(Link to video)
Super Monkey Ball is a physics based arcade-“platformer” released in 2001 for Nintendo GameCube. The game features 3 difficulties, Beginner, Advanced and Expert, each with their own set of levels greatly varying in difficulty. The difficulty chosen for this TAS is expert, also considered as the main category of this game, covering the largest amount of content out of any difficulty. The game engine has no real glitches, rendering the TAS to be purely about optimizing the movement to beat the floors as quickly as possible.
This TAS is a major improvement over the currently published TAS of this category, Super Monkey Ball “Expert through Master”, playing all the way through the 50 Expert, 10 Expert Extra and 10 Master levels. The final in-game time achieved in this TAS is 4:01.733, improving 938 frames or 15.633 seconds over the previous TAS.

Objectives

  • Emulator used: Dolphin 4.0.2 64-bit
  • Aims for the fastest in-game time
  • Warp goals are used to skip levels
  • Death is used to complete bonus stages faster

Emulator version

We have decided to use this version because it’s the one we are used to, and no newer version has known advantages for TASing this game.

Timing

The previous TAS of this category aimed for the fastest completion time. We have since decided that in-game time is the timing method that matters most in Super Monkey Ball TASing, in terms of measuring quality and how optimal the TAS is. It also translates well between different emulator versions with varying loading times; for example, the newer versions have loading times more accurate compared to original hardware, making them longer. The in-game time is measured by converting the completion time of each level into the number of frames, then converting the total framecount back to normal time, each frame representing 0.01666… (1/60) seconds. We would also like to point out that a run being optimal in in-game time is not mutually exclusive with a run being optimal in real time or TASVideos timing and that we also did optimize every aspect outside of in-game time, emulator glitches and sync issues being the only occasional limiting factor.

Warps

A few of the levels in this game have more than one goal, in which case the additional goals are either green or red. In expert mode, green goals skip over 1 floor and red goals skip over 2 floors. In this TAS, 5 floors are skipped with these warp goals, which means 65 out of the 70 total possible floors in the difficulty are beaten.

Deaths

Falling out in bonus levels instantly finishes the level, making it a much faster way of completing bonus levels. This trick is used in all of the 5 bonus levels in the difficulty. This doesn’t cost any lives either, so it’s debatable whether they count as “deaths”.

Techniques used

This game is purely about movement, the analog stick being the only control there is to move the monkey around. Even with an engine this simple and restricted, there are many techniques you can use to save time.

Boosting

Boosting is a movement technique used to accelerate the monkey on flat surfaces. It is performed by alternating between the two up-diagonal inputs (up-left, up-right) on varying paces. It is most commonly used right when a floor starts, being much faster than simply holding straight up. Boosting on ground is useful all the way until your speed is around 51 mph or more. At that point just following the shortest possible route is faster. Boosting is also especially helpful in most upward slopes.

Clipping

In mid-air, the monkey accelerates much faster than when rolling on the ground. Clipping is used to gain this precious air time. However, clipping too high up slows you down more than it helps so it’s mostly useful when you clip in angles such low that you stay barely above ground. Clipping is also used to launch the monkey into the air to pull off shortcuts in some floors. Clips can be performed from many kind of edges, corners and bumps.

Grinding

In order to cross over certain curvy bridges while also preserving a high velocity, you can perform a grind on the inner edge of the curve. This technique is usually very hard to perform but saves a nice amount of time. Grinding does not save time if the radius of the curve is so big you could cross the bridge full speed anyway.

Air boosting

Slowly alternating up-left and up-right midair increases the distance you cover before landing. However, it makes you fall slower, so it should only be used when really necessary.

Fast falling

Opposite to air boosting, using no input or light analog inputs in midair increases your falling speed, saving time in falling stages. Completely releasing the analog stick is the fastest possible way to fall down. Doing light analog inputs or straight down input is also faster than regular “strong” inputs.

Sidegoaling

Normally, you are supposed to break the goal tape by physically moving through it. However, there is a very small window where the tape can also break if you go through the “sidegoal” above the tape, next to the party ball in a specific way.

