Marble Blast Ultra (Platinum Edition) - World Record Rampage #2

DURATION:
WE STARTED ALREADY and ends 15th July 2020, or up until people are satisfied on the discord server.

RULES:
All runs must be done on .rrec unless express permission is given.
Runs must be recorded on PlatinumQuest's online leaderboards.
Screenshot glitching or other forms of lagging your game are BANNED. Minimum FPS is 30 for this reason, though we would prefer 60.
Powerup/Gravity abusable restart glitches are BANNED.
Every other glitch is ALLOWED unless there is widespread agreement in the community. Please discuss before attempting runs using those glitches as they may be banned.

SUBMITTING RECORDS:
Must be submitted as .rrec format to Matan (send all your runs in one .7z file if possible)
- All records are to three decimal places
--> Single digit 3rd decimal place improvements are accepted

- Your name as it appears in the community spreadsheet is the way you will be listed in the video.
Community spreadsheet link: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/192-70ahX...k8/edit#gid=42765300

VIDEO RECORDING GUIDELINES, SOFTWARE AND SUBMISSION OF VIDEOS:
N/A unless Matan specifically tells you what they are

Good luck!

HYPE

Just like Xedron did for his PQ WRR post, I'll split my runs into 3 tiers

Tier I: Rampage quality/top tier runs

Early Frost 4.917 - Accidental tweak, wasn't expecting this at all. Probably couldn't beat this.
Winding Road 8.163 - Also tweaked, looks perfect.
Ramp Matrix 16.287 - Basically perfect ending, don't think I could beat this.
Mountaintop Retreat 7.726 - Was not expecting there to be this much improvement here. Considering how my 2nd best is a 7.731, this is close to maxed.
Urban Jungle 4.440 - Absolutely gorgeous tweak, pretty optimized too. Really excited to show this off.
Around The World 9.352 - Tweaked in some places, looks really good.
Duality 2.272 - Did someone say NEW PATH? Far and away my best catch on this level, I won't beat this.
Sledding 8.896 - Wasn't expecting to beat Regislian's time by that much. Sloppy camera movement indicates possible improvement, but still really good.
Points of the Compass 6.420 - Was barely even expecting sub 6.5x, WOW. I won't be able to beat this, no chance
Fork in the Road 5.453 - My best catch by far, aside from jittery camera movement, a great run.
Black Diamond 4.560 - One of my favorite runs in this rampage. What a beautiful run, essentially pure optimization.
Survival of the Fittest 4.712 - I don't see myself improving this.
Scaffold 0.820 - How important is this even? Seems to be the best PQ catch on this level so not sure if improvable.
Under Construction 2.428 - The ending is the best part of this level. Extra airtime ftw.

Tier II: Could use some improving, but still good quality runs

Great Divide 7.544 - I have some ideas to get the time a bit lower, and this also isn't my best catch so might as well try to improve it.
Whirl 5.531 - For sure improvable, looks great but still some room there.
Three-Fold Maze 15.274 - REALLY optimized, but I don't like how the ending looks so I might improve, we'll see.

Tier III: I'll try to improve these for sure

Upward Spiral 8.835 - aaaaa this tweak is awful. 20+hrs put into this level so far, I would love a sub 8.75 but it's incredibly painful.
Daedalus 18.820 - Great run with an awesome newish path, but it can still go lower. Ending tweak is brutal also.
Natural Selection 5.850 - Some goofus got an invalid 5.82 on stream, I can probably beat it but still a painful tl level.
Schadenfreude 16.418 - I have a tweak that I think is faster. Technically new path since old rampage used different one. Great run still.

Hop Skip and a Jump: 7.362

I got this yesterday actually (June 4th, 2020), so uh, this announcement is sorta convenient I guess

This WR mad scuffed tho I will def improve it. I do have my sights on other levels as well, hopefully I can get them in time. I doubt it since some I want are bs trap levels, but it doesn't hurt to try

Just as in-depth as Cobalt.

Hazardous House 9.849 - Good run

First Flight 6.516 - Decent run

Marble Melee Primer 13.358 - Great run

Skate Park 18.164 - Great run

Skate To The Top 5.662 - Great run

Will o Wisp 9.102 - Decent run

Three Fold Race 18.553 - Great run

Hypercube 7.440 - Good run

I'll list my times afterwards, but there's something I need to say first.

