PlatinumQuest Feature Spotlight #2: The Ice Shard

Don't forget Aayrl, he contributed to some of the background ideas a lot more

Nov 6, 2011, 1:24am, pablovasquez wrote:Happy birthday, PQ! May you have no more during development.

November 3, 2009:

Quote:A few of you (PF, Andrew, Phil, Pablo) were on MSN 2-3 days ago and have supported a new idea that I came up with for MBP.

I'm kinda lost right now, to be honest. For one, isn't today the 6th?

It was a bit retroactive.

Nov 6, 2011, 6:17pm, ktbold12345 wrote:I'm kinda lost right now, to be honest. For one, isn't today the 6th?

No more birthdays for PQ means that the dev team will either kill it or release it before November 2012.

Crap, now I actually have to stick to a due date?

Hell no.

*prepares next birthday party*

Nov 7, 2011, 12:00am, marblefire wrote:
Nov 6, 2011, 6:17pm, ktbold12345 wrote:I'm kinda lost right now, to be honest. For one, isn't today the 6th?

No more birthdays for PQ means that the dev team will either kill it or release it before November 2012.

KILL IT!?!? NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't worry Kwill, we subscribe to the sunk cost fallacy.

Theres no way PQ would be killed, trololol. I also think PQ will be released before MBFubar

Whew! I was worried for a moment there.

Late post, but I have a couple ideas:

- The ability to change the duration of which it freezes your marble.
- The ability to change whether the shard shatters or stays in place after unfreezing.

Nov 12, 2011, 11:48am, nobody wrote:Late post, but I have a couple ideas:

- The ability to change the duration of which it freezes your marble.
- The ability to change whether the shard shatters or stays in place after unfreezing.

now that is cool. Both would be pretty easy to code too imo

I want that marble skin.

Nobody (and anyone else who had a similar query):
We thought about changing duration and decided not to. Mainly because then you can only guess how the hazard is going to behave. Secondly the shard you saw shattering is just an image like the superbounce/shockabsorber/gyro, the actual shattering are particle effects.

If you mean the Ice Shard itself shattering, then I shall keep you in the frozen darkness about that one

Nov 12, 2011, 11:40pm, admin wrote:
We thought about changing duration and decided not to. Mainly because then you can only guess how the hazard is going to behave.

If that was truly the case, then level builders should be limited in many other things:


Time modifiers. They can hurt or help you, depending on the time.
Magnets, the force changes based on the size.


Besides, after a couple play-throughs of a level, the user will learn which shards freeze for which durations.


Nov 12, 2011, 11:40pm, admin wrote:
If you mean the Ice Shard itself shattering, then I shall keep you in the frozen darkness about that one

hmmmmmm....

How about a randomness in the force necessary to shatter the Ice shard? Or even shattering the marble? If that is possible...

Nov 15, 2011, 6:58am, Promarbler bananas wrote:How about a randomness in the force necessary to shatter the Ice shard? Or even shattering the marble? If that is possible...

I would think thats totally possible (not gonna say how to code it here thats for sure, trololol). That is a good idea though . Now, shattering the marble i think is impossible.

Nov 15, 2011, 6:58am, Promarbler bananas wrote:Or even shattering the marble? If that is possible...

Would be cool, but gameplay wouldn't be much fun after the marble is shattered. It would be broken.

which is why you would just call the method onMissionReset, so you can restart

Nobody, you seem to be missing the point, plus your examples were bad. Talking about the POWER of hazards (such as magnets) is irrelevant as you can see that the size of these hazards were modified from original. We're talking about the duration of which you stay frozen. The TT example is also incorrect, as those you can tell the duration they add/substract to your time by simply touching each of them once.

With the Ice Shard, you can't tell how long you're staying frozen. In a level filled them them, if you start randomising them like the Time Travel, you're going to have to manually touch every single one of them and then time them to figure out which freeze you for longer. Worse yet, imagine you're falling down a chamber filled with them... practically impossible to tell which to avoid.

