Marble Blast is a franchise that doesn't need introduction on this
site. Ever since its initial release in 2002, people have been
'marbling it up' on PC, Mac, Linux, XBLA, online and yes, even Net Jet.
Its simple gameplay (you are essentially a round sphere that can roll
and jump) combined with a variety of power-ups and maps make it
accessible to both the casual and hardcore gamer alike.
Naturally, GarageGames saw a fit with their classic IP and the iPhone, but with all the work we've got going on with Torque and InstantAction, we needed to find the right partner to help us make it happen. Enter Luma Arcade.
Luma has been working with us over the past year and a half on various
projects, not the least of which is the much anticipated car racer, Rev.
With over 40 years of game development experience on their team, not to
mention a great history in graphics and design, they were a perfect
fit. Their gameplay video alone should give you an idea of what I mean:
Luke Lamothe, Technical Director of Luma Arcade, talked to me about creating Marble Blast Mobile, and the iPhone opportunity (and challenges) for this beloved game. Enjoy!
How did you integrate Marble Blast gameplay with iPhone tech?
Well,
it was pretty easy to decide that Marble Blast Mobile needed to be
controlled with the accelerometer on the iPhone. Being able to roll the
marble by tilting the device comes to mind. Unfortunately, it wasn't as
easy as just saying "if the phone is tilted to the left, then roll the
marble to the left." It took a heck of a lot of tweaking to get the
marble feeling natural, while at the same time having to compensate for
the lack of tactile feedback that a device such as the iPhone suffers
from when compared to using a keyboard or a game pad.
In addition, since you are essentially moving your screen around as you
control the marble, it doesn't make sense for the player to worry about
lots of touch screen interactions at the same time...that is just going
to get clumsy! To lessen the need for necessary touches when
controlling the ball, we developed an auto-camera system that would
follow the marble as it rolled around the levels with the accelerometer
input. This ended up working out quite well and allows for you to play
the game with only the accelerometer and single taps for jumping when
necessary.
What tools did you use to create Marble Blast Mobile?
Marble Blast Mobile was built using the iTGE engine.
We chose iTGE because a) we are quite familiar with TGE from the work
done on some of our previous titles, and b) Marble Blast is a
GarageGames property. Also, as the existing games in the Marble Blast
franchise were all written in some variation of a Torque engine, we
wanted to keep to a technology that would allow us to reference the
source from those games when working on this title.
In addition to iTGE, we used Torque Constructor
for working on the levels. Each level started out as an existing Marble
Blast level. Then, using Constructor, we made appropriate changes to
optimize and pretty things up where possible.
We also used 3DSMAX
and the DTS exporter plug-in for all of our DTS objects. Every DTS in
Marble Blast Mobile was based on the corresponding one from Marble Blast Online, but each one had to be simplified for the iPhone hardware in terms of material, poly counts, special effects, and animations.
Adobe Photoshop
was used by our artists to tweak all of the game textures. They needed
to be resized to resolutions better suited for the iPhone. Alpha
channels needed to be created for our specular mapping. And each
texture needed to be manually tweaked (with some brand new textures
created as well) since Marble Blast Mobile doesn't have all of those
fancy shader effects like the online version does!
All of our sound effects (and the music) were ones that previous Marble Blast games used, but we used Audacity to convert them all to be 8kHz and mono in order to reduce the download size of the game as well as to save big time on the memory used by the application when running.
What was your development process like?
We decided to first get a version of the game running on PC, as iTGE compiles and runs fine there (due to its TGE roots), using Marble Blast Gold as a starting point. Once we got there, we needed to pull in the resources and functionality from Marble Blast Online, which was built using a version of TGEA,
so it wasn't too hard to get the required information back into iTGE,
but it wasn't 100% straightforward either. By the time that we had a
"working" version on the PC, we had obtained our developer status from
Apple and were able to get the game running on iPhones for testing.
Once on the actual hardware, we had to overcome the hurdles of
performance and controls. The most important task was to get the
controls working properly so that we could finalize the necessary
changes to the level design for the iPhone. Concurrently, we had to
find ways of increasing the performance so that the game was actually
playable on the device, as we were averaging less than 10 fps on 2nd
generation iPod Touches (which are the "fastest" iPhone-type devices on
the market), with some of the more complex levels from Marble Blast
Online running under 5 fps!
Altogether we had about 10 people contribute to the project, not
including the QA people, with 4 of those being on the project pretty
much full time for its duration (2 programmers and 2 artists for
approximately 6 months). Generally, the work between the programmers
was split between non-iPhone coding (i.e. menus, gameplay, sound, etc.)
and iPhone-specific coding (input controls, graphics, performance,
etc.), and the artists were split between 3D art (world and object
meshes) and 2D art (menus, HUD, and textures). The additional people
associated on the project worked on smaller programming, art, and
design contributions. All in all, it took us about 5 months of work to
reach what I would have called beta status for Marble Blast Mobile.
We are always testing our own work as we go along and try to not let
any bugs or issues fester around to be dealt with later on in projects.
Having said that, there were quite a few issues picked up by the
excellent external QA team at VMC Game Labs
that handled the majority of QA testing for us. They enabled us to
concentrate on making Marble Blast Mobile better by fixing issues
instead of having to look for them.
