Just wanted to say its very cool looking at these fractals, although I cannot seem to continue where at the level I stopped at(if I didnt unlock all of them) if I close the game, start it up and select the last level I completed and attempt to continue where I left off, it will just repeat the level I selected instead of continuing from there to the next one to unlock.
This is absolute genius. This is exactly where games need to go- explore the unexplored! I love this concept, and the levels are absolutely gorgeous. Being able to explore fractals with no level bounds is a blast.
I have one major suggestion- Either have a multiple-goal system ( ie, gems from 'Marble Blast' ) that insentivizes players to explore more of the fractals, or make use of the vertical nature of some of these structures more. I'd love to see what could be done with a jump-button, or additional platforms added in to allow further exploration.
hi it would be really nice to add a mute button for the whole game or just music when you press escape for ease of use! And maybe add a keybind like f11 or 12 to go full screen (if there is a way already please tell me) . but aside from that this is really fun to play!
It might just be me, but my GTX 1050 Ti needed the game to be on the setting for "GTX 960 or similar" in order to consistently get over 10 FPS, even then the game averaged around 15-16, and is taking up 100% of my GPU according to task manager. Am I doing something wrong, or is the 1050 Ti a "potato" (I didn't see it listed, but I thought it would out-perform the 960)
EDIT: The game runs smoothly on potato setting but is now far too small for my display.
EDIT: After uninstalling the copy of McAfee that came with my PDF reader, turning off the Nvidia battery saving mode, and updating my drivers, I can get 25-30 FPS on the 960 mode, which is tolerable.
hit me up when the game is up on speedrun.com ~ also a commonly requested feature would be nice to have: a level selector, to beat the individual level times. love your work so far, keep doing what you do! :D
this game is stunning, very unique and satisfying, i think there should be an option to turn off retractions and shadows for computers on the lower end of the spectrum
Technically you can. In assets/frag.glsl, you can set 'SHADOWS_ENABLED' to '0' on line 34, but it's a little harder to play because you can't easily tell the height of the ball without them.
since speedrunning has been mentioned in the video i requested a Speedrun.com site for the game :) i also did a small speedrun myself:
Timing starts on hitting the play button and ends with reaching the flag in the latest Level (and i split on hitting flags). Of course there is a lot of improvement possible
Feel free to post your runs in the comments of my video, i'll hit you up once the speedrun.com page is online so you can submit your run there
Judging this as a demo, which it primarily is: this is incredibly awesome!
As a game: there needs to be some way, on the more sparse levels, for falling down to not be the end. The obvious answer is to give the marble some kind of upward mobility, but I'm thinking it might make sense to give the player the ability to morph the fractal to try to make the terrain more favorable; that'd fit the theme and show off the fractal collision tech.
Given that most people are going to be here to see the fractals and not really for a challenge, I strongly suggest the level select have all levels open from the start. As it is the level select sucks; you can't even go back to the level you left off from.
Any chance we could get a small fix to the level select? I can't get back to the Citadel without playing through the whole game. I just wanted to replay the fly-in so I could see where I was going again but alas and cannot click on the ??? to load it even though I've beaten up until Build Up Speed. Loving the concept though, rad what you've been able to accomplish here.
you should port it on mac too! it's a really fun game but my only windows computer is a crappy one and the graphics don't look so good when my imac is instead pretty good, i would like to see it available on mac
8 gb ram. 3.4 GHz intel core i5. 4k screen. graphic card: radeon pro 560 4096 MB. i don't know if it can be considered a high-end pc or not, let me know
I'd like to see a Mac port too. My Mac is a 2.9 GHz Intel Core i9, 32gb ram, Intel UHD Graphics 630. Numbers numbers eh... So, I've just run Grid 2 at 2880x1800 with everything to high or ultra. The benchmark came out with the following frame rates:
Average of 36.70
Minimum 18.95
Max of 43.72
For normal gameplay, I'd usually drop some of the options, like reflections, ambients and a couple others, but personally I think that's not too shabby. With more modest settings, 60fps isn't unreachable.
