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- Written by: HiGuy
- Category: News
- Hits: 2475
Hey all,
We hope you enjoyed the winter update, but its time has finally ended (for better or for worse), and the original hunt Multiplayer levels are now available once again. Ironic, that Marble Blast has thawed right after one of the coldest days of the year so far (at least, for those in the US East).
As well, we hope that our transition to the new site has been smooth for you. There have been some issues regarding in-game connectivity to the leaderboards, with some scripts having longer load times than expected. We will try to address these in the upcoming weeks, but just bear with us for now as we investigate.
Thanks for a great Winter Event, and who knows what may happen around the time of mud season... No promises.
-HiGuy
Marble Blast Platinum 1.50 Lead Developer
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- Written by: Aayrl
- Category: News
- Hits: 2298
Greetings folks,
While we apologize for the extended maintenance and the delay in bringing all of our services back online, we are pleased to announce that MarbleBlast.com, and the Leaderboards service are now both located on our brand new blazing fast server located in London, UK! This newer server hardware and extensive hardware capabilities should reduce the number of server crashes and increase the amount of traffic our services can withstand during peak hours. You may also notice increased performance when submitting scores to the server, even in the remote regions of the globe.
In addition, our Website is now running on the latest and greatest version of Joomla 3.3.6! As some of you are aware, we've been running on Joomla 2.5.xx, which had its final day of long term support on December 31st, 2014. As a result, we took the server hardware upgrade opportunity to also upgrade our Joomla CMS system. There may be small portions of the website that are still a bit buggy, and we would appreciate it if you would let us know in the Feedback Forum if you encounter any bugs or issues in the next few days.
As always, additional update notes may be found on the Forums under the Rules & News section that detail additional upgrades and changes that were made in this weekend's maintenance. And, of course, please let us know if you encounter any troubles or issues when using the Website or Leaderboards so we may be made aware of any errors as a result of our updates.
Cheers,
~Aayrl
Marble Blast Community Manager
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- Written by: Aayrl
- Category: News
- Hits: 2333
Twas the night before free gifts, and all through the leaderboards; not a marble was rolling - not even Kurt. The marbles hung socks on various pillars, with the hopes that free gifts and achievements would be stuffed with fillers. The marbles were neatly placed in their boxes, with visions of beating IsraeliRD on Nukesweeper while carrying little foxes. And HiGuy, with his gigantic coding wrench, and I with my tattered SQL hat, settled down at the programming bench. As we mashed the keyboards, tapping away into the night, we couldn't help but wonder what we could have in store for the community as we worked on the site. When suddenly, in the leaderboards chat, arose a clatter of noise, emotes, and "PQ WHERe?!"; as someone started shouting about toys. As we Alt-tabbed back in, waiting for the game to load, we pulled open the console and gazed at the code. What appeared on the first line, as our eyes did discover, was the gigantic imprint or our good friend St. Jeff, with guise of red cover. He was dressed all in Platinum, with a gigantic red hat, he reached into his computer and pulled out a .pak; "Free Gifts, my good fellows, and the community shall cheer!" twas the advice he spoke, and with the advice I awoke. Never again, shall I program with energy drinks in hand; let this be a lesson to those whom do not go to bed as early as they can.
As for the advice.. we did listen to our crazy thoughts, and we have an extra special website achievement and some bonus assortments lined up for everyone! Starting on December 25th at Midnight GMT (+0), and lasting until December 31st, any user that logs in to the Marble Blast Website and Visits their User Profile will be granted a unique achievement and some festive holiday flair!
So while you're at home, enjoying the holidays, take a spare moment to hop on to the Website and give thanks to your friends here for another Marble Blast filled year. We wish you all a happy holiday and we hope you all stay safe and enjoy the family around you this wintry season.
Happy Holidays from all of us here on the Marble Blast Community Staff,
~Aayrl
Marble Blast Community Manager
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- Written by: Aayrl
- Category: News
- Hits: 3446
Hey folks,
The weather outside is frightful, and the warm glow of your computer screens is delightful. If you've got no other place to go, let it go, let it go, and come play in the snow!
To celebrate the wintry holiday season, we're introducing this year our first annual Winterfest Event! All of your favorite Marble Blast Multiplayer levels have received a wintry makeover, featuring:
- 6 Brand New In-Game Achievements and 35 new Website Achievements
- A new Title and Suffix system
- Snowball Game Mode
- Loads of new scenery objects and obstacles
- Multiplayer UI Recolors to match the Winter Season
- Brand new Chilly and Frozen scores to beat
- Hidden Snow-globe objects
- ...and much, much more!