By maintaining a standard without the need to change its values we're giving players the benefit of all ice shards will freeze you for the same time instead of hey this one could freeze you for the entire game. Also, I'm not sure you'd like to accidentally touch an Ice Shard just to find out it that freezes you for 30 seconds. Or even 5.

Quote:[...]you can see that the size of these hazards were modified from original.
So change the Ice Shard's size...



Quote:[...]you can tell the duration they add/substract to your time by simply touching each of them once.
You can tell the duration every IS freezes you for by simply touching each of them once. And really, if you don't have patience to wait 3 seconds, then how do you have enough patience to fall over and over again trying to get a good time on a level?


Quote:Also, I'm not sure you'd like to accidentally touch an Ice Shard just to find out it that freezes you for 30 seconds. Or even 5.

30 or 5 seconds is waaay too much. About five seconds would be pretty much the maximum. In extreme cases.

Maybe you could speed up the timer if you're frozen. This way even 30 seconds would be feasible as it would only take a couple of IRL seconds.

Here's in favor of fixed duration. If you want to use this hazard to add time from the clock just use negative TT. Fixed duration is NOT a limiting factor in this case...

But by that logic the magnet is just as useless since you could just use a tornado.

Nov 19, 2011, 6:55am, rtyh12 wrote:So change the Ice Shard's size...

I don't think it would make sense for the shard to affect you differently at different sizes. Bigger ice wouldn't have greater freezing power, but a bigger cyclone would exert more pull.

Nov 20, 2011, 3:26pm, marblefire wrote:But a bigger cyclone would exert more pull.

IRL, yes maybe. In MB a bigger tornado/cyclone exerts less force


Anyway, I have always though that the magnet was pretty pointless, but it is slightly different from the cyclone, in that it only exerts force from one direction (I think at least).

Nov 20, 2011, 3:26pm, marblefire wrote:
Nov 19, 2011, 6:55am, rtyh12 wrote:So change the Ice Shard's size...

I don't think it would make sense for the shard to affect you differently at different sizes. Bigger ice wouldn't have greater freezing power, but a bigger cyclone would exert more pull.

Well, you could say that, being larger, it has more cold, so it freezes you more...

Maybe it would make more sense if a more powerful IS would be bluer, or something. Is it even possible to change a hazard's color depending on its power?

Nov 21, 2011, 2:12pm, rtyh12 wrote:
Nov 20, 2011, 3:26pm, marblefire wrote:

I don't think it would make sense for the shard to affect you differently at different sizes. Bigger ice wouldn't have greater freezing power, but a bigger cyclone would exert more pull.

Well, you could say that, being larger, it has more cold, so it freezes you more...

Maybe it would make more sense if a more powerful IS would be bluer, or something. Is it even possible to change a hazard's color depending on its power?

what do you want it to be, absolute zero?

um, yes, u can change it. I am sure seizure knows how to do such a thing.

Nov 21, 2011, 2:12pm, rtyh12 wrote:
Nov 20, 2011, 3:26pm, marblefire wrote:

I don't think it would make sense for the shard to affect you differently at different sizes. Bigger ice wouldn't have greater freezing power, but a bigger cyclone would exert more pull.

Well, you could say that, being larger, it has more cold, so it freezes you more...

You've never taken a physics class, have you? The temperature of an ice shard does not depend on its size. If I had a small ice cube and a huge chunk of ice incide a freezer, they will be able to freeze the food inside the freezer equally.

Nov 21, 2011, 3:33pm, andrewsears wrote:
Nov 21, 2011, 2:12pm, rtyh12 wrote:

Well, you could say that, being larger, it has more cold, so it freezes you more...

You've never taken a physics class, have you? The temperature of an ice shard does not depend on its size. If I had a small ice cube and a huge chunk of ice incide a freezer, they will be able to freeze the food inside the freezer equally.

Larger chunks of ice can absorb more heat energy before melting.

I think its a wonderful idea, but it does seem like it could be abused.

Naw, it stops you dead in your tracks. It'd be hard to come up with a level-destroying technique using these. Not that it's impossible