The game runs great in Wine. I can get between 30 and 60 fps consistently (locks onto these values and occasionally changes to the other) at 1600x900 resolution on a GTX 1060
The Timer goes slower on my friends PC even though we are both getting 60fps. It looks like the game runs slower too. We finish in about the same time but it takes me half the real life time to do it
Very interesting, I could run it at 1080p on my 2080 at least, I knew this new PC would be worth the investment 😅 If I could request a single thing, it would be an option for invert mouse... wait, there is source code... thanks!
cool fucking game, the only thing i would change is the flag to smoke or make the flag blow in the wind. Also, it would be cool to make a spiral level, sinkhole level, infinite staircase level, tunnel level, hot-wheel type loop level.
Beautiful concept and fun game, it was interesting reading the math behind it! However, I think you've alerted me to my need to upgrade my PC, since my old faithful ranked into potato quality =( (high end 7 years ago)
Lovely game, and I really like how you came up with something that uses the fractal tech perfectly!
Is there any chance that you could add a "Continue" option to the main menu, though? I completed two-thirds of the stages and needed to stop, and when I came back as far as I can tell I have to start over from the beginning.
When I try to run the game I get a popup that reads "ERROR Graphics card does not support shaders". I have a GTX 970, so I figured something else is causing the error, or can I just not run the game with a 970?
That may indicate your driver is out of date for the graphics card, see if you can upgrade it. If that doesn't fix it, then something strange is going on... Do websites like https://www.shadertoy.com/ work for you?
Okay. This game really blew my mind. Watching the levels evolve in real time and build out, mixed with the reflections and everything. WOW. This is some very impressive tech. I love Marble style games and this adds a new layer. That last level is so tough but I love it that way.
I don't know how, but this video got over 400 views and is my most viewed gaming video. If anyone of them is from here, please subscribe to my channel for more content!
Fantastic work! I can't seem to beat Around the Citadel, how the heck are you supposed to get around or climb this thing? Also a few notes for your next update :) - A mute option for music - The ability to jump - Short 3..2..1.. countdown, or you could even get rid of it - Controller support!
I think the main problem with the countdown is that it's based on your computers framerate. This means it will be slower the less FPS you have, and faster the more. I think that the creator adapted the countdown to 60 FPS, so on less powerful machines it will count slower. It would also be better if it counted faster, though :)
I may add a 30fps mode for slower machines. But yes, the game runs per-frame right now so that high scores are independent of your graphics performance.
Adapted for your language, then it would be accurate on all machines. I think this is especially important with highscores. To find the time since last frame, you might be able to record the system time in a variable, and then find the change. I'm not sure if this is possible using your engine and language, but it would be a great improvement. :)
I actually fixed this last night and updated the download. It now drops frames when the GPU can't keep up. So it gets choppier instead of slower when framerate goes down. The physics, scores, etc all stay consistent.
Thanks! To go around, try to stay on the top rail as long as possible. Once you pass the edge, you'll see the flag and it should be easy to fall down and roll to it. I did try controller support originally, but I felt like the camera was too difficult to control with an analog stick since it needs tilting up and down.
Marble Marcher is simple looking overall, having only the "stage" to look at, but still manages to be a treat for the eyes through the use of colors and fractal patterns. I may not be able to speak at length on the technical aspects of things, but I can definitely appreciate a unique experience such as this.
Good job on this, devs. People should do more with this idea.
Thanks for playing this! I have to admit It was painful to watch the low fps 😅 Definitely run it at a lower resolution if you do play it later on. The frame rate is certainly more important than high resolution for gameplay.
Going by your game's settings, I have to run it like I don't have a dedicated GPU in order to maintain absolute 60 fps, and at that point it looks like someone crumpled up a paper then tried to flatten it back out. That felt offensive to the game so, in the video, I was running it at 720 to balance gameplay/fps and visuals so people got more of a feel for the experience.
