This is a TAS of Super Monkey Ball Expert mode, playing all the way through the Expert, Expert Extra and Master levels.
For comparison, the best known non-TAS time for this category is 16:09 (RTA timing) by MilesSMB (as of 03/14)
  • Emulator used: Dolphin 4.0.2 64-bit
  • Aims for fastest completion time
  • Warp goals are used to skip levels
  • Death is used to complete bonus stages faster

Author comments:

byrz:

I started this project thanks to Barhunga, he asked if I want to TAS this game (knowing I'm TASing SMB2) and I decided to give it a try. Right in the beginning keylie joined the project too and the progress was really fast all the way to the end. I probably wouldn't have been able to do this without the huge effort from keylie and diddykong14 and the support from Barhunga, for keeping me sane. I had a really great time TASing this game, probably the best time I will have for a long while. It's a bit sad it's over now, I will really miss working with these people. :( Anyway, it feels very unreal I was able to handle a project like this (two of them at the same time, actually) and get it finished.

keylie:

I started to work on this TAS after seeing Nahoc’s amazing WIPs and the great potential this game has for TAS. After doing a few stages, however, I realised how hard TASing this game was, mainly because of manipulating collisions. Also, the level of optimisation on the human-made ILs was very high, it was difficult to beat the WR times on many stages.
Anyway, the TASers from SMB2 came to this game, and everything was much easier to handle. byrz did an amazing job to coordinate the TAS, by providing savestates and grabbing WR times and videos in a nice spreadsheet. I had issues with desyncs because I used the 32-bit version of Dolphin, and the movie file made to work on the 64-bit version, so the savestates were really useful.

Individual Levels

LevelTime leftNon-TAS IL WRComment
E128.3528.35Actually not easy
E226.4526.40.43 was thought to be really optimized. :o
E558.0658.05All previous TASes had .05 in this stage but we got .06 accidentally on real time
E655.7355.35The trick is going as early as possible
E751.0547.40One of the most popular levels, we improved the TAS record by 3 frames
E827.0127.00Pretty simple
E955.7555.66Nice improvement
E1027.46-Nothing special
E1123.4623.06This time was achieved twice due to a desync issue the first time...
E1255.6354.63Really nice
E1357.4157.36This strat ended up 2 frames faster
E1457.3557.28Nice bumper abuse
E1528.3828.38Fun way to goal
E1627.8527.83Going left in the start is much faster
E1727.9127.90Requires a precise bumper hit
E1821.8321.75Really painful to optimize but we did okay
E1957.6057.58Yay, saved a frame
E2027.85-Getting over this way is extremely hard
E2156.2356.23Zigzagging in the wire is faster in this case
E2254.6654.63Barely made it into the last letter but it ended up nice
E2327.9127.91Annoying level
E2443.0135.93We performed a new extremely hard strat that saved several seconds :)
E2524.7024.63Slightly altered the record strat
E2627.3327.33A simple falling stage
E2727.0027.00Seems pretty optimized
E2856.5856.53Wow, nice time save in such a simple stage
E2955.0154.98Yay, got the 55
E3057.65-Nothing special
E3128.3828.36Nice one frame cut
E3247.5646.43Grinding for longer in the first curve is slower
E3327.8327.76Cool optimization
E3426.9126.91Annoying level
E3556.1656.16Even more annoying level
E3626.3826.16Whoa, didn’t expect that time
E3727.2627.26Simple
E3827.5827.56It took a long time to reach the human record
E3926.4526.38Really simple and nice improvement
E4027.0027.00This time is surprisingly hard to achieve
E4128.1828.16Wow, improved a frame in such a short stage
E4258.6358.63Not as easy as it looks
E4523.8823.65Buggy camera makes it look like we slowed down :(
E4623.7323.41Looks pretty cool
E4826.0325.51Got 25.85 with a much cooler strat but whatever
E4928.4828.46Wow, didn’t expect to save a frame here
E5025.3624.35Found a new strat, one of the coolest in the TAS
EX126.0025.96Cool, got 26
EX226.7626.75Simple and short level
EX326.7126.71Too bad earlier cycle wasn’t possible :(
EX427.5627.43Wow, how did we improve 8 frames? :o
EX527.0127.00Nice 1 frame save
EX625.7625.76Yeah
EX723.5523.48Annoying level to optimize the beginning
EX827.6827.68Really annoying
EX921.4821.31Altered the strat and saved a nice amount of time
EX1026.7626.71Glitch goal!
M147.5646.45Wow, somehow saved a second :o
M258.4658.46Simple master strage
M354.4154.41Another simple master stage
M454.0553.08Abused the horrible collision of this stage for a new strat :)
M557.5557.50Nice time
M658.7158.71The easiest time to achieve in the run
M758.5658.56Annoying level
M857.5057.38Improvised a new strat in 5 minutes
M958.2358.13Nice and smooth
M1057.0857.03Cool time

