Thrills Killa from K1lla’s Xbox Domain has informed us that there will soon be a patch available that will bring new content to the smash arcade hit Marble Blast Ultra. Go after the jump to find out just how this patch will affect the game.
Thrills Killa recently interviewed Pat Wilson, the lead programmer for Marble Blast Ultra. The interview revealed that a patch will be arriving soon that will fix some known bugs and improve gameplay. The patch will fix:
Friends Leaderboard bug: This was reported very early on and will be fixed.
Crash exploit: There is a way to crash a server on several maps. This will be fixed.
Removing the advantage of dropping during a multiplayer game to protect your rating. This is very destructive behavior for the game because it breaks up servers. It also allows the host to unfairly effect the game for all other people in the server should they decide to kick the server back to the lobby to prevent a stat hit. We brainstormed many solutions to this and discussed it quite a bit, because we don’t want to provide a bad play experience for people who want to leave a server for other reasons. The implementation we chose, I feel, strikes a good balance, and I think it will have a positive effect on the game.
When you re-spawn in a multiplayer game, you should be facing the gems.
The HUD should inform everyone of voice activity so that abusive players can be identified by the host and kicked from the game.
Shadowing on the text for the scoreboard on the HUD to make it more readable on all levels.
Also of note is the addition of a whopping eleven multiplayer maps! Yes, you read right: 11 maps! All for the whopping cost of ZERO Microsoft Points! Downloadable content doesn’t get much better than that, folks! Pat Wilson also describes the multiplayer maps in a little more detail:
"I won’t list them all, but we got to really play with the gameplay even though we kept the game-type the same. Playing “Spires” is very, very different than all other multiplayer levels. All the gems are at the top of high-friction covered spires and platforms, and all the powerups are on the ground. The strategy is totally different, and it requires players to improve their flying, falling, and marble control skills. Alex also crafted a multiplayer level, “Bowl”, that mimics the skiing movement that makes single player levels like “Black Diamond” so much fun. “Blast Club” is another level in the style of “King of the Marble” but with a larger, more varying playing surface, and a different central conflict point."
Wilson did not reveal a release date for the patch, but instead said that:
It is really important to us that this update does nothing but improve the experience people have with Marble Blast Ultra. Testing these fixes is of the utmost importance and is something we are taking very seriously.
Wilson also said that Marble Blast Ultra fans will soon be able to download gamerpics.
Now THIS is how downloadable content should be done… eleven new maps for free that will seriously change the way the game is played. We should all applaud the MBU team’s hard work.
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