Marble World News

Hey everyone!

A quick fix has been applied to ensure the social buttons on the main page now reflect the new updated social media links.

For now Twitter and Facebook have been updated to reflect the company rather than the game. This is done for future purposes when more games will be released under Vector Interactive.

Whilst you are reading this, the annual Halloween update is coming soon along with some bugfixes :)

- Rinke

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

Hey everyone!

Marble World is now officially fully released! After 2 years of fulltime production and a little over a year of Early Access it's time to release it, as the majority of features are in and battle-tested. The game is now on sale with a 10% discount for 7 days!

Thank you all for your support over the past years, it has been incredibly valuable for the game to steer it towards a good direction! And we're not even at the finish yet, there's plenty more on the roadmap.

Yours truly,
- Rinke

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

Hey marblers!

Next week Friday is the big day, and in this post I'd like to go over some details on the launch. I'd also like to discuss the future of Marble World! Because the launch does not mean it's done.

[h2]Launch Day Info[/h2]

The game will come out of Early Access on Friday September 30th on 10AM GMT+2 (Amsterdam time). You can see a countdown here.

When the game launches, it will also become 10% discounted, for a duration of 1 week.

[h2]Post-Launch Features[/h2]

First things first. I have to announce that a MacOS / Linux build is not on the planning anymore. I took a look at the % of Steam users that use MacOS / Linux:

Source

When building for MacOS or Linux you need a machine that runs MacOS or Linux respectively. Now I don't own either, and buying one that supports it would have a cost. When comparing the % of the users that use either of these to the amount of revenue Marble World has made would mean it would take a really long time to just cover the costs that are made with buying a machine that runs it. In addition to this I'd also need to test / build / deploy for these platforms which takes up development time, but I'd consider that less important to this decision.

It's not the ideal situation and I know there are some dedicated players out there who only have access to a Mac / Linux, I'm really sorry but I have to make the right business decision in this case :(

Now onwards to the positive stuff!

The roadmap is as follows, with the features in order of priority*:
- Marble Teams support -> drag/drop complete teams into spawners | marbles can be in 1 team max | unlimited teams | Team Races
- Snow & Ice DLC -> Includes environment | effects (placeable + marble) | marble skins (+customizable) | paints (standard + customizable) | Decorations
- Controller support -> You know what this will lead to :)
- More base game content -> Applies to all categories
- More paint controls -> Toggle between world scale paint or object scale | Shine factor
- Light controls -> Turn on/off ambient light in the World

*order may or may not change during development

And more things are on the radar to be announced in the future, but that's for another post.

As always thanks for reading and your continuous support!

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

Hey everyone,

Short patch today in preparation for the launch on September 30th.

Patch notes:
- Added the option to mass import names and have them get random custom skins assigned
- Added a marble counter
- Added an option to toggle the camera clipping when following marbles

- Fixed a glitch where the rebind dark layer of the logic input component would not cover the panel fully
- Fixed some blending issues on the new tile paints
- Fixed an issue where the wormhole couldn't function as a teleporter anymore
- Fixed an issue where assigning an effect to the marble in the marble creation scene wouldn't give the correct achievement

More info on the launch is coming later.

Thank you for your continuous support! :)

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

Hey everyone!

Marble World entered beta today with a ton of new content in and outside of the game! Achievements have been introduced alongside collectable Steam cards and awards for completing the set!

As for the in-game content, transparent marbles have been introduced and they look a lot cleaner due to rendering improvements. Another big item is that freeform tracks are now split up behind the scenes similar to placing static track objects which allows for painting individual parts.

As usual bugs got fixed, new paint & marble skins have been introduced and more factory props have been added!

[h2]Beta[/h2]

In preparation for the launch on the 30th of September the game got improvements on several fronts in order to deliver a better experience. The main menu is less cluttered and has a new background, linking tutorial has been improved and a new help panel section for linking has been added. In addition all outdated icons have been updated and the paint panel's custom paint icons have been made more clear.

All of this and more can be found in the patch notes at the bottom.



[h2]Achievements & Cards[/h2]

Marble World now has achievements and trading cards! The cards will be distributed based on the amount of played time overall, so you might already have seen some notifications if you played enough. The set requires 8 cards and there are several emoticons & backgrounds to be earned.

The achievements will start tracking as of this patch. I've made sure they're all fair and not too grindy to achieve.



[h2]Transparent Marbles & Rendering[/h2]

This patch introduces a different way of rendering marbles. Transparency wasn't properly available before but is now! The new form of rendering allows for more detail & accurate reflections. Marbles will now look more real than before.

When creating custom marbles, there is now a template for transparent marbles. Inside the marble is a randomized swirl. Currently this is automatically added, but in the near future this will be customizable with various shapes & colouring.



[h2]Freeform track painting[/h2]

Freeform tracks are now "split" into sections and their individual parts they normally consist of.

Older tracks which only could be painted in 1 colour are split similarly on starting the world and will automatically have that 1 paint applied to all sections. You can then overwrite each section if wanted.



[h2]Patch notes[/h2]

Patch notes for Patch 0.2.0:
- Added transparency for marbles
- Added 8 new paints
- Added a new zigzag marble skin
- Added a bee marble skin
- Added achievements
- Added more background music
- Removed the Early Access pop-up when starting the game
- Added a linking page to the help panel
- Added the ability to rebind camera speed to buttons
- Added a small track spawner
- Added a giant spawner capable of spawning 450 marbles at once
- Added 6 more factory props
- Added a cone light

- Updated all outdated UI icons
- Updated the input settings panel
- Updated the main menu
- Upon renaming a world an error will be given if the name is taken or empty
- The linking tutorial has now more things to do
- Freeform tracks are now split into separate sections
- Magnet maximum radius is now increased to 20
- Checkpoints now emit a logic pulse when a marble crosses during a race
- Increased the render distance on the playroom to match other environments' distance
- Loopings have been visually smoothed
- The paint panel now has different icons for showing customizable paints
- The level load panel now allows for renaming and switching environments
- Planets in the space environment now have no gravity (they already didn't due to a bug)

- Fixed an issue where placed lights would block marbles
- Fixed an issue where opening the paint panel would induce lag for a little bit
- Fixed an issue where a 16:10 resolution would let panels overlap in the new world selection panel
- Fixed an issue where the mover would move whilst being linked but not getting a pulse
- Fixed an issue where the planet paint didn't scale properly


[h2]The future[/h2]

In 3 weeks the game will go into full release, until then only bugfixes will be applied and perhaps some really necessary edits. During this time work will be done for future patches, but the launch should as stable as it can get.

At launch the game will be discounted by 10% for a week! So grab a copy then if you haven't done so yet :)

Post-launch the game will be getting some big updates such as:
- Teams for marbles
- Light controls for glow in the dark tracks
- Controller support
- DLCs (only thematic, no features will be locked behind DLCs)

And of course I'll be looking into other platforms to release on:
- MacOS
- Linux
- Xbox
- Playstation
- Mobile
- VR

As always thanks for reading and your continuous support!

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