No Gems: The Second Compilation (1. Marble Blast Gold)

After 11 months, I have finished the second compilation of No Gems videos. Here, you will see the first video of the compilation. (Apparently I'm still limited to 15 minute videos. That will give 4 parts (MBG, MBP part 1, MBP part 2, Bloopers + alternate paths.)

In this video you'll see many new paths and for the levels that kept the same path from NGC 1, a healthy speed increase. You also get to see the current Leap of Faith (With Gems) World Record, as the path is the same as the best No Gems path.

When I mentioned that my trailer was made in the style of the MBG WRR2 final trailer, that was a subtle hint to the composition of the videos (not counting the short clip of Platform Mayhem). I purposely used videos of runs that were already beaten or would be beaten in the trailer. You can see the improved run of Money Tree in this video, and improved runs of the other levels in the next videos. (Unfortunately, my plan backfired slightly, I wasn't able to beat my Skyscraper time (the new path proved harder than expected).)

Comments on some of the runs:

Marble Materials Lab: I shaved off 0.03 by not turning the camera at all (after the initial turn) for the entirety of the run.

Tri Twist: This path was surprisingly hard to do, the alignment has to be close otherwise you will miss the finish one way or another.

Marbletris: Surprisingly, I found out that using the Super Speed is actually faster (0.06-ish) than using the Super Bounce to go directly to the finish.

Marble Playground: One of my favorite MBG No Gems paths. I attempted it for the NGC 1 but wasn't able to (I had bloopers though). The start is a little slow because that gives me better control over the marble at the Super Speed part than with a perfect start. It's 0.2 seconds faster than the direct path, which just goes to show that sometimes a long way is the faster way.

Take the High Road (2.41, there's a mistake in the caption): This level was very annoying because you have to get the alignment perfect for a 2.41 (I got the time twice, once when not recording).

Money Tree: Awesome traplaunch because it pushed me towards the finish not away from or straight up like most traplaunches from that point.

Leap of Faith: I used my MBG recording and removed the gem from the level. I have a delayed start because that puts the marble where it needs to be for the rest of the level. When I hit the bottom platform I hit it away from the edge. That's very rare because usually I hit it on or close to the far trim (if I hit it) or miss it completely (much more common).

Stepping Stones: There's a path for this level which involves a delayed start and an edge hit on the second stepping stone. It is probably faster than the start pad trick path but it's surprisingly extremely hard to do (I only got it once, for a 1.84).

Skyscraper: This is a great run; it's the best TT catch I ever got using this path. But the best path is one of two 4.xx paths. They each involve getting the TTs first, then the Super Jump, then quickly get to one of the two available trap locations (more information in the bloopers and alternate paths video) and then trap to the finish. Either trap is very hard, I've only gotten to the finish once per location, and neither of them were in a real run.

Escher's Race: Notice the hard (as in opposite of "soft" not opposite of "easy") edge hit? That saves ~0.04 second.

Will o' Wisp: This path is a product of some path exploration I did early on in the making of this compilation. Originally I could get the TT at 8.7-8.9 (I had a final time 9.16 run), but I retried it at the end (this was the last run I did for NGC 2) and found a tweak at the Gyrocopter part (and improved the part before it) so I could get the TT at 8.2-8.4.

Siege: There are two types of launches that are "good" for this path: the launch that gets 5.2-5.3 and the launch that gets 4.7-4.9. The problem with the latter type of launch is that you don't have much room to spin the marble back and so what happens if you even get to the TTs is that you get knocked off one way or another. I had two ways of overcoming that problem: edge-hit and try to stay on the TT part, or spin towards the 2nd TT so that the marble hits both TTs, falls off, and then try to get to the launcher as quickly as possible. This run is special because I didn't need either tweak, I was bumped up at an angle closer to the TTs than usual.

The rest of the comments plus a Q&A can be found here: http://marbleblast.com/index.cgi?acti...

Songs:
Nightwish - FantasMic
Nightwish - End of All Hope