iMacmatician's videos

Nice job. Why do you use space to activate powerup?

He started playing Marble Blast on his iBook; plus, activating the powerup button using the trackpad button is pretty wonky.

Correct. I also use Return for jump.

A bit of trivia: I originally used WASD for marble movement. When I got the Blast, there was no key I could set it to and comfortably activate it, except Caps Lock and I don't think I can set that as a key. So I had to change WASD to ESDF and made A the blast key.

Marble Blast Levels 18 —

I was going to upload this video weeks ago but schoolwork kept getting in the way.

Comments:

Thrill Ride (3.38): Over here for some reason, should be in Short Levels 2.

Three-Fold Maze (21.04): PR is 20.76 (ish) but this is my best video time. The ending isn't optimal, but the optimal ending is too hard for me to do reliably. Same with the edge hit on the ramp (historians will remember that I did a ramp edge hit on my 22.xx video 3 years ago, that edge hit is easier to do because I made a bounce before getting the Gravity Modifiers beforehand, so the marble was slower coming up to the edge).

Ramps Reloaded (14.27): Got Woody's trim tweak down.

Battlements (10.22): My first successful traplaunch on Battlements.

Pathways (24.69): A new PR for the old path, beating my 24.79 from February 2010 or thereabouts. The edge hit is not optimal, but it's close enough. Also note the jump pattern after getting the 2nd gem, my experiments show that this sequence of jumps has the right timing to allow me to get the 3rd gem with very little air time right before.

Darwin's Dilemma (7.78): Unfortunately there is no edge hit on this level either, but I still managed to improve my time over my previous 8.51.

Spin Practice (8.60): Most of the time I do this path, the wall-hit after the 5th gem results in my marble sticking to the (nearby) wall immediately afterward, screwing up the run. That's what stopped me from doing this path before (it's easy otherwise).

Widow's Peak (8.68): The edge hit just wouldn't cooperate with me, but I did what I could.

Turning Point (34.03): Every now and then I do a fairly long and complicated level (in comparison to most of the runs I do). This is one of them. It was quite a fun level to do, except for the ending part where I skip over the Random Force (it's not the easiest trick to do, I would have improved this run 1 more second otherwise). Still, it was interesting and at the right difficulty level for me to not be bored or unduly frustrated.

Song: Metallica - The Four Horsemen
Starting picture: From the Internet (I think)

By the way—my Mountaintop Retreat video will be next, then Marble Blast Levels 19 is coming soon. I have some more planned after that but those will be late June at the earliest.

Awesome video. Just-in-time TL on Battlements! And funny blooper. Have you considered doing audio commentary?

Not really. But now that you mention it, I'll consider it.

Good Job!

Mountaintop Retreat (8.89) —

The first few seconds of Dushine's path for this level is a jump pattern that I tried to use to beat my previous PR of 9.47. Apparently I wasn't able to do that jump properly, as I only got a 10.xx. So I sorta gave up the level.

When I was doing my Ultra Blast Mountaintop Retreat run, I combined the previous start pattern with the rest of Dushine's path (from the edge hit on). I realized that this path was quite fast, and it would be a shame to not do a regular run using it. So, after my Ultra Blast compilation was finished, I tried this level again, and got a 9.15 without too much work. That was 0.01 from Dushine's WR, so I decided to try more, and got this surprising time after many more tries.

I estimate this level could be done 0.1-0.2 better even without going straight to the Speed Boost.

Song: Nightwish - Storytime

Great jumping.

Sick run!

Such a pro Awesome run!

Marble Blast on Drugs! —

When I uploaded my Mountaintop Retreat video, a message popped up asking if I wanted to stabilize the video since it appeared jerky. I decided to do so, and the result was a wobbly mess because the stabilizer feature apparently isn't designed with these types of videos in mind. I tried to revert the changes, but the video edit was stuck at 90% done and so I had to delete and reupload the video.

However, the stabilized video was too good not to show, and so I made a short video out of 4 of my runs not seen before plus my Mountaintop Retreat run, uploaded it, and then deliberately stabilized the upload. So now you see Marble Blast on Drugs!

