Marble Madness - March 23, 2014

2014-03-23 03:16:11 pm

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/MarbleMadness.html

Marble Madness (Any %) (Single Segment)

Verifier Responses

Quote from UraniumAnchor:

A/V good, no cheating. There's no commentary despite what the StatID says so I'm going to presume it'll be recorded later.

This one's a bit weird... andrew's old run starts off ahead and stays ahead until the hammer section at the end of the fourth (Aerial) race, which is the biggest execution mistake in the old run. Then in the fifth (Silly) race the new run uses a new route near the end to save a few seconds... the new run finishes overall two seconds faster than the old run.

I mean, it's an incremental improvement but the thing is that without the route change at the end of the Silly race I don't think this would have actually been an improvement. It would have been close, though. So I'm going to ACCEPT but I do think the run should be revisited with a bit more polish, and I'd have no reservations with kicking this back to the runner if the other verifiers think it should be so.

Quote from CarpetCrawler:

Everything all around looks good, no cheating whatsoever. This runner has put lots of time into this game and I am frankly surprised that an even faster run than the SDA time before it was even possible!! ACCEPT, and I look forward to seeing what else you can do with this game!!

Quote from DK28:

Technical aspects are all okay.

I definitely agree that there are a couple bumps in the execution, but that new skip is really creative. Especially with how short the run is already, every little bit is a huge gain. It shows that another couple seconds could probably be shaved if somebody wants to grind it out. Let's go with it.

1 other verifier withheld their comments, but accepted.

Decision: Accept

Congratulations to Steve 'Elipsis' Barrios!

Thread title:

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/MarbleMadness.html

Marble Madness (Any %) (Single Segment)

[b]Verifier Responses[/b]

[quote="UraniumAnchor"]A/V good, no cheating. There's no commentary despite what the StatID says so I'm going to presume it'll be recorded later.

This one's a bit weird... andrew's old run starts off ahead and stays ahead until the hammer section at the end of the fourth (Aerial) race, which is the biggest execution mistake in the old run. Then in the fifth (Silly) race the new run uses a new route near the end to save a few seconds... the new run finishes overall two seconds faster than the old run.

I mean, it's an incremental improvement but the thing is that without the route change at the end of the Silly race I don't think this would have actually [b]been[/b] an improvement. It would have been close, though. So I'm going to [b]ACCEPT[/b] but I do think the run should be revisited with a bit more polish, and I'd have no reservations with kicking this back to the runner if the other verifiers think it should be so.[/quote]

[quote="CarpetCrawler"]Everything all around looks good, no cheating whatsoever. This runner has put lots of time into this game and I am frankly surprised that an even faster run than the SDA time before it was even possible!! [b]ACCEPT[/b], and I look forward to seeing what else you can do with this game!![/quote]

[quote="DK28"]Technical aspects are all okay.

I definitely agree that there are a couple bumps in the execution, but that new skip is really creative.  Especially with how short the run is already, every little bit is a huge gain.  It shows that another couple seconds could probably be shaved if somebody wants to grind it out.  Let's go with it.[/quote]

1 other verifier withheld their comments, but accepted.

[b]Decision:[/b] Accept

Congratulations to Steve 'Elipsis' Barrios!

Elipsis

Edit history:

Elipsis: 2014-03-23 10:02:17 pm

2014-03-23 08:05:18 pm

Wow, thanks everyone! This is a game I absolutely loved as a child, and getting this record means a lot to me. Thanks to those who took the time to verify (in addition to everyone else who I thanked in the written commentary).

Andrew's run was fucking amazing, and the strategies that one has to adopt in order to have a chance at beating it are all high risk for relatively small time gains. It took me many attempts before I was able to beat the WR splits on any of the six levels, and many many beyond that before I was able to produce splits for all six and bring my sum of best to below the 2:54.2 time. After that, trying to put it all together into one run was an enormously intimidating task. It may not look it, but there are just a hideous number of things that can go wrong in a ~3 minute timeframe and the faster you try to go... the more you invite disaster.

In trying to push for those time saves, I made a few execution slip-ups that I'm painfully aware of. Frame-perfect drawbridge completely backfired. Pre-pipe ramp-drop on Intermediate race saved time but left me with so little screen that I made a subsequent error post-pipe. Saving further time is really starting to be a double edged sword, especially in the Practice / Intermediate races where you can go so fast that you have to play the level blind.

In contrast, no-stop hammers and good (but not perfect) results on The Silly Shortcut were the two time-saves that did work out very well for this run. Andrew and I were talking and are both of the belief that sub 2:50 isn't out of the question one day.

~~UraniumAnchor, indeed the commentary is going to be recorded later (probably tonight in fact) now that the run has been approved.~~ UraniumAnchor, you were indeed correct and the commentary has now been uploaded. I also hope to get SDA a cleaner, even faster, run in the very near future... but as it stands now I'm thrilled to have the WR and to hopefully rekindle interest in one of my favorite childhood cartridges.

Thanks again everyone.

Wow, thanks everyone!  This is a game I absolutely loved as a child, and getting this record means a lot to me.  Thanks to those who took the time to verify (in addition to everyone else who I thanked in the written commentary).

Andrew's run was fucking amazing, and the strategies that one has to adopt in order to have a chance at beating it are all high risk for relatively small time gains.  It took me many attempts before I was able to beat the WR splits on [i]any[/i] of the six levels, and many [i]many[/i] beyond that before I was able to produce splits for all six and bring my sum of best to below the 2:54.2 time.  After that, trying to put it all together into one run was an enormously intimidating task.  It may not look it, but there are just a hideous number of things that can go wrong in a ~3 minute timeframe and the faster you try to go... the more you invite disaster.

In trying to push for those time saves, I made a few execution slip-ups that I'm painfully aware of.  Frame-perfect drawbridge completely backfired.  Pre-pipe ramp-drop on Intermediate race saved time but left me with so little screen that I made a subsequent error post-pipe.  Saving further time is really starting to be a double edged sword, especially in the Practice / Intermediate races where you can go so fast that you have to play the level blind.

In contrast, no-stop hammers and good (but not perfect) results on The Silly Shortcut were the two time-saves that [i]did[/i] work out very well for this run.  Andrew and I were talking and are both of the belief that sub 2:50 isn't out of the question one day.

[s]UraniumAnchor, indeed the commentary is going to be recorded later (probably tonight in fact) now that the run has been approved.[/s]  UraniumAnchor, you were indeed correct and the commentary has now been uploaded.  I also hope to get SDA a cleaner, even faster, run in the very near future... but as it stands now I'm thrilled to have the WR and to hopefully rekindle interest in one of my favorite childhood cartridges.

Thanks again everyone.

Riskbreaker Y

2014-03-24 10:21:45 pm

berserker status

Congrats on the WR, knew you could pull it off!

Elipsis

2014-03-24 11:41:52 pm

Quote from Riskbreaker Y:

Congrats on the WR, knew you could pull it off!

Thanks man! I really appreciated having someone to interact with during what turned into a six hour WR attempt stream. I don't know if you had to go before I finally pulled it off (it was at like 2am), but either way I'm grateful that you were around to break up the monotony.

Elipsis

Edit history:

Elipsis: 2014-03-26 06:38:05 pm

2014-03-26 06:37:04 pm

Here's the twitch highlight:

http://www.twitch.tv/elipsys/c/3958332 - it's marked as former WR because I managed to put together a cleaner run last weekend.