, and that is fact. We want progress on multiplayer. The less important stuff can wait.

Jun 10, 2012, 4:17pm, conor wrote:
Jun 10, 2012, 4:05pm, mbgaddict wrote:You AND HiGuy promised mod-mods to the community. Now, all we have is a buggy main menu GUI. And you saying that nothing else is going to be released. And furthermore you say I will finish MP when I stop being lazy.. Wow.

Do you understand the phrase self-entitlement?

Thanks trace!

@MBGaddict:

I am super busy enough already. I have a personal life too you know. I am busy enough with MBP and MBElite. And also, fyi, that MainMenuGui was not suppost to be released, in fact, i didn't want to release anything from pr (It was my mod anyways, why should I have too when i can give things to other mods who could put it to good use).

Now, like I said, I will get to it eventually. HiGuy is still not done with school yet, which means i can't work on Multiplayer until he is done because i need a tester. And no, don't even volunteer, this is just not the usual lets play marbleblast. This requires extensive knowledge of torqueScript and the engine to be able to program Multiplayer. It is not done yet either, besides the hours of testing that is ahead to come to ensure that when we release it, there are minimal bugs.

ARGH, ninja'd by KWill

Requesting lock..this is pointless bickering.

But before you lock it, I just want to say shouldnt we appreciate they are even doing mp for US? They put hard work into it and all they get are complaints? That is just sad and disappoints me. I just want to say, Thank You, to all the people who are working on mp for us. Cant you see they put time and work to get this for us? You guys are taking these computer talented people for granted. If anything, you should be thanking them. These people are nice enough to make MP for us and next thing I know are complaints? The nerve these people have...

Lockman got here via his lockmobile with his locks all ready to lock the action!!

From now on I'm not going to post when I'm angry. Here is an updated post, or just read Matan's below.

MBGaddict: I understand why you are frustrated, no one wants to have good work go to waste. And of course, multiplayer is very exciting. However, we must all keep in mind that Jeff, HiGuy, and the rest of the PR staff are/were building a free mod out of the kindness of their hearts and with time that they could have devoted to a plethora of other things. We can't possibly hold them to our own expectations; instead, anything they release should be taken as a gift and appreciated. I'm sure you have been lazy before and not wanted to finish something, and it's perfectly reasonable that the PR staff wants to devote their time and energy into other things, or simply not want to work on the game.


Kwill: I can tell from here and your PMs to me that you are really emotionally invested in PR. It's nice to see that you care that much about multiplayer. That said, as I mentioned to MBGaddict, we can't hold the PR staff to our expectations of how we think the mod should be run. A little tact never hurts, however. Nobody thought your post was an attack on Jeff, it's just important to make sure the connotation of your posts comes across in a way that others don't find to sound ungrateful.

This reminds me of Angry Birds in a sense. I know the iPhone version is pay only but there's a free android version which minus achievements and maybe slight other differences (and no eagle--yet) it's pretty much the same as the iPhone. Another difference is that because the iPhone is a paid version, it also releases much earlier than its Android counterpart.
The thing is that if you check the comments on all the three Angry Birds versions (minus the space one, since I'm not following that as much), you'll notice that people keep going where are our levels, we demand more and a whole bunch of stuff. In Angry Birds Rio, in every month that was supposed to have a release, you'd see straight from the 1st day that people go where are our levels and demand them. It's April we want levels!. They don't care how many days April has, they want it now.

Note that the company Rovio was nearly bankrupt before Angry Birds, and they got staff with people who have lives but also a job, which isn't just about Angry Birds but other games (and Rovio's releasing one soon).

My point is that these sort of people don't realise that they're getting something for free (whereas iPhone isn't!) yet think they have a right to demand more and complain that the new pack is insufficient because they got all levels 3 stars in 30 minutes time.
What the fuck.


How does this relate here?

Well, with a few similarities and differences. It's also to explain how PR fell.

Marble Blast is a game which minus the Mac Games Store is no longer being on sale. Its community is based on members who were here from the start, or from 2005+. These members have also took the time to learn the game, contact its developers and kindly get source files. They also took time out of their busy life schedule in school and university to further learn the game and build a modification. They spent thousands of hours building and crafting maps, polishing the game in much less time than any other mod does nowadays and with less knowledge of Marble Blast than today's.
That means a quicker mod, but a lot less features and knowledge. Since then, more became known and implementation of it becomes harder and longer. The MBP staff also became experienced and also matured (harder school/uni life) which also meant they tested things a lot more carefully and paid attention. It became quality over quantity.

How does PR differ to MBP?
In that its members were... lazy in the sense of it. It's understandable with school and life, but so did the MBP staff. The PR staff had a lot less work to do and frankly I've told them several times (even in MBE and in other mods) to make custom levels and release to the community so they get a sense of what to do. Even during MBP's production the staff still made custom levels to the public. The feedback we got told us part of the direction we ended up taking. I've not seen the PR staff do the same. Little to no feedback, not a whole of communication and it seemed like everything relied on Jeff/HiGuy to pull it. If you wanna contribute to a mod, at least do something.

There's another reason and that's MBP was designed for singleplayer while PR was multiplayer. The levels I've seen from PR were for singleplayer, not multiplayer. Likewise, the staff asked for many things. Understandable, but if it's one feature for a specific level (that can take quite a bit of work), then it's pretty much dragging things on.
Levels were also huge, which is a mistake. Alex Swanson told me to start from simple and small and to work your way from there. If you bite a lot more than you can chew... well, PR showed what happens. You get nowhere with large levels and no experience.
I'll admit some of the level ideas were good but not the execution. People are looking for fun over difficulty. Keep it simple. MBO multiplayer that were hard kept the fun (IMO) and had unique gameplay without the need to require stupid amounts of features.
I've also heard a number of levels having gems specifically put in very hard to reach spots. This is outright dumb because if you aim to release it for the public then take into account half of them can't do this shit.

