[Closed] Marble Blast Platinum Custom Level Issues

I have this problem where I download custom levels for MBP, and for most of the levels that I have a custom interior for, the custom interior isn't showing up. Please help, because I'm pretty sure I put the custom interiors in the right spot (the interiors folder). I'm pretty sure I put them all in there. The even stranger thing is that some (but very few) levels with custom interiors have their interior shown. What should I do?

Check if you have CLA interiors - those are in a lot of levels.

Which ones are the CLA interiors?

marbleblast.com/index.php/downloads/cla

The custom levels archive

Well, I don't have any levels from the Custom Level Archive. Is it still a good idea to get them? (I know this comment may sound stupid, but I'm just trying to make sure).

If you click the link you will see that it says

Contains Gold levels, including interior and skyboxes.
Works in MBG and MBP (1.00 - 1.50).

It's kinda meant to give you the levels, but it's good to have even if you don't plan on playing the levels just cuz the interiors are common in other customs.

Ok, I will download those interiors, and see if that works. Thanks!

Well, ok. That helped, but only a little bit. There are still many levels that are missing the interiors. There are seven levels that, when I attempt to play them, there's a little pop-up that says, "Error! (Invalid Packet). Those seven levels are:
-December 1, 2, and 3: Toboggan Hill
-December 4: Skating Pond
-December 5: 9-gem puzzle with eight pieces
-December 6: Precision Jumping
-December 7: Origin of Species
-December 8: Icy Waters
-December 9: Frictional Obstacle Course
-Enormous Road

There are 8 levels that have no interior. They are:
-Gemlings
-002
-Water Park
-Danger Zone
-Abridged
-Frictional Slopes
-Powerup Tower
-Mine Ultra Course

There are two levels that have interiors, but are missing some. They are:
-Buzz's Mini-Marble Golf
-Buzzmusic100's Skill Course

There is one level that could be missing interiors. It is:
-Marble Mini Golf: Ice Tunnel

I don't know what else to do. I hope you will be able to tell me what I can do about these problems. Thanks for helping!

Hmm. Actually, I'm also missing a bunch of interiors, especially from Buzz's MBG customs.

Matt Williams wrote: Well, ok. That helped, but only a little bit. There are still many levels that are missing the interiors. There are seven levels that, when I attempt to play them, there's a little pop-up that says, "Error! (Invalid Packet). Those seven levels are:
-December 1, 2, and 3: Toboggan Hill
-December 4: Skating Pond
-December 5: 9-gem puzzle with eight pieces
-December 6: Precision Jumping
-December 7: Origin of Species
-December 8: Icy Waters
-December 9: Frictional Obstacle Course
-Enormous Road

I believe when it says ERROR: Invalid packet, I think it means your missing a texture (interior).

ok, uh, let's start with the invalid packets. Invalid packets (afaik) means that you're missing the sky. Check the .mis and find which skybox it requires. And if you don't know what that means: go open your Marble blast Platinum folder and find the .mis file for the levels. You should see a line like this pretty high up

materialList = "~/data/skies/Purple Evening/Purple Evening.dml";

there you can see the sky name (in this case it was "Purple Evening"). See if the skybox dml file matches the mis files materialList line. If not, then change the filename of the corrupted dml file to the one in your skies folder. Remember to change the name in the .mis file and not in the skies folder.

here's a link to customs skies downloads: marbleblast.com/index.php/downloads/cga/cga-skies

Missing interiors could be several things. You could check the .mis file for a line that looks like this:

interiorFile = "~/data/interiors/addon/balancetower.dif";

I use balance tower here as an example, you can see that it looks for the .dif in data/interiors/addon, so if the .dif isn't in addon then the level won't work. You shouöd take a look at this and see if you have to move some files around. This has worked before for some customs.

If this doesn't work or you have trouble understanding just post again.

Yeah, I'm having trouble understanding.

Hey there,

What operating system are you on? Mac OS X? Windows 8? If you're trying to install interiors on OS X, be aware that the folder merging-copy semantics... don't really exist. If you have a handful of folders, you have to merge them manually. Hopefully you didn't have any copy-paste conflicts when you installed?

For the "Invalid Packet" message:
That message could potentially mean a variety of things, but usually the cause is either
-- You are missing "skies", or
-- You are missing a large amount of textures, and the interior is untextured.

Most likely, you are missing the skies.

Skies:
Occasionally level authors assume certain skies are already present (such as PerishingFlames's skies), or that you downloaded them from their level thread separately. You can get PF's Skies here: perishingflames.com/Skyboxes/ . The instructions are a bit outdated.
For instructions, follow the steps shown by clicking here (OS X) or here (Windows) to be shown how to navigate to the proper folder (ignoring the last step of course).
Open platinum, then data. You likely do not have a "skies" folder (only skies.zip). Create the "skies" folder.
For each sky you download, make sure that the entire download, folder and all, is copied/moved to within the folder you created. (The folder should already have it's own unique name.)

Interiors/textures:
Follow the same steps above, but create the "interiors" folder instead, and copy all interior files (ending with .dif) and all texture files (usually square, not including the level preview) to that folder. Keep subfolders intact. Some levels may want interiors_mbp or interiors_mbg. You can try copying and pasting the interiors folder to those names, if you're desperate.

