In the first part of this red ball iceberg
series, we took a look at several more-surface level aspects of the red ball series and the
speedrunning community that surrounds it. To all of the people that subscribed while
watching part 1, welcome back! If you haven’t seen part 1 yet, make sure
to watch it first to get caught up to speed, as in this part we will be exploring topics
in the depths that are known by far fewer people. Tiers 4-6 are jam packed with extremely interesting
information, and I hope you enjoy watching as we dive into the depths of the red ball
speedrunning iceberg. Here in tier 4, we are very far down on the
iceberg. The surface of the water can still be seen,
but this area is still extremely dark and hidden. Sanya the rocker- Sanya was a person that
submitted around two dozen sped up or spliced runs across the red ball and red ball category
extensions leaderboards, in a saga that lasted several months. The video modifications were often extremely
obvious, and the runs weren’t even that stellar. Cheating in speedrunning is a really dumb
mistake to make, as it completely sacrifices your personal integrity, and getting genuine
times are always more fulfilling than taking the easy way out. Inverted plunger- In level 9 of red ball,
there is a jointed object that works somewhat like a car piston, turning a rotational force
into a constant back and forth motion. If red ball wedges himself in the object in
just the right way, he can disrupt the jointing enough to cause the plunger to effectively
invert, disrupting its normal operation. King.com gambling- King.com, the website that
initially sponsored games in the red ball series, was essentially a gambling website,
where people could stake real money in what were called “skill games” in hopes of
generating some form of profit. Since King rebranded in 2014 after the success
of Candy crush saga, the website has been completely wiped of any traces of this activity. 31fps- All of the flash games in the red ball
series are set to run at 30 frames per second, all except for red ball, which carries an
extremely uncharacteristic 31fps. It is largely believed that this was a mistake
during development, as the physics in the game are clearly intended to be run 30 times
a second. There isn’t any practical reason for setting
the game to 31 fps, as everything functions just fine when it is set to 30. The difference between 30 and 31fps is practically
unnoticeable while playing, but it does come with the side effect that the game is actually
running faster than intended, 3.33% faster to be exact. If the game ran at 30fps instead, eg’s current
world record of 3:07.900 would convert to around a 3:14.167, completely altering the
difficulty of the ten second barriers of the game. Because of the impact this would have had
on mentality, it is likely that the history of the game would be completely different
had it not been for this tiny mistake while programming. RB2 Health- There isn’t any health bar in
red ball 2 like there is in the red ball 4 volumes, but there is actually a secret health
bar that red ball has relating to swimming in the toxic water. Upon loading a level, red ball can spend a
total of 1 second in the water. If this limit is ever exceeded, red ball will
die, and the level will reset. For example, if red ball spends 29 frames
in the toxic water before exiting, he will have effectively expended 29 out of his 30
hidden hearts. If red ball touches the water for even a single
frame more, he will instantly die. Speedrunners have to manage their toxic health
in level 16 to avoid dying and losing a bunch of time. Flying car- In level 8 of red ball, there
is a purple car that hides far more pain and agony than you would initially expect. There is no way to get through the car section
consistently, the vehicle will toss, turn, flip, and break to prevent you from reaching
the flag. The funniest outcome of failing the car comes
with the flying car, where the player will manage to clip into the body of the car where
they will be able to effectively infinitely jump inside of it, allowing for the generation
of infinite elevation. This is pretty rare but has still occurred
several times in people’s speedruns. Make sure to watch carpolation, linked in
the card above, to see some more examples of this. Squirrel- In red ball 3 there is a png of
a squirrel hiding in one of the walls in level 14, harboring five different gold stars, accounting
for 250 out of the 4780 points available for collection in the entire game. When touching the squirrel, it will let out
a squeaking sound. We are unsure what the backstory behind this
squirrel is and why ev decided to include it in the game, as all of that currently remains
a mystery. RB2 RNG puzzle- In level 24 of red ball 2,
there is a puzzle that is normally solved by revealing the shapes formed by hidden blocks
and entering it on three floor tiles. However, speedrunners just memorize the three
symbols to avoid this step. The starting symbol on each of the three floor
tiles is randomized, with there being five total symbols to choose from on each tile. The odds of a tile displaying the correct
symbol is 1/5th, making the combined odds of the combination being correct upon loading
the level 1/125. Managing to get this in a run can save a good
chunk of time, but it is of course extremely unlikely. Knockoffs- Though the official red ball series
has a wide array of entries, both by the original developer and by other parties, the amount
of bootleg and knockoff games of red ball trying to capitalize on its success are absolutely
immense, both on mobile and on the web. Hell, here’s a video of me playing what
is supposedly red ball 11. There is also a game called red ball forever
that is actually impossible to beat you can’t jump off of this boulder, which is necessary
to complete one of the levels. It’s almost like the game was never actually
tested. As you can probably tell, most of these games
are absolutely awful, though there is one mobile knock off of red ball 1 that is actually
somewhat playable, with it having an IL and full-game leaderboard on the red ball elite
google sheet. Purple dot- on the character sprite in Red
