PQ Feature Spotlight #5: Move on, people

Oh. Back at the end of 2009, you said that it would be released in 2011. Now I feel a little bit that it'll end up being released in 2015! You seem to be hiding the actual content of the game, and instead sloowly sneaking details of some specific features out one by one. It also doesn't give much details as to how far this game has come along, or as to when it will be released. It teases me so much knowing that there is much more left to the game that I don't know about. Though I probably shouldn't be complaining, but whatever.

Progress has changed as our staff numbers changed but also note that our staff are busy. All of us either have jobs or attend university. Our youngest staff member is 19 years old, which goes to show you the average community age (14-15) vs PQ staff (20+) also affects our progress.
I do admit progress has slowed down in favour of quality. We fixed an array of game-crashing bugs while maintaining cross-platform compatibility (not easy!), as well as improving gameplay and enhancing our content and features. Compared to other mods (except MBP/MBFubar) we probably have the best progress so far.

Talking about other mods, as Jeff/HiGuy are working on MBP, their content can then be used in PQ (and sometimes MBFubar) to achieve goals faster. Sometimes things from PQ end up in MBP/Fubar and from Fubar to MBP/PQ. Mind you, Fubar is run by a single person (Aayrl) who has college and jobs and a surprising amount of exams. You have no idea how much he tries to juggle several important projects including Fubar in his spare time just to release new content to his beta testers.

At first when we announced PQ we presumed 2011 would be a good goal. We also said MBP would've released in June 2007 but that didn't release until Xmas 2007 and 1.10 didn't come until September 2008. Mind you, MBP kept having progress until 1.14 and this year it received 1.20 which is a big improvement.
As of right now, Jeff and HiGuy are super busy both in school but also in working on the next version of MBPlatinum which is cross-platform (like PQ and Fubar) and has:
- Re-written leaderboards architecture with full support for Mac
- Dozens if not hundreds of fixes
- Re-written scripts both in singleplayer and leaderboards (performance increase or makes it easy to use for the user)
- Implemented a number of community requested features
- And even more features.

There is a bucketful of work done from these two that sadly isn't being mentioned and they deserve massive kudos for doing all this.
Again as staff numbers decreased and we got busy, so did our progress, so 2011 is now a thing of the past. We cannot give out a release date as we don't know when it will be ourselves. Rest assured there is progress. Always.


The next part is about hiding the actual content. Partly-true. We didn't want to reveal everything like MBP and other mods do. Some things are kept top-secret even when PQ will be released and are to be found by the players. By doing so not only do we keep the surprise, it will be a massive wow from you when you figure them out or find them yourself. If we tease you to the point where there is much more left in PlatinumQuest that you don't know about, then we're doing our job at keeping it a pleasant surprise for you.

We used the first trailer and all five spotlights as a jumping board to showcase not only the main features, but also our development. Look at the huge differences from trailer #1 to spotlights 3-5:
- In trailer #1 we showed the moving objects (seen in spotlight #5), as well as some scenery (spotlight #3).
- New game modes in trailer #1 but other things that people still haven't figured out
- New gems/gameplay-defining features in spotlight #1
- New hazards #2
- Water, gem effects and scenery #3
- Triggers and new shapes #4
- Even more with #5

We showcased soundtracks, sounds, skyboxes, marble skins and a lot more which I'm not going to tell you in every single spotlight release (and trailer #1). If you're not going to be paying attention to those then you're not noticing how much new content there is. This isn't just another Marble Blast mod. This is one of those very high quality mods that you find nowadays in other games where there's a lot of effort put into it, lots of tears, blood and sweat, and above all else: love.

Additionally I have singlehandedly decided how we'll show progress to the public and decided that after Spotlight #1. I won't tell you when anything will be released, but I will tell you that every time we release something to the public it's because we reached an internal checkpoint.

I hope this clears a number of things up not only to you, but many others.

Wow...just an awesome post Matan. Pro Marbler, I will assure you that because these things take time, you will have the best marble blast experience ever when MBP and PQ are re-released and released, respectivly. I am having a blast programming MBP as much as the community enjoys playing it.

Matan, you are quite welcome for HiGuy and myself doing the work for MBP, there is no need for a kudos, but thanks!

And pro-marbler, thats ok that you brought this up, at least the air is rather clear and not stale anymore. No problem with just asking a question.

Awesome post again Matan!

Jeff

Oct 21, 2012, 1:33pm, chameleon wrote:Tunnel vision with moving oob triggers...

Much more crazy... That means you may be OOB at any possible time.

how to download this PQ?

Oct 24, 2012, 9:25pm, mahmood wrote:how to download this PQ?

If you had read the topic you would know that PQ isn't released yet.

Oct 24, 2012, 9:33pm, andrewsears wrote:
Oct 24, 2012, 9:25pm, mahmood wrote:how to download this PQ?