Glitch goaling

The party ball located in the goal of each floor has some interesting behaviour. Sometimes it can pull you around in unexpected ways if you touch it with certain speed and angles. In some cases, this behaviour is abused to make goaling possible at all. The approach angle might otherwise be too extreme to allow breaking the tape. Glitch goals are so sketchy that the replay function of the game will not even break the goal tape in replays if you finished with a glitch goal.

Collision manipulation

This technique is more of a TAS-only technique. It consists of testing many kinds of analog input combinations to get desirable collision from any solid surface, in order to get perfect clips and shortcuts.

Author comments

byrz

I have TASed Monkey Ball 1 and 2 since summer 2013. I’ve done countless individual level TASes and six full TAS runs of the games prior to this project. The previous TAS of this category from spring 2014 was a big success, and at the time it was made, it was considered near-perfect. However, by finishing 4 more TAS runs (beginner and advanced for SMB1 and 2) I realized I have gained even more experience in TASing this game. In November 2014, I decided to start an improvement project for this category, without any idea that more than one second could be saved over the first TAS.
Over 10 months of hard work (+ a summer break) has proved that the category still had insane potential for improving apparent perfection. We saved over 15 seconds by improving 55 out of 65 possible floors; at no point could anybody have predicted half of the improvements we managed. This TAS is perhaps the single piece of work I’m most proud of I have ever worked on, it was absolutely worth the close to a year’s effort and hard work it took to finish this monster.
CyclopsDragon joined this project after slightly less than one third of the TAS was finished. His effort has been a tremendous help through the project and even though his inputs in the final recording are more sparse than mine, he worked just as hard as I did for the most part, sometimes even more.

CyclopsDragon

I started TASing Monkey Ball games for fun in the summer of 2014, focusing more on stunts than times and scores. Byrz brought me onto this project in January of 2015, and after working with him for a while, I realised how difficult it was to keep up with his ridiculous standards of optimization, since his understanding of the original Super Monkey Ball engine is much deeper than mine. This whole TAS project has been a really rewarding experience, between bouncing ideas off of each other and random discoveries of inexplicable, yet helpful collisions. I’m very happy to be able to say that I was able to help with this project, because the end result is absolutely astounding.

