PlatinumQuest Feature Spotlight #3: Water Madness

Hey there,

As some of you may have guessed, we have water! This refreshing cool liquid is making an appearance in PlatinumQuest and is bound to change the way you play. In some levels it may assist and in others it can hinder you and in some, unsurprisingly, it will send you Out of Bounds.

So take a breath as we dive into these images and teaser and let us know what you think!


Pictured: Learn how to play in water.
Level: Bubbles in the Water, by Matan


Pictured: So many bubbles!
Level: Above and Below, by Seizure22


Pictured: An awesome level to explore.
Level: The Spoils of Serendipity Gardens, by Oaky and Pablo

var pb_ad_url = ads.proboards.com/ad.pl?as=300x250&ap=BT...15&cb=+Math.random() ; document.write(''); Showcased: Water, scenery in PQ and The Spoils of Serendipity Gardens of course!

Keep on divin’,
The Platinum Team

hot cool damn....

Gobsmacked. I can't wait for more

Pretty dang awesome it looks.

i in love with the style of the last level

Great feature!
The scenery is nice, and the implementation for the water is genius.
Is that a bubble-like powerup cause I think that's something new.
I'm definitely looking forward to the demo.
I watched all of the PQ videos and I gotta say this mod is going to be a hit.
I know they're working hard to make this so keep it up.

I officially am dying for the release!

IWASRIGHTIWASRIGHTIWASRIGHTIWASRIGHTIWASRIGHTIWASRIGHTIWASRIGHTANDYOUWEREWRONG!!!! *gloats*

Well, seriously, that's incredible. The water looks awesome and the levels look great too, particularly the last one. PR team, we got some catching up to do!

Glad you're enjoying this feature, you guys. I wonder where the people who claimed water couldn't be done *cough*JEFF*cough* are at.

Oh, and Phil posted

Amazing. Im quite sure inside water rolling effect is made by adding low gravity to marble when it enters water (this was my concept of making water).
My reaction.

This is probably the coolest thing I've seen so far in Marble Blast! I'm sure that this will be so much fun in PlatinumQuest. And the scenery is incredible as well! Congratulations to Oaky and Pablo for making that epic level and to whoever made the water. - Buzzmusic100

One of the things that amazed me the most is the scenery. Those flowers, ferns, grasses, trees, gates...

Makes the level have a whole new style of looking and playing.

edit: Would be cool if the water distorted the texture of the interior under it like real water.

The water's not dynamic. *Dynamic* water would be the impossible part. I could actually see myself creating something like this.

Also, what's the music?

Holy freaking crap. 'Nuff said.

Mar 2, 2012, 11:46am, rdsempire wrote:Amazing. Im quite sure inside water rolling effect is made by adding low gravity to marble when it enters water (this was my concept of making water).
My reaction.


my reaction. Seiz, how many hacks did you have to do in torquescript, 1000?

Awesome job, i might just pass out...

with that....PR TEAM, LETS GET READY TO ROCK 'N ROLL

Mar 2, 2012, 3:02pm, jeff wrote:
Mar 2, 2012, 11:46am, rdsempire wrote:Amazing. Im quite sure inside water rolling effect is made by adding low gravity to marble when it enters water (this was my concept of making water).
My reaction.


my reaction. Seiz, how many hacks did you have to do in torquescript, 1000?

Awesome job, i might just pass out...

with that....PR TEAM, LETS GET READY TO ROCK 'N ROLL

^ THAT. I'm really going to make month long levels now.

But on topic... HOLY SHIT. Honestly that just BLEW me away. Pablo's quote was very clever. I didn't hear much talk about water.. besides it being impossible I mean for the MBG engine, you guys are doing a lot of things I never even thought of. As well as PR. Incredible job PQ team. Really

BTW, you guys should make like a progress thread or something. Just to see at where you guys are. Seriously though...
That water... is excellent.

I don't think Jeff meant an implementation of water like this that distorts the color underwater and lowers the gravity is impossible. More what whirligig is talking about, of dynamic/flowing/ripples type water.

@PQ staff:

I was refering to the TGEA terrain/water being impossible, I did have an assumption that a more of a fake water could be implimented. Still, well done.

Oh of course, ever since I saw MB+'s there's no shock that PQ staff could have improved it. Jeffy with time I bet you could right?

My god Revive myself when PQ comes out :holds breath and chokes to death:

Quick suggestion: Make the water a little less transparent, and darker. I think it would look better...


