Phil'sEmpire

Take a deep breath and sink with us into the water as this is a gameplay-changer. It may assist you or hinder your progress and in some even send you Out of Bounds.

Watch our teaser video below and click HERE to see other levels that use it.

Keep on divin’,
The Platinum Team

In the next PlatinumQuest Feature Spotlight of course!

For some people the top times area on the leaderboards page was really messed up (blame the ancient HTML/php code), that should be fixed now. It also occurred within the user’s account page as well.

Let me know in the comments if either of these fixes aren’t the case – thanks!

Phil

Among the many new features available in PlatinumQuest, the Ice Shard stands as a cold-hearted hazard, ready to freeze any marbles that dare to touch it.

The Ice Shard is a simple yet effective hazard. Upon touching it, the marble will instantly be frozen, halted in its movement. While the marble stays frozen, the player can do nothing for a short while until the ice shatters, allowing control to be regained.

The Ice Shard is great to use in your snowy levels, unless you’re as cold as the Ice Shard and wish to use it anywhere.

Keep on freezin’,
The Platinum Team

Hey everyone,

Although we were planning on a trailer, we got just so excited about one of our main features we just had to share it with you. Today, we’ll reveal everything we have about the Cannon.

The cannon is fully featured and can be used to get the marble from one place to another in speed, or get to an otherwise unreachable spot. You can use the cannon in several different mechanisms which will be described later, and also select one of 3 preset powers, or your own.

As a level designer, you’ll find the cannon packed with many useful features and fully detailed documentation on how to set up your cannon to work and in many different conditions.

Pictured: A Medium force cannon
Level: Having a Blast, by Andrew Sears
The cannon’s coder is Seizure22, and its model and texturing is by MadMarioSkills.

To read more about the cannon, check it out here.

Matan and the Platinum team

Lately I haven’t had the interest to work on the next release of Marble Blast Platinum for Windows.
Sorry about this news, but hopefully you can bear with it. I won’t be making any more posts on the site after this, but hopefully we’ll continue to see progress updates from Matan and the rest of the Platinum team.
With the future of the site, it will stay ‘as-is’.

On another note, I forgot to mention that I added a new ‘Support’ button to the top menu of the site. Please use that if you have any questions or feedback about the game at those forums; don’t use here. You’ll be able to get a much quicker response over at the Marble Blast Forums.

Phil

Hi everyone,

About a week ago we released the MBP 1.20 Mac build and set an expected release date for the Windows build to come out at the end of January, but as we mentioned before our due date predictions are pretty bad. As such, we’re pushing the build to a February-March release. Let’s hope we don’t get this one wrong, but who knows.

It’s been over a year since PlatinumQuest first started and after a few months we announced it to the public. Our first announcement post mentioned a release date in 2011, which is extremely likely not to happen. Worry not, as we know that within the community there are several mods for Marble Blast which are in progress, and we believe at least 2 will be releasing this year, but no one can confirm.

Because of this lengthy development time dedicated to PlatinumQuest, we must be doing the best things the community has been yearning for… years?

Happy new year,

Matan and the Platinum team

Yep, it’s finally here

It’s been almost a year since the last official release of the game. Version 1.20 for Mac is now here, and it brings a wealth of new features and improvements. See the change log for more details on what’s new.

The main focus of this update is more specifically targeted towards the Mac, addressing problems occurring with the installer & running MBG and MBP interchangeably. (hopefully for good)

This version’s installer has been tested and is fully native from Mac OS X 10.3 through to 10.6.
I’ve written it from the ground up (in Cocoa) and it’s been built as a Universal binary, so it’s very compatible. It supports the three main versions of MarbleBlast Gold, which are:

• the version bought from GarageGames (note: GG no longer owns the intellectual property to MarbleBlast and therefore does not offer it on their website)
• the version bundled with Apple’s iMacs & iBooks during 2004
• the version bought from Mac Game Store

If you’re using 10.1 or 10.2 and if you have another Mac with a later version of OS X, I’d recommend installing the game on that first, then moving it to the older computer and it should work just fine.

