MarbleBlast.com

A small gift

Details: Written by: IsraeliRD; Category: News; Published: 06 October 2016; Hits: 6083

I've teased for many months now about the May 2007 staff build, and now it is available for the public. You can download it for both Windows and Mac or find it on the bottom of the Downloads page. Thanks to HiGuy for helping me compile these builds. Just extract the .zip file into a new directory and you're good to go!

No bugs or mistakes will be fixed. This version is unsupported and released solely for the enjoyment of this community.

Only changes done to this build were to ensure compatibility for both Windows and Mac. Windows users can delete the Contents directory as it contains the Mac executable and data.

Known issues and additional info about this version:

- Windows users will likely crash after loading Hazardous House twice by entering the level, and quitting it and then attempting to enter it again
- Windows users will crash if The Time Modifier Race is not played first, or any level is played second after TTMR. The reason is that this level uses exactly 512 interiors, which is the hardcoded Windows interior limit.
- LSmultiplayer is a Multiplayer-based map Lonestar made which will not work on Windows as it uses more than 512 interiors.
- Windows users should avoid playing too many levels, as the 512 interior limit exists. When the game crashes, your prefs.cs doesn't save at all, unless you saved it first by quitting the game normally.
- Sanctuary is a level from Xelna which was never ported to the final version of the game. You can add it yourself to the custom directory (does the interior exist? didn't check, don't care)
- Some .recs are available. Some will work on windows, some on Mac, maybe they don't work at all. I don't know.
- The fried egg skybox exists. Best skybox in all of Marble Blast's history.
- Also the old interface. God the horrors.
- NO CHECKPOINTS as we didn't have any code for it back then
- Some levels are incomplete, such as Ultimate Tree. Except levels by Jase and Phil, the rest were made in the Level Editor. Most levels are also easier/harder than their final version counterparts.
- Note that Tarmac is easier... :)
- Ultimate/Easter Egg Guides are available, dated May 2007 as well.
- You can qualify the next level by pressing the middle of the P in the level select menu.
- Source is available for certain stuff. Have fun.

Enjoy,
Matan and HiGuy

Labor Day Madness 2016: Aftermath

Details: Written by: Aayrl; Category: News; Published: 05 September 2016; Hits: 4468

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!