If you want to make videos like this of your own, try to get a jerky video recording to begin with for the greatest wobble after stabilization, as a video that's smooth won't turn out as wobbly. Case in point, I uploaded a video of runs recorded using CamStudio, which is a smoother (but lower quality) recording. When I stabilized that video, the wobble was less than half that of my stabilized MTR video.

To see the video without the stabilization, go here:

Song: Cycerin - Vain Star

Very funny. I think Divergence has 6 TMs.

Funny stuff

Marble Blast Levels 19 —

This was meant to be somewhat short but it ended up a bit longer than expected. This video was never part of my plan in the beginning but I just happened to record a number of video PRs and so I decided to make a few more and compile them into this video. What I've ended up with is no cool paths, but a lot of enhancements and modifications on levels I've done previously. Some of the paths are well known, but it's the first time I've done them. Make sure you watch until the end!

This video, like most Marble Blast Levels videos, contains MBG and MBP normal levels. Matan pointed out in my MBL 18 video what many of you might have been thinking, why hasn't iMacmatician done many custom level videos? Well I'm not entirely sure why myself… it's not because I don't play custom levels, as I've played a decent number of them over the years (I used to play more of them in the 2009-ish timeframe), a number of them regularly, and there hasn't been a corresponding amount of videos.

Look for this problem to be remedied soon. Marble Blast Levels 20, scheduled for the second half of July to the first half of August, will be an extra-long video consisting of 100% custom levels. I plan to play a lot of the old levels, most of which I have played in the past, but I also want to add a number of the newer levels. I'll have more information on MBL 20 when it gets closer to release.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy Marble Blast Levels 19, and MBL 20 even more when it comes out!

Comments:

The Wave (7.06): Was aiming for about a 7.15-7.2 but I unexpectedly got better.

Great Divide Revisited (9.32): I found that the jump pattern at the start helps with the edge hit (~1/3-1/2 of my edge hits make it up) compared to not jumping at the start. Despite that help, it was an endeavor to get a decent trap—my PR was 9.4x from two years ago, I had a 9.7x when trying to record for this video, and nearly gave up before getting this time.

Acrobat (9.06): If I had a penny for every time I made it <1 trim height below the gem platform…. (I didn't get a sub-9. Getting a successful finish was hard enough.)

Under Construction (2.76): I couldn't let that 2.91 from MBL 18 and 2.87 from MBL 8 slide.

Recoil Training (13.91): Yep, I was quite surprised at this time.

Hazard Loop (14.44): I tried the WR path and the bumper hit wasn't too hard to do once I got the hang of it. This .rec finishes a bit to the left of the real finish (explains the .48), but it fails most of the time so this is the best I've got.

Downhill Racing (1.86): No comment, except to say it was a surprising PR.

Double LoopLoop (22.61): Same overall path from my previous run, 1 second improvement.

Pink-Fold Maze (8.32): I couldn't quite do the WR path—my marble keeps falling off after the last diamond catch. But I looked through Matan's videos and found this earlier path that I can do without much hassle. His video was a 9.06 or so…getting a much lower time was the tricky part. I tried to get as little height on the Helicopter as possible (it worked).

Tunnel Vision (18.12): I've tried to beat my high 18 on one of my previous videos on many occasions afterwards, but failed every time. For this video, I tried to beat it again. I was successful after a surprisingly long time, then improved it even further.

Great Divide Revisited (blooper):

Song: My Chemical Romance - Save Yourself, I’ll Hold Them Back, which I wasn’t quite able to do with the marble on the GDR missed run…

Great video. What's that bar in the lower-left corner?

It's a blast bar; it's been there since his Ultra Blast compilation as well as all of my videos.

great job!

@Mosquashi, agreed!

3 MBG Levels Done Using Alternate Paths —

Since there's still ~1.5 months to go until Marble Blast Levels 20, I decided to give you a small video of three interesting runs. They also serve as a quality test, not for video quality, but in the sense that overall, the runs of MBL 20 should be better than the three runs you see here.

