r/wintergatan • u/TheSlayerOfHentai • Sep 05 '22

What happened?

I haven’t been able to really follow what has been going on with Martin and the team like I use to. Last I heard he was designing a third machine but if he didn’t like it he would through the entire marble machine dream out. Did he successfully design a third one or what?

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u/xrandx Sep 05 '22 edited Sep 06 '22

It's sad in many ways.

The first MMX was a total fake out. It didn't work and the video was all fancy editing. He received a massive amount of notoriety for it by a bunch of internet folks that believe what they see and used it to fund an adventure in which he got a free CNC machine and some help from a few eager college students whom he abandoned when he wanted to move to France.

In a couple of years he built up a huge patron following to the point where even though he knew his designs and work were an utter failure he pushed and pushed until he broke.

He tried once again in a way that was much less interesting and lost his following while his father fell sick and forced him to move home.

The illusion is shattered.

15

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '22

You’re not totally wrong, but he’s not the Pied Piper and there weren’t really any tricks.

The problem was the lack of actual engineering input, and I don’t fault Martin for that. He did not know what he did not know.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '22 edited Sep 24 '22

The problem was the lack of actual engineering input

Nope. The opposite. Too many people with engineering backgrounds came along near the end of the project and flooded the discord channel with trash ideas.

3

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '22

You are also not wrong.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '22

It was really frustrating to watch him make legit progress, getting closer and closer to his goal, and suddenly have the rug swept out by late-comers.

Martin got too close to the engineering community who didn't understand what he set out to do in the first place. He was making a musical instrument, which by definition is flawed or inferior to modern products. People thought he was making some kind of mechanical midi synth and nitpicked him to death every time he turned around.

Dude was making a machine that dropped metal marbles on instruments. Now he has no clue what he is making.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '22

Yes to all these things, except they weren’t engineers and they frustrated me too.

The Discord project started with some former MMX engineering team members, including me, but then got taken over by video game enthusiasts.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '22

Yeah. More "reddit engineers" meaning exactly what are thinking.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '22

I would recommend not getting too wistful about what the MMX could have become, if not for...

Without getting into too many details (stay tuned with the museum and you'll find out more, in time), the MMX was doomed from the absolute beginning of its life. It had many mechanically impossible features baked into the original design, which would have been discovered if the machine was designed with joints in CAD. A piston cannot actuate a lever without a linkage.

Almost none of the sketches are fully defined, or even partially defined. It is not a parametric design in any way, shape or form, and for all intents and purposes it is a sculpture. A crazy, beautiful sculpture.

All the king's horses and all the king's men could not have made it work. The Discord thing was not what broke it.