Individual levels

FloorOld TASNew TASFrames savedComments
E128.3528.350Looking deceivingly easy, pulling off this time is not a simple task
E226.4526.461Saving this frame was very unexpected. Previous TASes of this floor started from .40, climbing up one frame at a time up to this point, each frame save being more unexpected than the previous
E558.0658.102Pretty simple time save that wasn’t found at the time making the first TAS
E655.7355.730This is one of the only floors of the TAS where we had to use the inputs from the previous TAS because it turned out to be an absolutely insane time to match
E751.0552.1063Completely crazy new strat was pulled off. This strat was thought to be simply impossible, with previous attempts at TASing it falling short. With the magic of perfect movement optimization, we barely managed to pull this off
E827.0127.010One of the simpler floors
E955.7555.835We managed to save a bunch of frames with a sexy sidegoal finish
E1027.4627.502This simple 2 second bonus stage took a huge amount of rerecords compared to its size, but a 2 frame improvement was pulled off just before giving up looking for time saves
E1123.4623.481Completely different route, one frame faster. The left railing has strange collision, giving you way more speed than it should. Briefly visiting it allowed this strat to happen
E1255.6355.662Managed to save 2 frames with this clean run
E1357.4157.431Surprising frame to be saved in such a simple floor
E1457.3557.414By abusing these poor bumpers, we pulled off a new strat no one even imagined before
E1528.3828.380Funny looking goal where you get stuck in the goal post until being forced through the goal tape
E1627.8527.861Another unexpected time save for a short floor like this
E1727.9127.910Cycle-based floor with a very precise bumper hit
E1821.8322.0111Extremely simple looking floor, yet there are many little tricks used to make it faster. Amount of time saved was somewhat insane
E1957.6057.653Who would have thought that simply mirroring the normal strat would end up 3 frames faster?
E2027.8527.903Not much to say about this, a minor movement difference produced a nice time save
E2156.2356.283Never expected to see this improvement
E2254.6654.787Prime example of how the game handles collision at very high velocities... if you manipulate it right, that is. Crazy time
E2327.9127.931Yet another magical frame save for a short and simple floor
E2443.0151.86531Holy crap. A HUGE time save, saving more than half of all the time saved in the TAS, thanks to a huge new shortcut being found after researching and TASing this floor for a long time
E2524.7025.0119Dwarfed by the previous floor, this time save is still considered huge. Instead of skipping over the 2nd and 3rd “dip” and then flying straight to the goal from the 4th one, we managed to use the 1st and 2nd ones combined with a nice clip from a peak for this crazy run
E2627.3327.362We found out how much fast falling matters in this floor and then found a nice way of inputting the moves for this time save
E2757.0057.032By finding a slightly nicer set of clips, we managed to cut off 2 frames
E2856.5856.8315Instantly dropping off to get clips from every edge on the way to the goal ended up a really nice time save
E2955.0155.2011One of the cycle-based floors where going later allowed us to preserve more velocity, bringing us a crazy time save
E3057.6557.682Frames were saved for no apparent reason other than lucky collision
E3128.3828.380Very short and simple
E3247.5647.687The longest level in the TAS, pretty nice time save. Grinding only helps in the second curve, in the first one it would only slow you down. The shortcut used requires a very strange collision
E3327.8327.851Simple shortcut, unexpected frame save
E3426.9126.910This floor is a massive taunt. Due to the cycle, you can only get the right collision on specific timing, even if you can make it there one frame earlier you are awarded with a worse collision. In addition to this, the monkey is incredibly close to breaking the tape a framer earlier
E3556.1656.234This time save is kind of nuts. The floor has some of the wonkiest collisions to abuse
E3626.3826.507One of the cooler strats. The ending of this one includes a collision that defies all the logic in the universe. Just discovering the collision was an extremely lucky thing to happen
E3727.2627.281No one could have ever imagined that there was a frame to be saved in this floor, but there was
E3827.5827.612Very nice clean time save that no one expected
E3926.4526.567A new speed bump was found in this floor, allowing this time save to happen
E4027.0027.000Finally, the last bonus floor in this game. No one likes you
E4128.1828.201No idea how this floor had one more frame to be saved. Sometimes things get crazy with the party ball giving these sketchy finishes
E4258.6358.630This red warp goal is supposed to be hard to reach, right?
E4523.8824.039Very hard strat to pull off. We also found that you can squeeze some crazy speed out of the left edge of the second bridge
E4623.7323.836Some impressive collision manipulation at high speeds brought us a nice time save
E4826.0326.083Very annoying level to TAS, attempting the shortcut gives you crap 99.5% of time. Happy with this time save, though
E4928.4828.512Last time we saved one frame by abusing one bumper. This time we saved two frames by abusing two bumpers
E5025.3625.5310Crazy how many more frames we squeezed out of this insane strat. People generally seem to like seeing this strat
EX126.0026.032Thoroughly testing different clips on this level helped us save these frames
EX226.7626.802Another little nice time save
EX326.7127.8870Wow. Never imagined you can actually finish this floor in a cycle this early. Definitely one of the most unexpected new strats in this TAS. Also got a very cool finish with a record breaking septuple “Yay!” from Aiai (unconfirmed)
EX427.5627.602Managed to finish with a sidegoal by touching the revolving platform very lightly on the way down
EX527.0127.105Another very unexpected new strat for a nice time save
EX625.7625.781This was yet another of those floors where the previous time was considered maxed, but we wanted to prove it wrong
EX723.5523.8116Another cycle based floor where going a bit later actually helped us preserve much higher velocity with an amazingly good setup
EX827.6827.701The unexpected frame saves go on and on. Aiai decided to disregard the fact that he is crossing over a gap, going into the goal without clipping
EX921.4821.533This floor has the longest flat straight surface in this run. Optimizing that simple platform allowed us to save these frames. The ending of this strat is very tough to pull off
EX1026.7626.919A new way to get hit towards the goal at very high velocity was found. We managed to do it with a fancy new angle as well
M147.5648.4352We found a very strange collision on the far-right corner of the moving blocks on this floor. This was abused along with very low clips from the corners of blocks to produce this insanely huge time save
M258.4658.481A frame was saved on this level by dropping off very slightly earlier than before, also making goaling barely possible
M354.4154.452We found a specific way to climb the hill that allowed us to preserve slightly more velocity, awarding us with these frames
M454.0554.2311After abusing this level’s strange collision, we clipped high off of a platform and hit the back side of the rolled-up carpet on a frame where the angle redirected us straight into the goal
M557.5557.582We used a new strat involving very precise collision to get hit straight towards the goal rather than rebounding off of a platform on the left
M658.7158.710Getting this time was the most trivial task of the whole TAS
M758.5658.581We recently found out that an unknown Japanese player got this time in 2008 with an extremely lucky goal. Matching that time was very challenging, even in TAS
M857.5057.564We used a new strategy with an earlier hit into the air that makes it just barely possible to squeeze by the goal post
M958.2358.251Very similar to the previous TAS of this level, we altered the ending slightly to save this frame
M1057.0857.101Similarly to the previous floor, we managed to improve the old setup with careful optimization

