DustbinGames MarbleGP

[Brainsaw]

You're a real QA guy. I remember that I thought "noone will ever fall off the track as it is completely surrounded by walls", that's why I didn't bother to add the respawn triggers. But if you have QA this thought is neglegted soon as they find everything. I have updated the track, but it will take some time until it gets released (I am working on the Steam release at the moment).

[Brainsaw]

Today I finished my first Steam release (added achievements). The achievements will be available in the other versions as well, but this will take me some time. Release date for Steam is the 4th of November. Here is a link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3035300/MarbleGP/ . It's cool to see my game on that store

[Brainsaw]

Yesterday I received my Asus Rog Ally X so I was finally able to test MarbleGP on an AMD gfx chip, and it failed. This is now fixed. The shaders didn't compile at all, and while the NVidia and Intel drivers accepted the code AMD didn't. The new version is available on https://dustbin-online.de/, and I hope the steam update will also go live soon. Happy rolling.

[wizard4]

Yesterday I received my Asus Rog Ally X so I was finally able to test MarbleGP on an AMD gfx chip, and it failed. This is now fixed. The shaders didn't compile at all, and while the NVidia and Intel drivers accepted the code AMD didn't.

I can't imagine how the code would need to change. Was it a major change or some tweaking that fixed it?

[Brainsaw]

It was a minimal change in the vertex shader. Before it was

Code: Select all

vNormal = mat3(mWorld) * gl_Normal;

Which seemed to work fine, but mWorld is a 4x4 matrix, and the AMD implementation didn't like that so I had to add a method (taken from some place on the web):

Code: Select all

mat3 mat3_emu(mat4 m4) {
  return mat3(
      m4[0][0], m4[0][1], m4[0][2],
      m4[1][0], m4[1][1], m4[1][2],
      m4[2][0], m4[2][1], m4[2][2]);
}

(...)
vNormal = mat3_emu(mWorld) * gl_Normal;
(...)

And now it runs fine on my new handheld

[CuteAlien]

Hm, this looks familiar, I think I used that one as well in the past. Probably got lucky as my current users are all using NVidia. Interesting :-)
Thought in this specific case I send an extra matrix by now in my code as I have to handle non-uniformly scaled objects (so needs transpose of inverse matrix for normals).

[Brainsaw]

It's always special cases . I am not that deep into shader programming, just hacked together mine, but now it works on an additional system. I think I may update the OpenGL-ES shaders in the same way, just to be consistent

[wizard4]

Two screenshots.

[web site gone]

I did wonder why a missing marble didn't show up?

[Brainsaw]

It seems that the marble in second place is still on the track. Maybe (happens from time to time) the AI is stuck somewhere. I have added a respawn for the AI some time ago if they get stuck, but this doesn't always work.

However if you go to the race result screen the deficit of the marbles which have not yet finished is calculated from their previous deficits.

As you have lapped all opponents but one in this race and the best lap time is under 20 sec it rather seems that you were close to also lapping the last marble. By default the soundtrack after the race takes around 16 seconds whereafter the fade-out is started, so most likely the last marble is still racing.

If you want all marbles to finish the game (players and AI) you can select the "Customs" option in step 3 of the "New Game Wizard"


And modify the "Race Auto Finish" option


This setting will be stored and used for all future games.

[Brainsaw]

I have just released a new version of MarbleGP, I have added support for Track Packs. I am currently working on a track editor which will allow users to create new tracks and export them as track packs (which are just plain ZIP archives) to share them. The editor is not yet available (and it will most likely take some time), but the management of track packs is now available in the game, and I have added two track packs to my homepage: https://www.dustbin-online.de.

You can download the new version from there and from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3035300/MarbleGP/

Btw: for the Android version there is also a new version in the pipeline, but as Google and Android develeopment suck (my opinion) it doesn' come with the management functionality, but it has some new network function which makes sure that in a network game only tracks can be started which are available on all connected systems.

(edit) now the video on youtube with two of the new tracks is ready: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilSOQ3Ns_TI

[wizard4]

Don't mind me. I'm still around.

The video description gives a little more info. I wanted to see what hard and very hard modes with high braking was like.

Another QA sort of

[Brainsaw]

The only difference between the levels is the level of the AI marbles. As you pointed out in the video description "very hard" is all MarbleGP opponents. I have to admit that I also am not able to win against those when playing on the phone (at least with the touch controls), but on the PC or when using a gamepad I can outrun all of them .

Using the AI help will generally make you slower, but when playing with touch I recommend "Low" AI help (which automatically adjusts speed when approaching jumps).

For me (as I dont think the AI marbles are hard to beat) I have other goals. I have customized the names of the AI marbles, and my two favorite targets are:

- Play "Complext: Dustbin::Games" circuit for 10 laps in "Medium" level and put at least one lap between me and all the other marbles except for two: "Ralf Marblemann" and "Jonas Rollger"
- Play "Flat: Eight Crossing" for 30 laps in "Very Hard" and try to make sure the two marbles from above come in second and third, and also ensure that "Kenny Rollbert" (For some reason I don't like that one - even though the real person whose name I took and adjusted isn't bad at all) comes in last

Maybe I'll create a little video showing how I can achieve these feats (not the whole races though). But this requires real unfair playing, and I don't know if I should show that

[Brainsaw]

I have created and uploaded a video where I show for the first time how I play at the moment: unfair. I kick many of the AI marbles off the track a lot of times th emake sure my two favorite marbles finish in 2nd and 3rd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9XtLfIj5b0. I hope you like it

Btw: I'll switch back to FullHD as my video editing software has problems with synchronization of audio and video in 4k

[Brainsaw]

Over the last few days I started work on porting MarbleGP to the Raspberry Pi, and it does already run. Ok, it has no sound yet, but the game generally runs, and it runs fine in Full HD on my Raspberry Pi 5. Once I'm done with the rest (some menu updates, sound, find out why the rostrum is not showing) I am going to search for ways of releasing it in some repository or wherever. I'm also thinking about getting one of those gaming handhelds with a Pi and try it on that. Some screenshots (which look like the Android version):