A rollerball game based on spatial fractals (Menger's sponges and Kochs's snowflakes as far as I could identify, maybe there're also Mandelbrot and Julia sets and more) is a rather innovative and whimsical design notwithstanding it's too performance-consuming (my GTX 940M is fully engaged under the lowest resolution to just sustain a somewhat reasonable frame rate).In my opinion, maybe it's not necessary to keep such a high resolution and iteration in order to unleash the graphical burden.
Also, a RESTART button is urgently needed due to its easy besiegement. It's annoying to exit to the main menu and re-enter the level due to the complicated transition procedure. Additionally, re-entering levels should allow players access the recently UNQUALIFIED ones while it currently keeps (actually should NOT be) the last QUALIFIED ones replayable which makes players had to re-qualify those levels again.
Finally, I guess that the marble in the gameplay is driven by a horizontal stable physical drag (it's confirmed after I checked the code). Perhaps using torque instead of drag will make rolling controls much easier and smoother(however it may disable air movements so a combination of both worths considering).
Generally, it's really a fantastic try though there're still some aspects to be improved.
The graphical requirements are high, but it really is necessary for this type of game. I've optimized as much as I can already.
You can restart instantly by pressing 'R' or right-clicking (it is listed in the controls).
I do actually use a combination of torque and drag already, you have tighter controls when on the ground and looser control in the air. The problem is that fractals are really bumpy so you often find yourself in the air more than you'd like.
I would still like it if from the Levels selector you could enter the level unlocked+1. So the first uncompleted level. It maybe should also continue increasing the levels from there. Or have a button on the countdown that switches to increasing levels mode.
Good to know. These RTX cards must be pretty crazy! I can't even get 60 on my GTX-1080 in that resolution. I'll see what I can do about full screen options as well.
Just to let you know it works quite well on wine 3.7 (stock ubuntu package, latest) as well as wine-staging 4.0-rc3.
Tried on GTX 980TI and windowed 1600x900 gets 60fps yet there are no ultra wide resolutions available to test more (fps counter not visible). Mine is 2560x1080.
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fuckin brilliant
Just wanted to say its very cool looking at these fractals, although I cannot seem to continue where at the level I stopped at(if I didnt unlock all of them) if I close the game, start it up and select the last level I completed and attempt to continue where I left off, it will just repeat the level I selected instead of continuing from there to the next one to unlock.
Just updated with a fix for this.
This is absolute genius. This is exactly where games need to go- explore the unexplored! I love this concept, and the levels are absolutely gorgeous. Being able to explore fractals with no level bounds is a blast.
I have one major suggestion- Either have a multiple-goal system ( ie, gems from 'Marble Blast' ) that insentivizes players to explore more of the fractals, or make use of the vertical nature of some of these structures more. I'd love to see what could be done with a jump-button, or additional platforms added in to allow further exploration.
Fantastic demo.
Looks suspicious on virustotal. Is this a false positive? https://imgur.com/a/zbJ0FuY
Yeah, must be false positive. It's open source if you're really paranoid and want to build it yourself :P
I wonder if it would be at all possible to impliment adaptive resolution scaling to keep a steady 60 FPS, it'd be awesome if thats possible.
Might be possible, but I think it would be very distracting.
also probably really hard to implement but a monkey inside the ball would be funny asf and make the game funny too (it should be optional though)
Might be too close to copyright infringement, haha
hi it would be really nice to add a mute button for the whole game or just music when you press escape for ease of use! And maybe add a keybind like f11 or 12 to go full screen (if there is a way already please tell me) . but aside from that this is really fun to play!
Just updated, you can now mute the music.
It might just be me, but my GTX 1050 Ti needed the game to be on the setting for "GTX 960 or similar" in order to consistently get over 10 FPS, even then the game averaged around 15-16, and is taking up 100% of my GPU according to task manager. Am I doing something wrong, or is the 1050 Ti a "potato" (I didn't see it listed, but I thought it would out-perform the 960)
EDIT: The game runs smoothly on potato setting but is now far too small for my display.
