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- Written by: Aayrl
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Hey everyone!
I wanted to thank all of our community members who were able to participate in the 2016 Labor Day Madness event! The Marble Blast Community Staff had a great time hosting the event and were equally impressed by how stable the game servers have become!
If you were unable to make today's event, fear not! Aayrl will be hosting more community events in the near future! Keep your eyes and ears on the Forums for details!
Having so many of you community members with the time and energy to dedicate to Marble Blast is astonishing, and the turnout this year was surely something to be proud of. While I didn't nab a photo of the website homepage at the time (I got one a few minutes before, shown below...), we did reach a maximum server capacity of 29 / 32 players a few minutes after the start of the event. A huge round of applause for all of you who made this possible!
While the server was a little unhappy with 29 concurrent clients connected (and neither was my router!) it did manage to play the game at a whopping 3 FPS. After some quick setting changes on my end (and some assistance from HiGuy), I was able to bring the players back up to around 20 - 30 FPS (though, I had to spectate most of the games to accomplish this.) Overall, the majority of you had informed me the latency was "manageable", and I believe we even identified the cause of some server stress as well! Going forward, we'll certainly see if we can strive towards stable 32 player environments, as we're looking to hold similar events in the future where we expect massive turnout!
Additionally, during our annual "spawn-camp King of the Marble" round, El_Robert and Rozi battled (not really, they were just sitting on Yellow Gem spawns hoping the random number generator would work in their favor) to shatter the King of the Marble multiplayer record, but in the end, El_Robert prevailed with a whopping 506 points! (Rozi was not far behind with 486). Next year, I think we can aim for 750, what do you say?
Lastly, I know some of you whom participated livestreamed the event and/or recorded some of the gameplay - Please feel free to share your recording(s) in the comments section below! We'd love to see how things went from your point of view! HiGuy is currently working on a series of videos, which we'll list shortly after they're available. In the meantime, here's some of our favorite action shots captured by yours truly from this afternoon:
28 players on King of the Marble? How is this even playable?
24 Players on King of the Ring was quite fun to spectate - half of the marbles just spun around the outside the entire time, really wish I had some footage from Spectator view for all of you!
22 Players on Sprawl turned into an absolute brawl!
There were tons of campers and some fierce Mega Marbles during All Angles!
HiGuy steals the Platinum Gem to assert his lead during a round of Marbleland!
Nukesweeper, anyone? I think most of you spent the round Out of Bounds!
Three Minute Madness felt more like Three Minutes of Skillshots!
Towards the end of the event, our fellow marbles enjoy a relaxing picnic with some Fun in the Sun.
Thank you again, and we'll certainly see you next year for more Labor Day Madness!
~Aayrl
Marble Blast Community Manager
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- Written by: Aayrl
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Hello all,
The Marble Blast Community Staff will again be holding our annual Labor Day Madness event!
This year, the event will run on Monday, September 5th from 2:00 PM EST (18:00 UTC) - 5:00 PM EST (21:00 UTC). Please join us on Marble Blast Platinum Multiplayer and join Aayrl's Server at the time specified!
The event will feature several rounds of traditional gameplay and a series of special Event Custom Levels! Just look at how much excitement ensued from last year's round of King of the Marble:
Last year we had over 50 participants during the span of the event. We're hopeful that most of you will be able to attend this year again!
We'll see you online Monday!
~Aayrl
Marble Blast Community Manager
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- Written by: IsraeliRD
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With the PlatinumQuest demo released, the Platinum Team is back to work towards the full release in 2017. There is still plenty to do, so we're hard at work!
Based on the (fantastic) demo feedback and watching a few videos, we noted that people have an environment-mapping problem where the textures are quite messed up. The easiest way to solve this is to go to the Options Menu and choose the Medium or Low Quality Graphics setting. In addition, open your console and write the following (then press enter): $pref::environmentMaps = "1";
In addition to the demo releasing, we went ahead and removed the 65-achievement requirement on the four PlatinumQuest Multiplayer levels, and they are now permanently open for all users to play.
Remember that if you find an issue in the PlatinumQuest demo, you should post it on the forums on the feedback topic.
Thanks,
The Platinum Team
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The Platinum Team is pleased to announce the release of the long-awaited PlatinumQuest Demo, just 2.5 months shy of the 7th year anniversary of PlatinumQuest's inception.
This demo contains 15 Single Player levels that range from the Tutorial to Expert difficulties, and plenty of features to boot along with a brand new User Interface. PlatinumQuest aims to be easier and more fun than Marble Blast Platinum while maintaining a higher quality of level design and new scenery.
The Platinum Team would like to extend our thanks to our Beta Testers, Kurt, hPerks, Nihahhat and J@ckrb. They helped us find issues, test requested items and give extremely through feedback on every possible aspect of the PlatinumQuest Demo.
This Demo is available as a compressed ZIP download which you can install and launch anywhere on your computer. It does not require Marble Blast Platinum or Marble Blast Gold installed on your computer in order to function. While it has no Multiplayer compatibilities, we are collecting data such as selected marble skins, in-game resolution and times and scores achieved on levels. As privacy is important to us, we have no way to identify who is each user unless explicitly told by that user.
You can download the PlatinumQuest Demo by clicking on these links: Windows, and Mac.
You can help us out by filling out the feedback form for the PlatinumQuest Demo on the forums right here!
Known Issues:
- When starting a level for the first time, there is slight lag due to loading of all the objects.
- Ice Shards do not emit particles, as currently we experience extreme lag with them. This should be fixed for the full version.
- On rare occurrences, entering the cannon will show you a white screen. Quitting and entering the game will "fix" this (it can return in the next sessions), but we're having issues replicating it consistently.
- Jumping on top of triangle bumpers may launch you sideways instead of straight up. This is likely a shape issue we have no control over right now.
- Gravity Modifiers like to not have any sound playing when touched. We have absolutely no idea why.
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- Written by: Aayrl
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Hey all,
In celebration of the 2016 Summer Olympics, I've added a new flair icon to the Marble Blast website, webchat and game clients (Fubar will have a patch for this soon!)
You may claim your new Olympic Flair to show your support of the games by logging in to the Marble Blast website and navigating to your User Profile. From there, you should see the flair automatically apply to your account (or you can revert back to your previous flair icon if you're in it for the achievement..)
Best of luck to all of the athletes competing in the games!
Enjoy,
~Aayrl