Ever since I started playing Marble Blast Ultra, one of my biggest wishes was to be able to play on maps from other games. That’s now been made possible.
Marble Blast Ultra uses a file format called .dif for its level geometry, which is a proprietary format used by the Torque Shader Engine (TSE), the game engine that powers Marble Blast Ultra. The .dif file format is more limited and less compatible than standard 3D file formats, and requires a special tool called Constructor to create and edit it.
I was telling some friends a few months ago about my wish to be able to import maps from other games into MBU and how much fun it would be, but converting common 3D file formats to .dif doesn’t always work correctly. We started discussing the possibility of adding support for standard 3D file formats, which would make the process much easier as it allows more flexibility and customization.
Just this month, RandomityGuy (a talented friend of mine), backported Collada and assimp support from Torque3D into TSE, which means it now accepts importing standard 3D file formats such as .dae, .obj, .fbx, and more. It even supports the .blend file format!
I’m currently working on porting Halo 3 maps to MBU, and I’m really excited. I’ll post an update once there’s good progress.