EDIT: After uninstalling the copy of McAfee that came with my PDF reader, turning off the Nvidia battery saving mode, and updating my drivers, I can get 25-30 FPS on the 960 mode, which is tolerable.
I have a 1050 ti to and I get 60-30 fps on the "980" preference. Not sure what would cause it to go to 10 unless the cpu held it back.
It shouldn't my CPU was only at 5% usage and is a 7th gen core i7
hit me up when the game is up on speedrun.com ~ also a commonly requested feature would be nice to have: a level selector, to beat the individual level times. love your work so far, keep doing what you do! :D
That feature is already in the game, no?
yea its in the main menu
Cool game, but when the levels started moving i started to feel sick
this game is stunning, very unique and satisfying, i think there should be an option to turn off retractions and shadows for computers on the lower end of the spectrum
Technically you can. In assets/frag.glsl, you can set 'SHADOWS_ENABLED' to '0' on line 34, but it's a little harder to play because you can't easily tell the height of the ball without them.
Wow. This is great. But my laptop is actually worse than a potato.
this is so amazing, great work
since speedrunning has been mentioned in the video i requested a Speedrun.com site for the game :)
Timing starts on hitting the play button and ends with reaching the flag in the latest Level (and i split on hitting flags). Of course there is a lot of improvement possiblei also did a small speedrun myself:
Feel free to post your runs in the comments of my video, i'll hit you up once the speedrun.com page is online so you can submit your run there
I think in-game time should be used (or sum of times for a full run). Otherwise different hardware can get you different times.
thx, i'll look into that
at least on my hardware the timer seems to run in realtime
Yes, the last number is frames instead of milliseconds.
since there has been a lot of interest in speedrunning the game
but the speedrun.com page is not online yet, we decided to already open a Discord for it.
Marble Marcher Speedrunning Discord: https://discord.gg/r3XrJxH
Judging this as a demo, which it primarily is: this is incredibly awesome!
As a game: there needs to be some way, on the more sparse levels, for falling down to not be the end. The obvious answer is to give the marble some kind of upward mobility, but I'm thinking it might make sense to give the player the ability to morph the fractal to try to make the terrain more favorable; that'd fit the theme and show off the fractal collision tech.
Given that most people are going to be here to see the fractals and not really for a challenge, I strongly suggest the level select have all levels open from the start. As it is the level select sucks; you can't even go back to the level you left off from.
This is absolutely amazing! I can't wait to see what else you can do with this!
Here, I made a video:
Any chance we could get a small fix to the level select? I can't get back to the Citadel without playing through the whole game. I just wanted to replay the fly-in so I could see where I was going again but alas and cannot click on the ??? to load it even though I've beaten up until Build Up Speed. Loving the concept though, rad what you've been able to accomplish here.
you should port it on mac too! it's a really fun game but my only windows computer is a crappy one and the graphics don't look so good when my imac is instead pretty good, i would like to see it available on mac
How good is your mac? I've seen lots of people saying their iMac is good, but it ends up being terrible.
8 gb ram. 3.4 GHz intel core i5. 4k screen. graphic card: radeon pro 560 4096 MB. i don't know if it can be considered a high-end pc or not, let me know
I'd like to see a Mac port too. My Mac is a 2.9 GHz Intel Core i9, 32gb ram, Intel UHD Graphics 630. Numbers numbers eh... So, I've just run Grid 2 at 2880x1800 with everything to high or ultra. The benchmark came out with the following frame rates:
For normal gameplay, I'd usually drop some of the options, like reflections, ambients and a couple others, but personally I think that's not too shabby. With more modest settings, 60fps isn't unreachable.