If you had read the topic you would know that PQ isn't released yet.

Ohhhh the fifth PQ is not released yet okay
but i wanna the four last platinum quests

how to download them????

Oct 24, 2012, 10:41pm, mahmood wrote:
Oct 24, 2012, 9:33pm, andrewsears wrote:

If you had read the topic you would know that PQ isn't released yet.

Ohhhh the fifth PQ is not released yet okay
but i wanna the four last platinum quests

how to download them????

These five PQs you reference are PQ spotlights, which have been slowly released by the PQ staff over the last year. These spotlights all highlight a certain feature of an upcoming Marble Blast mod called PlatinumQuest, or PQ for short. For example, spotlight #1 showed pictures and a video showing the cannon feature. These spotlights are not different games as you seem to think, but they are actually update threads for PQ. This is so the Marble Blast community, whom are looking very much forward to trying out PQ for themselves someday, can get news and progress updates on the game, and so they can see just a small fraction of the new features PQ has to offer. We want to keep them interested in the game and not become tired of waiting, plus keep the community alive. That is why there are no download links anywhere in any of the five threads. The other reason why there's no download for PQ is because, as I mentioned before, the game has not come out yet. If you want to know when PQ will be released to the public, don't bother trying to ask anyone, because no one, not even the PQ staff, know when the game will come out.

This will be awesome! But really easy to code

Never say anything is easy or hard to code. Go play Minecraft. Like me, right now.

Oct 26, 2012, 5:46pm, jkk39 wrote:This will be awesome! But really easy to code


The MBDK is free for you to post your code. Go for it. Can't wait to see your 30kbs of code. +11kbs if you knew what is another feature we have for the MOs that we didn't show off in this spotlight. The GUI is another 12kbs at least.

Edit: forgot there are code-extensions in other scripts. Have fun modifying quite a fair amount to support everything in the game, including particles. Make all that at least 10kbs more. That's a total of 51kbs (1024*51 = 52224 bytes [aka characters]) you need to write. And that's optimised code too that also avoids game crashes.

Oct 26, 2012, 5:46pm, jkk39 wrote:This will be awesome! But really easy to code


The reason why I state a lot of things are easy is because I have years of experience with programming now at this point. So obviously from a programmer who is a master of TorqueScript (me, higuy, seiz, spy) we know the ins and out of the language. However, realize that it takes a LONG time to code this stuff. Just wanted to point that out to why I say a lot of stuff can be done.

Oct 26, 2012, 8:37pm, jeff wrote:
Oct 26, 2012, 5:46pm, jkk39 wrote:This will be awesome! But really easy to code


The reason why I state a lot of things are easy is because I have years of experience with programming now at this point. So obviously from a programmer who is a master of TorqueScript (me, higuy, seiz, spy) we know the ins and out of the language. However, realize that it takes a LONG time to code this stuff. Just wanted to point that out to why I say a lot of stuff can be done.

Not only that, but you have to be sure your code runs properly under all situations. It's all well and good if your code runs fine normally, but crashes the game when a moving gem hits physics trigger (just a random example). Good code is half design and the other half actual code

Who made PQ's skyboxes? Off-topic I know but I want to know.

Oct 26, 2012, 7:04pm, admin wrote:
Oct 26, 2012, 5:46pm, jkk39 wrote:This will be awesome! But really easy to code


The MBDK is free for you to post your code. Go for it. Can't wait to see your 30kbs of code. +11kbs if you knew what is another feature we have for the MOs that we didn't show off in this spotlight. The GUI is another 12kbs at least.

Edit: forgot there are code-extensions in other scripts. Have fun modifying quite a fair amount to support everything in the game, including particles. Make all that at least 10kbs more. That's a total of 51kbs (1024*51 = 52224 bytes [aka characters]) you need to write. And that's optimised code too that also avoids game crashes.
I was only joking . I can't code anything for MB.

Wow, just wow this is totally epic! Good work you guys I am really looking forward for this to get released soon, I remember I asked if scailng platforms were possible and they said it was impossible, but look at this, Guess everything is possible.

PQ will surely make the forums as active as before. Now I hope that you can also control the power of tornadoes, duct fans and magnets as well.

Nov 3, 2012, 11:04am, ticket2ride wrote:PQ will surely make the forums as active as before. Now I hope that you can also control the power of tornadoes, duct fans and magnets as well.

Now that is actually a really neat idea. Why I've never thought of that before.

Nov 3, 2012, 11:06am, jeff wrote:
Nov 3, 2012, 11:04am, ticket2ride wrote:PQ will surely make the forums as active as before. Now I hope that you can also control the power of tornadoes, duct fans and magnets as well.

Now that is actually a really neat idea. Why I've never thought of that before.

Just came into my mind when I remembered DuctFans and SmallDuctFans...