I'll get back to you on how to find the missing skies/interiors.
~ PM

Would it be ok if I clicked on the skies.zip, and it made the folder that way? Is that what you mean about "making a skies folder"?

Also, and these questions are unrelated to the topic, but how do I update my MBP version? And how do I update my OpenGL version?

When you launch MBP, do you see "1.51" in the upper right corner? Then you are most likely up-to-date. If you use the "launcher" which runs before the game, then the launcher will update and repair any missing or incorrect files.

There should be an option when you right click in the "data" folder to create a "new folder". You may have that option in the File menu, or as a button in that window, depending on your OS. Choose it, and rename it to "skies". If that folder exists because you "extracted" the zip file's contents (likely what you did), then remove it, or rename it something else, like skies_xxxx, to be safe.

(Renaming a file can be done by right-clicking the file and choosing "rename" or by pressing F2 (Fn-F2 for most laptops), only on Windows. On Mac OS X, select the folder and press "enter" or "return" on your keyboard, typing in the text when it highlights.)

Could you specify your system? Do you have a menu bar at the top of your screen with an apple icon at the top-left, or do you have a window pane icon in the bottom left?

If you are on OS X, you're out of luck when it comes to graphics. They're likely Intel HD or Intel Iris graphics of some variety, and Apple, OS X KINDLY locks away control of the hardware from the user, for both hardware and firmware (drivers).

If you are on Windows, your best bet for finding up-to-date graphics controllers is by going to the card or chipset manufacturer's website and downloading them from that website. Drivers from Windows Update or the Device Manager may give you more up-to-date drivers, but they are likely modified by Microsoft to promote their "Direct3D" graphics acceleration. The drivers from your website will most likely be the most optimal for MarbleBlast.

One final mention:
If you go into, say, singleplayer, and load any non-particular level, you can open up the console to see if there are any messages about possible interiors/shapes/skies/particles/sound/music/datablocks that may have "failed to load". If you press the tilde/backtick key ( ` or ~ ), then a console window should open, and you should be able to scroll up and down the window, and see if there are any "red" text messages indicating failure or error of some kind. In particular, be on the lookout for messages similar to "Could not load file... <path> ... .file.dif", or possibly ending in "dml", "dts", or "ogg". However, textures are particles will likely not be shown due to their nature as image data, and will instead cause the game to receive an "invalid packet" (empty data) when it tries to load it.

~ PM

Can you tell me, in a simple way, how to find out what skies I need? I could download all of them, but that'd take a while...

How do I open up the console?

This question is also unrelated. I can't play online. It just stays on the screen with an MBP background, and in a little box, it says, "Logging in", but I never get past the log-in screen. It just stays there until I press "Cancel".

Matt Williams wrote: Well, ok. That helped, but only a little bit. There are still many levels that are missing the interiors. There are seven levels that, when I attempt to play them, there's a little pop-up that says, "Error! (Invalid Packet). Those seven levels are:
-December 1, 2, and 3: Toboggan Hill
-December 4: Skating Pond
-December 5: 9-gem puzzle with eight pieces
-December 6: Precision Jumping
-December 7: Origin of Species
-December 8: Icy Waters
-December 9: Frictional Obstacle Course

Ah, I can actually help, because the skybox missing is one of my skyboxes. Go find a thread, in the Custom Levels, called "Ice Levels". From here, you can get the skybox of the specified levels. The folder's called "Snowy Icescape". Copy this folder into the skies directory. It may work.

I'm confused on what you mean by "thread". Do you mean "pack"?

Each forum topic you post in can also be called a "thread". --tip

I can find it pretty easily right now, since I have time.

EDIT: Here it is! "Extract" it, and copy the entire folder into the skies folder!

Hey, you're pretty fast, PM! Oh, and sorry, Matt, for not being precise.

That's ok.

Sorry for no activity on this topic for a while. I've been so busy. Please don't mark this as closed.

It's okay! I have two more skies which may not be present in your installation. Download these, extract each folder, and place both folders into the skies folder, as before!

Here they are:



The Bonus Sky should already be there... the Mountain Lake one is less likely.

Now, please try and load "Enourmous Road" and see if all the interiors are still there.

I'm having this same problem too, I put in the CLA Custom Levels 0-B in, and I copy and pasted all of the CLA Gold interiors into the custom interiors folder, and no interiors show up in ANY of the levels, not even interiors from marble blast gold regular levels. What is the problem?

I am on OS X latest version and on MBP 1.5.1

It seems like you (you just posted) clobbered your interior files. Make sure you do not modify interiors.zip. Make a new "interiors" folder. Make sure that select ALL of the files in the CLA "Interiors" folder, and copy them to inside the other folder you just created. That should work! If not, just post back a reply to this thread.

Eventually, installation of custom levels should be trivial. No ETA of that yet, though...

~PM

I meant to post this on this profile, not as a guest, apologies. I tried making a new folder called "Interiors" and copied the interiors into there, but still no change in the levels, doesn't fix the problem.

ProMarbler wrote: Make sure you do not modify interiors.zip. Make a new "interiors" folder.

OHHHHHH! You have to make a NEW interiors folder! I had no idea about that! Okay, I will get right to it right now. Wow.
Also, that was my first ever post with a quote in it. I think I figured that out.