The game runs great in Wine. I can get between 30 and 60 fps consistently (locks onto these values and occasionally changes to the other) at 1600x900 resolution on a GTX 1060
on what version of Wine? I get "MarbleMarcher.exe: cannot execute binary file". Wine 3.0.4, macOS 10.14
The Timer goes slower on my friends PC even though we are both getting 60fps. It looks like the game runs slower too. We finish in about the same time but it takes me half the real life time to do it
Hmm... I'll investigate. Does it make any difference if you turn V-sync on or off?
I didn't even know you could turn it off.. But we were both locked at 60
Clever! Consider having the marble change in size: it would really show off the tech.
Very interesting, I could run it at 1080p on my 2080 at least, I knew this new PC would be worth the investment 😅 If I could request a single thing, it would be an option for invert mouse... wait, there is source code... thanks!
cool fucking game, the only thing i would change is the flag to smoke or make the flag blow in the wind. Also, it would be cool to make a spiral level, sinkhole level, infinite staircase level, tunnel level, hot-wheel type loop level.
Well, it's all fractals. If you can figure out a type of fractal in those shapes then you got a possibility.
Beautiful concept and fun game, it was interesting reading the math behind it! However, I think you've alerted me to my need to upgrade my PC, since my old faithful ranked into potato quality =( (high end 7 years ago)
Lovely game, and I really like how you came up with something that uses the fractal tech perfectly!
Is there any chance that you could add a "Continue" option to the main menu, though? I completed two-thirds of the stages and needed to stop, and when I came back as far as I can tell I have to start over from the beginning.
You added it, thank you!
When I try to run the game I get a popup that reads "ERROR Graphics card does not support shaders". I have a GTX 970, so I figured something else is causing the error, or can I just not run the game with a 970?
That may indicate your driver is out of date for the graphics card, see if you can upgrade it. If that doesn't fix it, then something strange is going on... Do websites like https://www.shadertoy.com/ work for you?
Updating Windows fixed it. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Awesome game, just needs a better level select (which it should show in between levels) and a less ugly flag. And of course more levels!
Wow - this is incredible
Reminds me a bit of the 3D mind bending of MacSwear: http://wakaba.c3.cx/sup/kareha.pl/1131061133/
Okay. This game really blew my mind. Watching the levels evolve in real time and build out, mixed with the reflections and everything. WOW. This is some very impressive tech. I love Marble style games and this adds a new layer. That last level is so tough but I love it that way.
Beat my times!
1 00:08:19
2 00:27:05
3 00:37:47
4 00:26:34
5 00:45:35
6 00:13:47
7 00:34:20
8 00:10:22
9 00:25:09
10 00:18:12
11 00:13:33
12 00:43:42
13 00:11:29
14 00:36:58
15 00:43:24
The most exhausting video I've made so far. And also a lot of fun!
I don't know how, but this video got over 400 views and is my most viewed gaming video. If anyone of them is from here, please subscribe to my channel for more content!
Fantastic work! I can't seem to beat Around the Citadel, how the heck are you supposed to get around or climb this thing?
Also a few notes for your next update :)
- A mute option for music
- The ability to jump
- Short 3..2..1.. countdown, or you could even get rid of it
- Controller support!
I think the main problem with the countdown is that it's based on your computers framerate. This means it will be slower the less FPS you have, and faster the more. I think that the creator adapted the countdown to 60 FPS, so on less powerful machines it will count slower. It would also be better if it counted faster, though :)
I may add a 30fps mode for slower machines. But yes, the game runs per-frame right now so that high scores are independent of your graphics performance.
If you have your timer like so
float time = 0;
ThisRunsEveryFrame() {
time = time + tineSinceLastFrame;
}
Adapted for your language, then it would be accurate on all machines. I think this is especially important with highscores. To find the time since last frame, you might be able to record the system time in a variable, and then find the change. I'm not sure if this is possible using your engine and language, but it would be a great improvement. :)
I actually fixed this last night and updated the download. It now drops frames when the GPU can't keep up. So it gets choppier instead of slower when framerate goes down. The physics, scores, etc all stay consistent.
Nice!