Now about that last shot, was that current? If it affects the marble that is awesome, and if not, well it shouldn't be to hard for you guys. You could basically use a modified version of the fan script. Now getting it all to be user customizable for level builders could be tricky, but then it will be even if the current is purely visual. (Of course I am almost definitely totally wrong here, and the texture on the water could just be animated uniformly all across, but it DID seem like in some places it was moving and other places not...) I suspect that you won't be clarifying ...


0:39 Bubble Powerup. But what does it do?


1:00 Something... Maybe the new Finish Pad, or something entirely new?


Now one question someone might actually answer...

Did you apply Archimedes Principle to figure the weight of the marble underwater, and use that to reduce gravity the proper amount to realistically simulate a marble underwater? If so I am VERY impressed (Although gameplay-wise it would probably be better to decrease gravity more than that, IDK)


EDIT: Don't think the thing at 1:00 is a finish pad, seeing as the start pad is the same as MBP at least so far (picture 1, in the background). Probably something new, although it could also be a CP or tele-pad

i would assume the current is just dts animation, which would not really affect the marble, unless it was custom coded. and as of now it looks like it does not.

Don, the bubble also looks like just a placeholder for the particle emitter data, because particles can not be saved to a .mis file, its better to attach them to an object's onAdd method, and the bubble makes it a little less random for omg random bubbles

oh, and the bubbles trail emmitter on the marble, i am 99% sure i know how that was coded, tehehe. However, i will stop talking about code, because it would ruin the awesomeness of the mod. (incase of some smuck were to come along and think i know how to code this, i can just use what info i found out from jeff)

This is speechless, you guys have really put the effort into this one, hats off to the lot of you.
Cant wait to alienate myself from the real world and play this game for hours on end, for countless weeks.

Wow, it offer us a lot of excitement!

Quote:Did you apply Archimedes Principle to figure the weight of the marble underwater, and use that to reduce gravity the proper amount to realistically simulate a marble underwater? If so I am VERY impressed (Although gameplay-wise it would probably be better to decrease gravity more than that, IDK

Archimedes' principle says that the apparent immersed weight (which is the fancy way of saying 'the weight of the marble when it's underwater) is equal to its weight (outside the water) minus the weight of the displaced fluid (the water which gets pushed away when you put the marble in it).

The weight of the object is actually a force, which can change depending on the planet you're on (and acceleration, but that's getting complicated, so I'll just ignore it). This force is set in MB by the defaultmarble.gravity cheat/code. The default value of it is 20, so we can assume that the weight of the marble is 20 units (let's call them mbN, Marble Blast newtons).

Now we need the weight of the displaced water, which is kinda hard to find out, but not impossible. If I remember correctly, the marble was an (almost) perfect sphere with dimensions of around 0.3x0.3x0.3 Torque Constructor distance units (let's call them tm, torquemeters). This is the diameter of the sphere. Now that we know the diameter and the shape of the marble, we can find out its volume: around 0.014 tm³.

The volume of fluid displaced by a body submerged in it is equal to its own volume, so the marble displaces 0.014 cubic torquemeters. Now we need to turn that into weight. For that I'll assume the torquemeter is equal to a meter (so the marble is 30 cm or one foot across). 0.014 cubic meters of water have a mass of 14 kg. Weight is equal to mass times the gravitational acceleration, which is almost 10 m/s² on Earth. Therefore, the weight of the displaced water is 140 newtons.

Now that we have the data, let's plug them in the formula:

weight underwater = weight of the object - weight of displaced water

weight underwater = 20 N - 140 N

weight underwater = -120 N

So the marble actually floats.

This assumes that the Marble Blast newton is equal to a RL newton.

Well that would be counterproductive to make the marble float Nice physics porn there.

Wow, that's amazing!

However the problem is that we don't actually know the mass of the marble...

I was thinking more along the lines of using the size of the marble and the density of glass (marbles are usually glass ) to calculate that, although with a little googling I realize that the density of glass can vary greatly...

Of course if there is a mass parameter for the marble, then we CAN know. It really all comes down to what theoretical substance the non-existent marble is made of

Also just MAYBE (and now I am way beyond the scope of my knowledge) it is possible to figure out the velocity and momentum of the marble, and calculate the mass from there. (assuming as well that the physics engine MB is built on is accurate enough for all this to work)


I know that real marbles sink... Of course how much realism can you expect in a game where marbles roll and jump with no external propulsion.

well don, there is a property of mass for defaultmarble

If you go into the game's console and type defaultmarble.dump();
you will see mass = 1;

However, that is probably sooo inaccurate

Water is a good guy.