And PlatinumQuest? That has the Hunt Mode which is essentially what PR has (but singleplayer), so its levels are designed in the sense that it would be great for both singleplayer and multiplayer if ever necessary. Our hunt levels keep the simplistic yet fun look without the need for specific features and each one achieves its goal very easily.


All in all there is no one person to blame here specifically. When you want to see something done, it's better off to help and contribute to it actively rather than call out its staff for not doing their job, especially when they do it for free for everyone and taking their time out of school. If its leaders decide that on one had contributed to the level they anticipated, they are free to cancel the mod.
Likewise, since no one is paying them, then they can spend their time on anything they want. If you were to pay them (see Rovio's Angry Birds for iPhone) then you'd get priority.

You totally described how PR failed 100%.

Awesome post matan, thanks for writing it!

I thought this was locked...lol?

I for one, agree with kwill.

Jun 11, 2012, 8:02am, mbgaddict wrote:I for one, agree with kwill.

I don't even care anymore. Jeff can do whatever the fuck he likes now. I'm not part of MBP, MBE, or the hack package. I should have no business telling him what to do, so I apologize.

Sad to say, Matan is right. The mod died because of my laziness. Jeff and Higuy were working their asses of with coding and all I did was build 2 levels. One was this big-ass level named Heaven and Hell which took me months and was scrapped to do its size. The second one was smaller, but I never felt like finishing it. Codes, graphics, and other stuff were getting done, but levels weren't. And I did the least out of the entire level-building team, and thus, the entire account. The most constructive thing I did was come up with all these extra features an game modes we didn't need. Jeff and Higuy did their best. The only mistake they made was deciding to hire and keep inexperienced, shitty staff like me.

I'm going to delete my account. Who wants to try and stop me?

I'm not going to stop you, as it's your decision at the end. I do think the grounds you do base your decision couldn't be more wrong.

If you think you were the least person it still doesn't mean you didn't contribute. I've had worse in MBP/PQ, and I've seen PR and other mods having a dozen people worse than you that you can't even believe that. And funny enough, I could easily put the blame on its leaders *coughjeffcough* too for doing mistakes that eventually led to its demise, and hiring inexperienced staff wasn't is just one of the top reasons. I could easily blame myself for not taking the time or care to get involved in mods to explain what people look for, what mods should have and shouldn't and also give tips as things progress.

I think the problem for PR's gamemodes and features was trying to overcomplicate the mod. Not only there was a lot of code to run through, the levels were *waiting* for the codes to come before someone was going to build them. There was also little discussion on how the features are going to work out, their contents and how they expect to look at the end (there's a surprising amount of discussion that goes into things). Likewise, there were no levels for even the basic gem hunt mode which is bad enough.

And regarding inexperienced again... that's basically how I was when MBP was. How the entire MBP staff were. If you think I had good levels you're joking. The secret to be a good level designer is to release levels to the public and listen and take in feedback. I prefer asking people on MSN (and if you don't have someone, then ask them if you can add them) for feedback so that I know what is their opinion.

Anyway, I thought you were a contributive member of the forums, and you just went in the direction that many others did and that's make a mod without understanding the time/input required for it. I liked Simon Says and Timbertown and it's a shame you didn't make more. You also contributed in the graphics department, something that is lacking nowadays (and interestingly enough I always keep a lookout for one, but no one ever contributes).
But yeah, if you want to leave, do note that I, among quite a number of other people, think that your reasoning behind it was wrong and know the truth to PR's demise has little to do with you.

Thanks again matan for the awesome post.
Thank you PF for revising yours.

@Kwill, i can't stop ya either, as I said last night on msn you have that choice, it is not mine. But I strongly recommend that maybe you do not delete your account and just take a 3 month break or so.

@Mbgaddict: you have to realize that MBP is priority. It is theonly released successful mod with many patches. First of all, Multiplayer would not even work well in most of MBG/any other dead/alive mod, because there are no good levels. Those levels were specifically designed for Single Player only, as Garage Games decided to have no Multiplayer in MBG (I know i am not a professional programmer or anything, but that was a complete supid thing on there part, when they coded half of the multiplayer already in Torque Game Test Engine 1.1, (mbg's engine) but hey what do I know). My point is, there are really no levels that are specifically designed for Multiplayer. MBOnline/Ultra was different, because there team specifically designed levels for Multiplayer.

MP is one of the most anticipated things in MB, therefore it should be a VERY high priority.

Well maybe, if you guys shut up, and stop making stupid posts, Jeff could work on said projects, finish them, and get to mp without having to bother with making posts telling people what his rights are.

P.S. IMO just do what you want.

~Explode

can the lockman come back? I am requesting a lock again.

btw thanks explode

I won't delete my account, because I may need it sometime. I just need some time.

All I hear in this thread is nothing but self-entitlement and self pity, everyone get over themselves yeesh. Jeff can work on stuff whenever the hell he feels like, this is a mod for a game that isn't even being sold anymore, and we've been without multiplayer for 10 years. I for one don't mind the wait because I know that rushing something and working on something that you really don't feel like working on leads to disaster. Good points Matan and PF, but for the love of god Kwill and MBGaddict keep your pants on and simmer down, you don't realize how juvenile you sound.

P.S. Typing on a tablet is a pain.