I don't think it's wise to go for 100% improvement in MBU. All it will do will delay everything else, because unless people are incredibly lucky it would take a very long time to beat the remaining times. There should be a balance between the rampage releasing more quickly and the runs being more optimized. Too quick and there won't be much improvement from the previous rampage, but too long and you'll get a situation like MBG where we had to wait five whole years in between rampages. It's already been over three years since MBU #1 released, and based on how long just the four (or five) remaining times have lasted I think it's safe to say that we're past that balance point now. They've been around for a while after everything else has been beaten, so we're definitely past the phase of lots of improvements and into the really slow part of seemingly "needing" more improvements on a select few levels.

I really feel like the most efficient use of time is to finish the rampage now, get it out, and then we'll have a great rampage with most of the levels improved and wonderful runs throughout, and we'll be able to get onto the next project more quickly, in order to keep things interesting around here.

That being said, since there is an official deadline, I would hope the efforts end sooner than that but I highly doubt they will with the way things usually go. Deadline in mid July probably means rampage in early September, but I'm optimistic that maybe it'll be quicker if we don't expect an unreasonable 100% improvement from ourselves. MBG #5, with its 100% improvement, shouldn't be the new standard for how rampages should be completed, and the fact that it's likely the last rampage for MBU shouldn't mean that we "need" 100%, since there are still some very good times from the previous compilation.

[hr]
My times:
Platform Party 6.427 – 26 December 2016
Gauntlet 8.118 – 29 December 2016
Timely Ascent 2.201 – 16 September 2016
King of the Mountain 2.601 – 11 May 2020

Going for 100% is a reasonable goal imo, so long as it isn't a must have for the rampage, cuz like you said it may take longer for said records to be beaten. What has been discussed today over on discord actually was the fact that we may have to remove the remaining IC level WR times that were never beaten due to weird things that went on with some IC levels in the shift from MBP to PQ. If this does go through we will be much closer to our goal of 100%. With only 2 or 3 levels needed to achieve this goal rather than 5 (Not sure if the Timely Ascent WR is doable in PQ but we'll see). This is pretty much the only reason why I say that 100% is a reasonable goal, without it, I'd completely agree NF.

What exactly was discussed, and why is it an issue—was there really that much changed between MBP and PQ? Has there been a final decision on whether any times will be removed? Will Kalle's and my 2016 runs get removed? I would prefer not to have to redo everything, since I don't particularly want to play MBU at all, but if I have to in order to keep my times then I will.

We'll have to talk more before any decision is made to wipe scores, most of my IC times were beaten after WRR1 so it's not as simple as "PQ is worse". After I do Tree House I'll try extreme skiing some more and see what happens. I personally don't care if a few IC levels are not improved - the runs look the same anyway.

It's an issue because for a while now we were questioning if the Scaffold and Extreme Skiing catches were even possible in PQ. No one has gotten close to them. As for Timely Ascent no one has really said anything about it but it is an IC level as well so I decided to lump it in with those two. No final decision has been made yet, as it was only briefly mentioned by Matan today. I recommend dming Matan or Higuy regarding all this for a better understanding of the situation with MBU IC levels

The best catch I've gotten on Extreme Skiing was a 1.937 but I fell off. If no one can beat Kalle's 1.931, I agree that there's no harm in not improving it—good luck all the same though!

As for Timely Ascent, as far as I know no one else has gotten below 2.25 (or 2.24? Can't remember) so that's rather a bigger gap than just a few milliseconds. I'll see how low I can get it in PQ. I agree on Scaffold though—it seems pretty impossible.

Once there's a decision made, or even just a reason why there might be too much inconsistency between MBP and PQ, I hope it gets posted here. For now I'll do what I can to improve and hope that my times stay in if they don't get If beaten.

I have gotten catches of 2.23x on Timely Ascent in PQ. Though I'm not that good at IC levels so I'm sure people could get faster than me.
As for deleting times unless there's conclusive evidence they're unachievable idk if we should do that...

