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This is a resource page showcasing tips and tricks for the game 'Super Monkey Ball: Touch&Roll' for TASing use. At the time of writing, I (xy2_) is mainly running this game and is free to accept anyone who is interested in TASing this game: PM me on the tasvideos forum. I also recommend checking my channel for progress: https://www.youtube.com/user/Videoteur.

Input in this game is very special because it is based on touch screen input (what is referred as 'input'). There are 256 * 196 (size of the touch screen) = 50196!! different inputs possible each frame; for one X input there are 196 Y inputs and for one Y input there is 256 X inputs.

Before going into optimising movement, we must define what is movement.
There are quite a few types of movement, but I will define the main types:

Ground movement

Ground movement is defined as having speed while Aiai (your character; he is referred when talking about the player) has a solid platform (generally under him) that can be used for movement.

Air time

Air time is defined when Aiai is not into contact with any solid platform and has velocity.
Air time is very different to optimise from ground movement.

Grinding

Grinding is defined when Aiai is in contact with a solid platform but has very little to no ground for walking on it: he also has a sliding animation in his ball, not a walking one like in air time and ground movement.
This is the hardest to optimise. An example of abusing grinding:

Optimising movement

While doing ground movement, the fastest way to move is moving diagonally (up right, up left, down left, down right). Hovewer, ground movement is limited to a mere 70 speed if on a exactly flat platform. As such, you want to get air time as much as possible, and grind when possible; grinding is best used in long sections, such as Coil.
How movement actually works: while holding the stylus in the blue part, you gain speed; while in the red part, you lose speed. The reason for this is that you automatically turn, so this rule is always true except at the beginning, where you can do a reverse boost (see Boost section).
Optimising air time is completely different: when falling off, there are two 'arrays' of inputs: the outer array and the inner array. The limit seems to be at which point the game considers the input is diagonal and massively slows you down (you lose from 2 to 6 speed). In the 'inner' array, all directions give you the highest speed possible you can have when holding that direction, but they all are slower or faster when bouncing: the middle one (here in blue) is generally always the fastest. When the median input is uneven (for example 131,5) you want to hold up on the touch screen 131 and 132 for the same number of frames, which amounts like you were holding up 131,5. This array of inputs and position changes each time, but the consensus is that holding up center (128) is always in the 'inner array', unless your angle is very diagonal, and the diagonal inputs in air (up left, up right) are always slower.

(TODO: more stuff)