If you had to do it all again, what would you do differently?
I'm
not sure what we really could have changed. I think that we tackled the
project about as best we could seeing as it was our first iPhone game,
we were working with iTGE (which was in beta), and we had to spend
nearly the first 2 months of development time without being able to
test on an iPhone while we waited for our iPhone developer application
to be processed and approved by Apple.
If anything, I guess I would have liked to have had the time to include
more levels in the game, as well as swap out some of the levels that
perhaps were not as well suited to the iPhone (both in terms of
gameplay and hardware capabilities) for some others from the Marble
Blast series that perhaps were. This ultimately was a side effect of
having to start working on getting the levels into the game before we
could properly test on the iPhone itself.
What can we expect to see next from Luma Arcade?
Well, next will probably be us finally finishing off REV
for InstantAction. It was in closed beta towards the end of last year
on the site, but we decided to spend some time porting it to TGEA 1.8
from TGE 1.5. We're looking to have that back in beta shortly, and we
are also working on 2 other iPhone games that are due to be released in
the next few months as well (one using iTGE, and the other iTGB), so keep your eyes open :)
With the release of Marble Blast Mobile I bring this tricks video from everyone's favorite IA user Farhan. Granted the video is of Marble Blast Ultra, but I challenge anyone to submit a video with similar tricks in Marble Blast Mobile. Let's see what you've got.
I'm Sam Williams, the Producer for Marble Blast Mobile. We really appreciate everyone's feedback on the game and the price. Based in part on your response, we have decided to introduce a special promotional price of $4.99 for a limited time. Again we really appreciate the response and we at InstantAction make it a point to listen to our customers. Hope you enjoy the game!
For those of you that have already paid for the game at full price we'd like to offer you a refund on the difference if you are interested. Please feel free to contact me directly at samw@instantaction.com to get your refund or for any other feedback on the game itself.
InstantAction and GarageGames are very proud to announce the release of Marble Blast Mobile on the app store for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Marble Blast Mobile transforms your iPhone into a futuristic astrolab arena suspended high in the clouds. Race your marble through moving platforms and dangerous hazards, while collecting rare gems and power-up enhancements, in an effort to complete each course in record time. Play alone or compete head to head in multiplayer mode and race your friends to collect the most gems.
The game features 20 single player levels and 10 multiplayer levels.
If you are big into mobile gaming you may be happy to hear that Marble Blast is making it's way over to the iPhone and iPod Touch. This version of Marble Blast will feature gameplay with both tilt controls and on screen controls. The game includes 20 levels to complete via singleplayer and features best times. In addition to this you'll be playing multiplayer with 4 - 8 friends over 10 levels.
IsraeliRD is kicking off a VIP hosted Marble Blast Online Tournament and it looks like he's got a healthy number of people registered already.
THE RULES!
- Players will play in 1v1 matches for a total of the best of three on three different maps. All maps will be eventually used throughout the tournament so players will get a variety of maps to play, but doesn't mean they'll play on all maps. The maps are predetermined.
- Winner for each round is determined by whoever wins two of three games.
- Players can play at any time, but must have a VIP present to host the game. If the VIP lags either player, the players host with the VIP watching the games. All matches will be in private parties.
- If you can't play due to connections error but end up hosting, please make sure you do not lag other players. Ask others whether you lag so you have a general idea.
- However, there is a set end date for each round.
- At the end of the tournament, the top three players will receive the following:
--> First place: 1000 ActionTokens. --> Second place: 700 ActionTokens. --> Third place: 500 ActionTokens.
- There will be smaller hidden prizes worth 100 ActionTokens. The hidden prizes (and their winners) will be announced at the end of the tournament as well as the top 3 players. There will be up to 10 of these. The hidden prizes are actually achievements done during the tournament and (as an example) include the following:
--> Highest amount of points achieved in Map X (single game, any round). --> Most amount of times Player Y Mega Marbled in Map Z (single game, round #). --> etc.
There you have it. If a Marble Blast tourney sounds like your thing. Head to the forums and sign yourself up! MBO Tournament Sign-ups.
Yesterday we mentioned that WickedScepter wanted to see people take on IsraeliRD. As of yesterday we've already had some people knock him out of the map "Bowl".
Good job SonicWarrior1, agedude, DemonHunter240, and Fatal_Penguin.
This is an ongoing thing, so if you want some free tokens, find IsraeliRD and knock him out of bounds on Bowl. Take that IsraeliRD!
That's right, there's a bounty on IsraeliRD. WickedScepter is sick and tired of seeing IsraeliRD win in Marble Blast Online and is offering up 100 ActionTokens to anyone that can knock him out of the Bowl.
All you need to do is find IsraeliRD and WickedScepter on InstantAction, challenge IsraeliRD to a match and smack him down (meaning knock him out of Bowl). But make sure WickedScepter is there but he wants to see IsraeliRD fall! Get to it!
After Wicked witnesses the event, he'll notify us and the tokens will be yours. Good luck!
A couple weeks ago I challenged you guys to beat my top score on "Winding Road" and a few of you were able to. I have been bumped from 16 to 20. So I just wanted to highlight some of the names of people that are better than me on that level.
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