Gravity Helix [sign hit] (6.71): Three years ago (or so), I tried the sign hit path for this level. My first (I think) finish was around a 6.94. Since then, I have made many successes but none of them have gone below a 7.2. Until now.
Note: It should also be possible to bounce off the wall after the sign hit and onto the top part of the platform. I believe I've done it a few times but I always fell off before finishing. That tweak would also get sub-7.
Note 2: I don't know if sub-6, as done in MBU, is possible in MBG. Sub-7 is already hard enough….

Winding Road [both Powerups] (14.12): To make sure I could do the first part quickly, I practiced the normal fast path for this level until I got sub-10.40 three times, then I started to work on the both Powerups path. The two points of interest are the jumps before using the Super Jump as well as the Gyrocopter catch and curve to the finish. On the latter point, notice how I went to the right of the Gyrocopter, which allows a faster curve to the finish, saving time.
Note: If I follow the above path but not get the Gyrocopter, then it's easy to get sub-14 (I got 13.88 (or so) without that much work).

Whirl [no jumping] (19.86): I did this run sometime during spring quarter of college (unlike the other two runs which were done shortly after spring quarter ended), so this is my first decent finish and I didn't have the time or the motivation to redo it. This run was done because I thought I could improve on my 21.21 in Marble Blast No Jumping 1 (over 2 years ago). The ending is a bit slow but that's just due to how the marble lands after the loop exit (during my attempts, my other landings were worse).
Note: It's possible to catch the TTs and finish before the time restarts, but that's harder. It wasn't done in this video due to the aforementioned time constraint.

Song: My Chemical Romance - The Kids from Yesterday

awesome job imac! That was pretty awesome

Great paths and good execution

Great job.

3 MBG Levels —

A small video consisting of a Bumper Training blooper, a successful Bumper Training run, Thrill Ride, and Points of the Compass. This video is in the style of a few videos I've made: I make multiple videos in the same iMovie project, export them as one, and split it up into its parts before I upload them to YouTube. The other part of this video will be the trailer for Marble Blast Levels 20, and you can expect to see that in about 3 days!

Comments: I didn't expect to get so low on Bumper Training, I figured the start pad trick could save a few 0.0x, but I was expecting a high 2.5x at best. (Is this the Bumper Training WR for the bumper hit path?)

Song: My Chemical Romance - Hang 'Em High

Nice!

Oh man that bumper hit was insanely good. WR for bumper hit path afaik.

Amazing job.

Marble Blast Levels 20: The Trailer —

9 Pillars, — Aim or Shame, Clean Your Room, The Jonesville Marble Course, Swinger, Tower of Peril, Vertigo, — The Ultimate Race, Mud Jump, Adventure, The Suicide Slide, Danger Zone, — Tubular Twist, Catherine's Level, Fast Lane, Ghost.
Those are the levels seen (placed at the top so if you don't know all the names, you won't have to scroll much if at all).

Well here's the trailer for my upcoming all-custom level compilation, Marble Blast Levels 20! Note that most of the levels are old CLA ones, that's because those are the levels I have the most experience with. The final video is most likely to have older levels as a majority. However there will be a fair share of newer levels, MBP custom levels, and long levels. As of now I have 23 levels completed (although some of them are planned to be redone), and I estimate that the final video will have around 35 levels or a few more than that, and a total duration of around 20 minutes.

I also plan on making a new marble skin around later this month, so you'll see that in some of the videos in MBL 20.

(Note: Apparently I have lost the capability to upload 15+ minute videos, so MBL 20 will be in two parts.)

Song: My Chemical Romance - Hang 'Em High.
Wallpapers: 1. Mountain Lion wallpaper Sky, 2. NVIDIA wallpaper Mega Village.

You know a compilation is going to be good when it has its own trailer. Maybe run some TV spots too?

2:35 of bumper hits in Bumper Training — 2:35 of bumper hits in Bumper Training

This is the entire video of the bumper hits seen in my previous videos. Watch this if you're bored.

Note: Since this was part of an attempt on the bumper hit path in MBG's Bumper Training, I didn't practice this, I'm sure I can go longer if I did.

Song: Nyan Cat