In addition, for a limited time, the website will feature daily achievements between December 1st and December 31st, so be sure you log in to the website and visit your User Profile via the Profile Button every day and claim your rewards! Perhaps there will be an extra special gift waiting for you under the tree on December 25th?
The Winterfest Event will be live beginning on December 1st, and be available until the 11th of January, 2015 at 11:59 PM Eastern Time. In addition, the fabled PlatinumQuest Multiplayer Levels will be unlocked for the public to play between the 1st of December and the 4th of January, 2015, inclusive.
In addition to the exciting content we've prepared for you, we will also be upgrading our servers late this December. We will be launching a brand new dedicated server for our leaderboards and website and several new dedicated servers for the leaderboards system. One server will be located in London, UK, as a testing server for several days. We openly invite you to provide us with feedback so we may improve our dedicated server process.
If all goes well with the dedicated server testing, the remaining dedicated servers will be launched. In total, we expect to have 7 dedicated servers by the end of January, 2015:
- Tsuf 1 - California, USA
- Tsuf 2 - California, USA
- Thistle - Vermont, USA
- Beginners Only (Provisional Users only, < 20 games played) - Vermont, USA
- Cuties Only (Established Users with 1650+ rating only) - Vermont, USA
- London 1 (TBA) - London, UK
- London 2 (TBA) - London, UK
We would like to thank the following community members for making this Winterfest event possible:
- Aayrl - Usability Testing, Quality Assurance, Winterfest Ideas, Winter Textures, Level Design, Web Programming
- RDs.Empire - Jaw-dropping scenery and dts shapes for Winterfest
- Whirligig - Physics Programming related to Wintry Hats
- Buzzmusic - Phenomenal Winter-themed Music
- HiGuy - Lead Programmer, Level Design, Web Programming
- Jeff - Physics Programming, Assistant Programmer
- IsraeliRD - Lead Designer, Winterfest Ideas, Level Design, Usability Testing
As always, we greatly appreciate donations to help us keep the website and leaderboard services running as optimally and efficiently as possible. We are currently paying the expenses for our website and dedicated servers out-of-pocket. Any donations provided by community members will only be used to pay for the website and dedicated services. You may donate via PayPal through your User Profile by clicking on the Profile button (once logged in to the website) on the top right side of your browser. From here, click on the Donate button, located on the right side of the screen. Please be aware that donations of $1, while greatly appreciated, will still have a premium taken off the top by PayPal (whom takes 33 cents as part of their fees).
Happy Holidays, and enjoy the wintry levels!
~Aayrl
Marble Blast Community Manager
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- Written by: IsraeliRD
- Category: News
- Hits: 2670
Many of us are getting into a festive mood as we are entering the holiday season, and the Platinum Team, Aayrl, RDs.Empire and Buzzmusic have pulled a lightning fast effort to celebrate the holidays.
It’s been raining recently, and due to low temperatures a lot of Multiplayer levels are covered in ice. Marbles are advised to use caution when navigating to the gems. Those that did not have the extra ice on them have been removed to a warm shed. These levels will not be playable.
It also appears temperatures have gotten a little too extreme, and PlatinumQuest’s Ice Shards have started popping around the levels, freezing any marble that dares touch them. We found that using Mega Marbles is the best way to handle them, as you won’t get frozen; you will only lose your Mega Marble. PlatinumQuest’s Ice Slicks have also surfaced, even on non-ice surfaces.
Furthermore, all levels have been swept in a seasonal snow, and we don’t know when it will stop, but you will see it falling while playing. To help many combat the cold, we are happy to announce that small Santa’s hats will be provided for marbles to wear at all times.
To raise the chilly mood, a new festive soundtrack will be played while matches are being held, and it will replace the normal Tim Trance.
In addition, all rated matches will see a change in scores. Winners will receive a bonus of 3 points on every win, and losers will lose 3 fewer points, so if you were set to lose 3 points on a match, you will lose nothing instead. All Leaderboards have been modified so you can grab a new number 1 spot in these challenging levels.
Lastly, it has come to our attention from the police scanner that marbles seemed to have gained an ability to throw snowballs at each other, causing mayhem. Here at MarbleBlast.com, we strongly approve of that, and anyone found hitting each other with snowballs will be awarded extra points.
Temperatures should warm up during January, so these changes should be limited to the month of December, but weather forecast may see them stay for up to a week in January.
We wish all marblers to exercise caution and enjoy the holiday season.
- The Platinum Team