Thanks! To go around, try to stay on the top rail as long as possible. Once you pass the edge, you'll see the flag and it should be easy to fall down and roll to it. I did try controller support originally, but I felt like the camera was too difficult to control with an analog stick since it needs tilting up and down.
For the controller support, you could use JoytoKey. Then you can map the buttons to key inputs.
This is amazing!
Marble Marcher is simple looking overall, having only the "stage" to look at, but still manages to be a treat for the eyes through the use of colors and fractal patterns. I may not be able to speak at length on the technical aspects of things, but I can definitely appreciate a unique experience such as this.
Good job on this, devs. People should do more with this idea.Thanks for playing this! I have to admit It was painful to watch the low fps 😅 Definitely run it at a lower resolution if you do play it later on. The frame rate is certainly more important than high resolution for gameplay.
Going by your game's settings, I have to run it like I don't have a dedicated GPU in order to maintain absolute 60 fps, and at that point it looks like someone crumpled up a paper then tried to flatten it back out. That felt offensive to the game so, in the video, I was running it at 720 to balance gameplay/fps and visuals so people got more of a feel for the experience.
Fantastic work.
A rollerball game based on spatial fractals (Menger's sponges and Kochs's snowflakes as far as I could identify, maybe there're also Mandelbrot and Julia sets and more) is a rather innovative and whimsical design notwithstanding it's too performance-consuming (my GTX 940M is fully engaged under the lowest resolution to just sustain a somewhat reasonable frame rate).In my opinion, maybe it's not necessary to keep such a high resolution and iteration in order to unleash the graphical burden.
Also, a RESTART button is urgently needed due to its easy besiegement. It's annoying to exit to the main menu and re-enter the level due to the complicated transition procedure. Additionally, re-entering levels should allow players access the recently UNQUALIFIED ones while it currently keeps (actually should NOT be) the last QUALIFIED ones replayable which makes players had to re-qualify those levels again.
Finally, I guess that the marble in the gameplay is driven by a horizontal stable physical drag (it's confirmed after I checked the code). Perhaps using torque instead of drag will make rolling controls much easier and smoother(however it may disable air movements so a combination of both worths considering).
Generally, it's really a fantastic try though there're still some aspects to be improved.
Thanks for the feedback!
I would still like it if from the Levels selector you could enter the level unlocked+1. So the first uncompleted level. It maybe should also continue increasing the levels from there. Or have a button on the countdown that switches to increasing levels mode.
All it needs is more resolutions, true fullscreen, and a flag like `--screensaver` to launch it straight into screensaver mode.
What do you mean by "true fullscreen". It should support fullscreen already...
And what resolutions do you need? Smaller ones or bigger ones? I don't think bigger resolutions would run fast enough on any existing hardware.
perhaps 1440p? My 2080ti runs 1080p at around 100-120fps. Though the game seems to cap at 120
My monitor is 1440p. https://i.imgur.com/0eeVvTX.png
He probably means exclusive fullscreen, the fullscreen in the game is like borderless windowed.
Yeah, I'd also love to see support for Fullscreen Exclusive mode (aka: a way to avoid interference by the DWM under Windows Vista, 7, 8 and 10).
Good to know. These RTX cards must be pretty crazy! I can't even get 60 on my GTX-1080 in that resolution. I'll see what I can do about full screen options as well.
Oooh, looks cool! Is there a Linux build?
That would be sweet! Linux port would rock :)
It is currently being ported: https://github.com/HackerPoet/MarbleMarcher/pull/1
So I may have something for Linux and Mac soon.
Just to let you know it works quite well on wine 3.7 (stock ubuntu package, latest) as well as wine-staging 4.0-rc3.
Tried on GTX 980TI and windowed 1600x900 gets 60fps yet there are no ultra wide resolutions available to test more (fps counter not visible). Mine is 2560x1080.
Good game, man!
This is awesome! Reminds me of seeing DOOM running on my home pc for the 1st time. I wonder will fractals find more common use in games in the future.