Troubleshooting / questions

Also, the installer will only copy settings from a previous version of MarbleBlast Platinum that has already been installed. Custom levels’ times may not display as previously they saved incorrectly, and this update fixes that.

If the installer throws an error while installing, try perhaps repairing your disk permissions, and delete the ‘MarbleBlast Platinum’ folder within <username> -> Applications.

Once you’re playing the game, you may encounter some problems with custom levels not showing their parts – this is mainly because the game’s content no longer belongs in the ‘marble’ folder, and instead a new ‘platinum’ folder. Download the FAQ for more details (it will eventually be a proper page on the website).

The Windows version

I’m very sorry Windows users… but your update will be more focused on improving the leaderboards / some other things. All of the features that are in this just-released version will definitely be available in the Windows version. An estimated date for release is late-January.

Enjoy! Have a Merry Christmas and a great New Year

Phil, and the Platinum team

Well, the list of changes and additions I’ve implemented so far is quite a lot. Currently there’s about 20 or so various additions and changes, and we’ve got a few more planned, so we’ve decided to bump the version to 1.20.

Here’s a list of some of the more major changes. Some I’ve explicitly marked as ‘not done’. Some are maintenance/cleanup whereas some are focused towards gameplay (though not dramatic):

• All game content now belongs in a folder called ‘platinum’, instead of ‘marble’. The folder structure within the ‘platinum’ is exactly the same as before.
• Every time you view a new screen, the background will randomly change. The MBP text and logo have also been removed. In the level selection screen, if you switch the game, the screen’s background will automatically change to a background for the game you’ve switched to. Each background has a high resolution of 1920×1080
• Manual has been rewritten (in progress)
• Mass compression made to the game in a variety of areas. Old filesize was around 200MB, now it’s about half of that (almost done)
• Added ingame Field of View slider. By adjusting it higher, you will be able to see more within your field of view
• Added a new bindable hotkey which allows you to instantly respawn at the level you’re currently playing
• Improved keyboard navigation across the whole game
• The Out of Bounds insult messages can be switched on/off. They are OFF by default
• Custom level times used to only save to marble/data/missions/custom/<level>.mis, now it saves within subfolders
• Jukebox button now accessible from the pause menu. The original key bindings (F5-F8) are still retained

So… the new version is getting close to ready, I just need to do some final things related to packaging and cleanup. Then I can start on the installer. My estimate for the release of MBP 1.20 for Mac will be in the middle of next week.

Phil

I’m planning to release the next version of MarbleBlast Platinum (1.15) for the Mac sometime within this and the next week. The main intention of this update is to solve the problem people have been having with the previously very buggy installer, as well as running the game afterwards.

The Windows version will come later; hopefully shortly after the Mac release. This is because the Mac is the main focus of this update. It will also include a few community-requested features and minor bugfixes – more details on these additions will be available upon release. Don’t worry Windows users, you will get the same update later on, so please do not complain!

I’m also planning to release a new installer which MBP 1.15 for Mac will be packaged within. The main goals of this is to: (beware – it gets more technical here)

• be a native Cocoa application, and be fully compatible with all users running OS X ~10.3 or later (nobody uses less than 10.2, do they?)
• remove the need for the ‘divisions’ process. MBP 1.15′s content will not belong in a folder called ‘marble’, and instead a new ‘platinum’ folder. All of the game’s content will be fixed accordingly
• be available in one version, with the option of either:
  • installing MBP from a copy of MarbleBlast Gold which was bought from GarageGames (it’s unknown whether versions of MBG from other places are similar to this, such as macgamestore)
  • installing MBP from a copy of MarbleBlast Gold which came preinstalled on your Mac (aka the ‘OEM version’)
  • upgrading from a previous version of MarbleBlast Platinum

Phil, and the Platinum team