Known improvements:

E50: ~0.5 seconds is lost in the transition out of this level. It is caused by the monkey getting between the goal posts again after already finishing the stage. This resets the transition animation and loses time. This was discovered too late.
EX7: byrz has done 23.58 (2 frames better) TAS of this stage after the movie was finished.
Note: The amount of rerecords in the .dtm file is 30-50% smaller than the real amount of rerecords done during the project.

Ilari: Changed time from 13:01.067 to 13:10.783 and cleared the alert.
Nahoc: Claimed for judging...
Nahoc: Accepting for publication.
RGamma Publishing...


TASVideoAgent
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Active player (388)
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The submission page says "DTM file starts from a savestate". It doesn't start from a savestate, I don't know why it says that.
Spacecow
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Both of these games are already so unbelievably well optimized, these are REALLY impressive improvements. (A "total saved" row would be nice for the tables.) Easy yes vote, and IMHO worthy of star consideration. Time to copy + paste this exact comment into the other thread! :)
Cooljay
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Very Fast paced TAS. Definitely was fun to watch. There was a lot of cool tricks in the movie that I saw. Yes vote from me.
Joined: 7/20/2010
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I'm surprised that some of the levels are frame perfect with the human players and that there's aren't any TAS-only timesaves for every level. Besides that, beautiful work and such clean execution. Any reason for gongon?
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stootab wrote:
Any reason for gongon?
We chose Gongon mainly to shock the Monkey Ball community. Other than that, there's no difference.
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The corrected time for this submission is: 13:10.78 Sync-verified on Dolphin tag 4.0.2 (dsp_*.bin files that came with the emulator) with "Super Monkey Ball.iso" (MD5: 391b8e620d8d924f150dc40343ced8a5, SHA1: 2cca02879db51ca2850949c7b2349cf470607cf5).
All syllogisms have three parts, therefore this is not a syllogism.
Spacecow
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stootab wrote:
I'm surprised that some of the levels are frame perfect with the human players and that there's aren't any TAS-only timesaves for every level.
These games have had some pretty active IL competition for over a decade, and it's important to note that pause buffering is possible (though unpopular) in the game. It's IMHO more surprising that any levels had 1 second+ improvements, but I suppose that's where the power of rerecording (as opposed to simple frame advance) really shines.
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How hex-friendly is this game, just out of interest?
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thatguy wrote:
How hex-friendly is this game, just out of interest?
Not very. If you hex edit a past stage, 30-40% of the stages after that will desync.
Joined: 3/4/2012
Posts: 74
So awesome! I've been waiting so long for this. That new E50 strat was amazing.
Patashu
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E50 strategy was godlike.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Tub
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Those are some pretty sick routes. About as sick as that poor monkey is going to get. Yes vote on both submissions.
m00
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Location: Calgary, Alberta
I've been waiting for a TAS of this game for a long time now. I didn't know that real world time attacks were so close to these times though... The kind of guts you've got to pull some of these shortcuts I wouldn't have thought to be possible.. I always have to shit myself to try to get to the next stage :P And because I suck at the games, I would love to see the beginning and intermediate stages completed too. Maybe a future movie will obsolete this to have all stages. Hopefully the entertainment value wouldn't be hurt by adding simpler stages.
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I used to watch some speedrunners play this game and so it was a really nice watch. :) Yes vote
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Patashu wrote:
E50 strategy was godlike.
I was thinking, "there's no way they could speed this level up." But you know what? They did.
Warepire
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Gongon is slightly annoying to listen to, but incredible TAS. Yes vote.
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I was grinning practically the entire time. This was awesome. Easiest yes vote I've made in ages, and IMO this should be starred. Great work, all of you!
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This was great! Yes vote!
Zarmakuizz
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I vote for moon!
PJ
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Amazing. Definitely yes vote.
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Why you can't break games guys? Yes =)
Current: Rayman 3 maybe? idk xD Paused: N64 Rayman 2 (with Funnyhair) GBA SMA 4 : E Reader (With TehSeven) TASVideos is like a quicksand, you get in, but you cannot quit the sand
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Holy hell that was impressive.
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Infreakingcredible! That is all.
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Sega doesn't disappoint when it comes to annoying sound effects and the most suicide inducing loud announcers in videogames. If you're into killing yourself and all that. If you weren't before, you might be now.
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