Known improvements:

In terms of in-game time, there are absolutely no currently-known improvements for this category, rendering the TAS to be optimal in terms of gameplay execution.
Around 19 frames were lost in TASVideos timing due to syncing issues when hex-editing past floors and an emulator glitch where the emulator randomly fails to detect the input device for a single frame. To fix the sync issues, we had to delay few level transitions by 1-5 frames (another way would be redoing months of work). To get around the input drop glitch, we had to visit the pause menu for 3 frames to force the input drop not happen during gameplay, which would have cost movement velocity. The glitch happened twice during the TAS (floors E9 and E46). These frame losses did not cost any in-game time, so it doesn’t affect the gameplay quality of the TAS.

Suggested screenshot:

Frame 4048

Samsara: Judging~
Samsara: This was a fantastic improvement! After watching the published run and this run back to back, the improvements were clear. As many have stated in the thread, Floor 24 was a particular highlight, but every other stage looked awesome as well.
Feedback has been unanimously positive, and it's all well-warranted. Technical quality is astounding, with well over half the stages being improved, even if it's just a frame or two. Therefore, accepting as an improvement to the published run!
Fog: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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Congratulations Alan and Bryz, you sexy beasts. This is the TAS the Super Monkey Ball community deserves. E7, E24, EX3 and M1 were some of the sickest strats humanity knows (I lost my face after E24.) Voting Yes and recomending for Stars.
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Holy crap, you utterly destroyed Exam C and Wind. I love you.
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Consistently entertaining, easy yes! The dullest stages are only a few seconds, so you stay excited! There was a little lull in my enjoyment around 30-35, but then 36 just ramped it up massively. And omigod, some of those strategies... I just wonder if someone who isn't familiar with smb would realise that some of the things you do aren't game mechanics, like jumping using edges, since this TAS makes them look so fluid and natural.
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Very entertaining. Always nice seeing new ways for this game to be destroyed. Am I missing something about the embed, though? I tried embedding the video in a post preview and it gave me the option to watch in 720p60fps
CyclopsDragon
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Raelcun wrote:
Am I missing something about the embed, though? I tried embedding the video in a post preview and it gave me the option to watch in 720p60fps
The inability to watch an embed in 60FPS refers to the submission page, not the forum embed. The submission page doesn't use the HTML5 player, and the old player doesn't work with 60FPS when embedded.
Completely defying all physical logic since 2014
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I don't usually talk at recorded moving pictures on screens. This had me saying things like "Wait, are they...?" "They are." "Where do you think you're going?!" Doubleplusgood (Star) vote. The comments on levels got a bit repetitive about how there's an unexpected strat [usually also not described] that saved unexpected time. The Master 1up (and therefore an exact 1up) was a nice touch.
Warepire
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That was awesome, and a really cool improvement. Voted yes.
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eternaljwh wrote:
The comments on levels got a bit repetitive about how there's an unexpected strat [usually also not described] that saved unexpected time.
Sorry about that, I'm not very creative at writing about all of the duller floors. Most of the floors I commented like that are short floors that the whole SMB community has thought are clearly maxed out and the improvement truly caught us off guard.
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720p60 was a nice experience, stuttery video on full screen, voting yes.
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Aiai sucks. No vote.
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dam son, good job. Yes vote, and requesting this be made into a Star when it's published.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter - some loser
keylie
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Very impressive new strats. EX3 early cycle was so unexpected! Congratz to both of you.
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Very good and I'll blow the spoiler tag and say the 1Up was very good. I was waiting through the run to see if you got one :P
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Amazing TAS! Congratulations to all the contributors! By curiosity, was the 100 bananas on purpose or is it a coincidence?
