Marble World News

Hey everyone!

Patch 0.1.13 just launched and brings improvements regarding building tracks. No longer frustrated by the inaccuracy of moving points with the mousecursor but rather a solid system to create exactly the track you want!



As seen in the picture, it's a well known system which is often used by amusement park sims for rollercoasters and therefore would work well with Marble World. By dragging the floating UI buttons you can form your track. Or if that's not your thing you can use the panel which provides some predefined angles and curves to create your track!

A sidenote: after 5 free-form trackpoints the game will create a new one, this is done to keep the game at a solid FPS. Large free-form tracks take a long time to generate the correct hitbox, but multiple shorter ones are keeping the game at a good framerate. Any existing long free-form tracks which were created before this patch will remain to exist.

Free-form tracks might have a bit of a different curvature if you open a world which had a free-form track in it which was build before this patch. Long technical story short: the curvature is now dependant on the distance between the points instead of being a fixed value. This leads to smoother curves.

The full notes:
- Added a new Track Building system
- Free-form tracks are now more smoothed out when points are close to eachother
- Improved performance of the moving stairs object
- Various bugfixes & improvemens

Thanks to everyone for providing feedback regarding the building tools of the game!

[h2]The December Patch[/h2]

December is usually a crowded month full of stuff to do, and this year is no different. Therefore there will only be one patch next month which will arrive on the 17th! This will include the Christmas content along with some other content and bugfixes.

If you have any questions your always free to chat using any of the social media's :)
As always, thanks for the feedback & support! It means a lot to me.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491340/Marble_World/

Hey everyone!

Today Patch 0.1.12 launched, which includes pinball related objects such as a bindable flipper, a bumper and more interesting additions! Also I'd like to look forward abit and take a look at the next patch + the upcoming timeline.

[h2]The Patch[/h2]



The patch introduces 2 flippers (left/right), these flippers are bound to K by default, but can be bound by selecting them and then rebinding the key. The key which is bound is per flipper saved and in that World. This means that when uploading a World to the Steam Workshop the keybinds are saved with it! Pressing the bound key results in the flipper moving, as expected.

The patch also introduces pinball bumpers, these bump marbles away when they hit the ring, and then they will flash a light a few times. The light and the bumper strength can be customized as you want.



In addition to that, spinners now have a motorized option. Select any existing spinners and you can turn them into motorized versions, with customizable speed, direction and if they should ignore marbles bumping into them. In real life motorized objects can be slowed down if the pressure is beyond the motor's strength, so I added in a toggle if it should ignore any marbles hitting it and just spin without any interference. I recommend playing around with it as it offers some interesting techniques.

A magnet has been added as well, this magnet can be customized in terms of strength, radius and if should pull or push. Using the magnets you can now prevent marbles going one way, or even attract them into a certain direction!



Here are the full notes:
- Speed boosters have a "set speed" option. Marbles passing them will simply have the set speed instead of it being added ontop of it's current speed.
- Fixed an issue where scaled boosters would multiply their boost through their scale.
- Spinners now have their own panel which pops up when selecting, here you can customize if they should be motorized, their speed if motorized, their direction (clockwise / anti-clockwise) if motorized and if they should ignore marble collisions.
- Added 2 new spinner variants, a triple bladed and a single bladed variant.
- Added a magnet, the magnet can push or pull with the desired radius + strength.
- Added a new marble skin panel, with additional buttons for selecting marble skins
- Added a pinball bumper, this bumper can be customized in terms of strength and lightcolor to emit.
- Added 2 pinball flippers, these can be keybinded to any key.
- Added a new community marble skin


[h2]Looking back and going forward[/h2]
Last patch introduced the flexible track building system which provides new ways to build your track, but came at a cost.

I spoke with various players about this system. The new system allows for more options, but it is slower to work with than the previous one where you had less options but a solid & fast way to create tracks. So in order of getting the best of both worlds next patch will be dedicated to an update on that front.

I'll reintroduce the previous building technique where you can drag UI buttons at the end of a selected free endpoint to create a new piece (this will be shown as a ghost like the previous system did). This piece will then be created using the new free-form tech, but using the system we had before.

In addition to that, the free-form panel which pops up when editing one will have additional buttons, similar to Parkitect's UI for example. Using these buttons will work in the same way the UI-dragging does but at more predefined values, create a free-form track using whatever buttons you have selected!

The created free-form track will still be editable per point if wanted, so you can still connect 2 normal tracks using a simple free-form track for example.

If you have any questions your always free to chat using any of the social media's :)
As always, thanks for the feedback & support! It means a lot to me.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491340/Marble_World/

Hey everyone!

After a long time of hard work on the new track building system its finally here! Select a free end point on a trackpiece and start building from there! All of this, and the majority of the game info is now available in-game through the help panel. This panel is located next to the exit button.





Patch notes:
- Added Free-form Track building support to the game, replacing the old way of building. Along with some variety of track types to start off
- Added a help panel for all the info you need on the game
- Background music is now softer and more in line with effect sounds
- Fixed an issue with quickrotate whilst using the move with cursor functionality
- Align to surface is now off by default
- The small blockers on the marble spawners that go inside the track now have disabled hitboxes when going down
- Renamed the "Edit Starter Track" panel to "Edit Spawner Track"
- Improved the water in the pond, now with refraction!

[h2]Next Patch[/h2]
Over at the Discord there's been a community vote on what to add next, the winning feature will be added first to the game! Currently it's looking like the pinball update is winning.

Other than that expect a cool new animated paint, more marble skins and general improvements & other content!


As always, thanks for the feedback & support!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491340/Marble_World/

Hey everyone!

It's the spooky time of the year, and Marble World could use some of that! Marble World now has 17 new halloween themed props. Along with a new special paint that absorbs all light, ideal for when you need complete darkness surrounding your tracks!

The props & paint will remain permanently available in the game from now on, and expect yearly expansions on the theme over the years.




[h2]Track Building 2.0 Progress[/h2]
In the meantime this is a good time to post an update regarding the new track building update. Things are going smooth and it's starting to look like something! Im expecting to be done somewhere around the end of this month.




As always, thanks for the feedback & support!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491340/Marble_World/

Hey everyone!

This is a small patch which includes some fixes for recently reported bugs.

Patch 0.1.10B:
- Applied correct icons for the metal / darker metal paint
- 0 is now the minimum for spawners, allowing you to "disable" them. (1 is still the default value when placing them)
- Added a safety check for the hitbox' movement on the spawners, some player reported issue's however I was not able to reproduce these issues. This should hopefully resolve them
- Added appropriate scaling hitboxes for all 3 sphere shapes
- Fixed an issue where the tooltip wouldn't show up after hovering the questionmark on the 2 ordered spawners.
- Added functionality to automatically import csv files with names

The game checks the location where all the worlds are stored for a "names_add.csv" file. (this location is
C:\Users\(Your Name)\AppData\LocalLow\Vector Interactive\Marble World)

If this csv file is found it will extract the first column and skip the first row which contains the names of the columns. All other columns are ignored. After extraction the file will be renamed to "names_add_imported.csv" to make sure the next startup won't import it again.

Thanks for the continuous support! If you encounter bugs or issues let me know :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1491340/Marble_World/