Hop Skip and a Jump 7.323

I did not expect to lower this time relatively soon, but DK took the record earlier with a more sizable cut (7.342) and gave me the motivation to improve the WR sooner rather than later. I think it can still be improved further, but I'm happy I no longer have a scuffed record to say the least now.

Here's my times:

Learning to Roll - 2.416
Moving Up - 2.780
Gem Collection - 2.339
Triple Gravity - 9.688
Bridge Crossing - 7.794
Bunny Slope - 1.807
Pitfalls - 8.153
Gravity Helix - 5.054
Half-Pipe - 1.677
Skyscraper - 21.956 (improvable)
Timely Ascent - 2.176
The Road Less Traveled - 3.222
Aim High - 2.988
Divergence - 3.093
Ordeal - 5.810
Cube Root - 1.210
Acrobat - 6.967
Endurance - 6.493
Battlements - 6.291
Half Pipe Elite - 1.475

Extreme Skiing and Scaffold I genuinely believe are impossible to beat. Good luck to anyone else trying.

This is basically just rehashing what Nature Freak said but honestly I'm getting a little impatient. At this point as well as farther along with rampages people are going to have to realize that getting 100% on every single attempt is going to be impossible. I seriously advocate that this just be released as is as opposed to waiting for the remaining couple of levels to get beaten (especially since it seems like Mazik gave up on PP, and Scaffold/Extreme Skiing both appear to be borderline unbeatable). As long as the community enjoys watching the previous runs of the rampage and don't feel like grinding for 15 hours to beat a time by a thousandth of a second people should be completely okay with 57/61 improvement.

The only one that I think should be worked on a bit is Gauntlet since it has at least a bit of visible improvement and a potential tweak but besides that really would go against grinding the other times down.

Just to clarify, I didn't give up on PP. I would still like to grind it more but I got carried away with MIU, a little bit of PQ, and now customs. I hope to get back to it with classes starting soon (I need a mindless grind while listening to my professors tbh). Idc if we release it without 100% improvement but I just wanted to clarify xeefs comment on my status with PP

Yeah I fully agree with Xedron here. I've not played the game in a while but I'd still want to see some new WRRs, and the sooner they're out, the sooner people can get on to new ones. There's nothing worthwhile to be gained from waiting multiple months for a few milliseconds when we could have the entire PQ rampage in the same amount of time, with improvements many orders of magnitude greater than what's left for MBU. I want to see this rampage released as-is. Other than the fact that the lack of 60 FPS and old interface will stick out a bit, nothing will really matter all that much about any further improvements, and even that doesn't matter much at all because rampages practically always have some sort of inconsistency. So I'd say just get it out now so that people can start working on PQ.

Funny how people forget the egg rampage is a thing.

Sorry—I haven't been keeping up with anything going on around here for a while now and I completely forgot about the egg rampage. I just want things to go quickly more than anything else. Worst case scenario is that there's more to improve for next time I guess. But overall I think Matan has the final say on stuff like this—I just hope the deadline is very soon so that people can get moving on to other things.

Totally not late or anything. Finally got around to catch up a breather, and look at the community spreadsheet.

So it appears we're pretty close and there is little movement on anything else.
Unless there is something big happening, the current deadline is 15th September 2020 with an allowed extension to 30th September 2020 if someone requires.

If you are done running, please send me all your.rrec files on discord in a single zip format. 7z is preferred.

Thanks to everyone for keeping well into the deadlines, and we're seeing a super fast turnaround. Next post is the actual video, and it is coming THIS FRIDAY so keep an eye out!

Marble Blast Ultra - World Record Rampage #2

This unexpected World Record Rampage was started a few months ago after we noted that most levels now have new records!
Played in PlatinumQuest, this rampage contains 60/61 new records and 21.036 seconds improvement. Platform Party is from previous rampage, and Scaffold is NOT a world record, but an improved time over previous rampage.

Please note that Hypercube is a MBG Xbox exclusive level that was ported as Advanced Level 21. As such the marble size is the standard Gold marble instead of the bigger Ultra one.
This is a PORT of the levels from the original MBU to PlatinumQuest. The two are not interchangeable!!!

Enjoy!