CyclopsDragon
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SmashManiac wrote:
By curiosity, was the 100 bananas on purpose or is it a coincidence?
That was intentional, but inspired by a coincidence, I suppose? At some point during the Extras, Byrz realized that we would have 120 bananas at the end of the TAS, so we went back and avoided collecting bunches on a couple of levels to make that happen.
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This game doesn't have a jump button, does it? Because this TAS makes it look like it does. A stylish run, yes vote.
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AKheon wrote:
This game doesn't have a jump button, does it? Because this TAS makes it look like it does. A stylish run, yes vote.
It does not. If you want to jump then you need to bounce off of the terrain. This TAS was excellent. Thanks for making it! Any plans to do SMB2?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
CyclopsDragon
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Derakon wrote:
This TAS was excellent. Thanks for making it! Any plans to do SMB2?
We have actually started a new SMB2 TAS. The new one takes advantage of the fact that the PAL version can be played at 60Hz instead of 50Hz by holding B at startup, and by playing the PAL version at 60Hz, the monkey gains more height from clipping because of how the developers decided to compensate for the difference between NTSC 60 and PAL 50. The physics is rendered once every frame instead of constantly, so they gave you more speed and height out of clips and certain movements, so playing PAL at 60Hz instead of 50Hz leads to more speed in most places, making PAL objectively superior for in-game time for almost every level.
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nice run, really eenjoyed it, YES vote
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CyclopsDragon wrote:
Derakon wrote:
This TAS was excellent. Thanks for making it! Any plans to do SMB2?
We have actually started a new SMB2 TAS. The new one takes advantage of the fact that the PAL version can be played at 60Hz instead of 50Hz by holding B at startup, and by playing the PAL version at 60Hz, the monkey gains more height from clipping because of how the developers decided to compensate for the difference between NTSC 60 and PAL 50. The physics is rendered once every frame instead of constantly, so they gave you more speed and height out of clips and certain movements, so playing PAL at 60Hz instead of 50Hz leads to more speed in most places, making PAL objectively superior for in-game time for almost every level.
Hm, this kind of decision has been contentious in the past. Might want to bring it up with the judges to make certain it's a "kosher" way to run the game. In any event, good luck!
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Floor 24 was CRAZY! Huge YES vote! Great job guys.
Noxxa
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Derakon wrote:
CyclopsDragon wrote:
Derakon wrote:
This TAS was excellent. Thanks for making it! Any plans to do SMB2?
We have actually started a new SMB2 TAS. The new one takes advantage of the fact that the PAL version can be played at 60Hz instead of 50Hz by holding B at startup, and by playing the PAL version at 60Hz, the monkey gains more height from clipping because of how the developers decided to compensate for the difference between NTSC 60 and PAL 50. The physics is rendered once every frame instead of constantly, so they gave you more speed and height out of clips and certain movements, so playing PAL at 60Hz instead of 50Hz leads to more speed in most places, making PAL objectively superior for in-game time for almost every level.
Hm, this kind of decision has been contentious in the past. Might want to bring it up with the judges to make certain it's a "kosher" way to run the game. In any event, good luck!
As per the movie rules on NTSC/PAL, runs using PAL 60 are allowed. Generally PAL 60 is recommended against, in favor of the USA version, but considering the advantages the PAL version has in this case, it certainly can be used here.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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PAL version is definitely the superior version in SMB2 when it comes down to how fast it can be theoretically beaten. The first SMB2 TAS was played with NTSC version because the main player base of that game doesn't have the PAL version so they were more interested in seeing an NTSC TAS. I'd also like to point out this difference is not in SMB1 where both version are pretty much identical, so it's most likely an oversight that happened at some point when localizing SMB2 for PAL.
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Fantastic TAS. I absolutely love the SMB TASes. Yes vote for stars. This may seem like a silly question, but what are the similarities/differences between this run and a hypothetical score-attack run?