Ball 1, there is a tiny purple dot on the outer edge. This spot usually goes unnoticed by people
who play the game due to the low contrast it has against the color of the outer edge
and the small size of the character, but it is still just, always there, visible in plain
sight. Red Ball 5 Any%- In the licensed red ball
game red ball 5, there is a glitch that allows someone to skip multiple levels just by hitting
the spacebar multiple times on the level complete screen. How this went unnoticed by the developer is
just beyond me, as it happened several times while i was just casually playing the game
for the first time, but I digress. This glitch causes some really weird behavior
in regards to dying, and exiting to the menu, as the player will have to restart multiple
times in order to get the character or menu to show up again. With enough elbow grease and like four different
keyboards, it is possible to skip all the way from level 1 to the last level, level
30, allowing the entire game to be beaten in under a minute. Red Ball 3 secrets- aside from the squirrel
in level 14, there are a bunch of different secret areas in red ball 3 that need to be
accessed in order to collect every star and 100% the game. Similar areas exist in levels 2,5,9, and 13,
with other hidden stars existing such as the one under this box in level 12. These spots are extremely hard to find casually,
as a walkthrough is pretty much necessary in order to 100% the game. In tier 5 of the iceberg, we have almost descended
to the very bottom. Darkness consumes the vision of all who travel
here, with public information on the subjects being sparse to nonexistent. Motorjumping- In the original Red & Blue Balls,
there is a pseudo double jump glitch that involves using the other character as an effective
slope in order to gain a large amount of height from a single jump, allowing for many puzzles
to be partially or fully bypassed. This glitch is more commonly known as buddy
jumping or partner jumping, but it is sometimes referred to as Motorjumping after the person
who initially discovered it, motorjam. RB4 boss “RNG”- In the red ball 4 volumes,
there are many instances of apparent RNG in the boss battles that can either save or cost
speedrunners a decent chunk of time. However, none of these battles have actual
RNG in them, but rather play slightly differently every time due to character position having
a great impact on how the boss plays. In the final phase of the vol.1 boss, the
boss can decide to bounce either 4 or 5 times before becoming vulnerable again, a total
of three times. Each 5 bounce costs anywhere from half a second
to an entire second over getting a 4 bounce, so this final phase can become the make or
break point for many speedruns due to the game being very short. The boss can be somewhat manipulated to have
a greater chance of jumping only 4 times, but it is effectively impossible to consistently
achieve this result. After the discovery of a new boss strat that
will be touched on later in this video, the pseudo-RNG was moved earlier in the boss in
regards to the player’s ability to roll it to the other side of the screen. In vol.2, the bosses position after being
stunned changes how far the sawblades have to travel in the first phase, though this
timesave or loss is pretty negligible. In vol.3, there is a strategy at the beginning
of the boss that involves jumping into the first set of crushers, squeezing through the
opening, hitting the boss to the other side of the screen, damaging it twice, and then
getting the third hit once it rolls back. It’s quite intricate, quite technical and
saves around 3-4 seconds, but is extremely inconsistent, mainly because the first set
of crushers often don’t give red ball an opening to squeeze back through, causing him
to be crushed. The crushers have to be jumped into in a certain
way to mitigate this possibility, but there will still always be a high chance that red
ball is never given an opening and dies, making it a source of pseudo-RNG. Additionally, at the end of the volume three
boss, the bomb enemies roll at a seemingly random speed towards the boss after being
activated, sometimes being so slow that they never actually end up damaging the boss. This charade is entirely dependent on player
and boss position, but with no way to get consistent results from a setup, it remains
yet another way for a run to be killed by bad luck in the boss. Moving over to red ball 4 mobile, volume 4
has a boss that has an extremely erratic jump pattern in the third phase, also tied to player
position, which has the ability to kill the run, even if the player is really skilled. The volume 5 boss does appear to have random
pellets being shot at the player in the final phase, but these actually aren’t random,
making it the only boss out of the five volumes that doesn’t have any tangible pseudo-randomness
present. Dale R. - If we navigate to the comment section
of a glitchless strat video made by Motorjam, you will find a few comments by a certain
Dale R. These comments are all relating to glitchless strats, one of which went unnoticed
for a year. Something that was finally found by speedrunner
thog_n, which allowed it to be implemented into glitchless runs of the game. 1 Frame Pause - In the red ball 4 flash volumes,
there is a single frame that the player can pause while a level is being loaded that will
display the level objects with a completely white background. This sometimes happens to runners when they
are trying to reset the game after failing a run. Star Phasing- Star phasing is a glitch present
in red ball 3 where the player will completely go through a star without collecting it. This is a product of the stars having a small
hitbox and game lag causing the collision to not be detected. This has happened to people during 100% runs
and is a really annoying occurrence as it can create a pretty hefty timeloss Dev flags- Dev flags refers to the theory
that Evgeniy Fedoseev, the creator of red ball, placed level complete flags at random
points in some of the levels for testing purposes. If one of these flags could be found, it would
have the potential to save a massive amount of time in the speedrun. Unfortunately, we have yet to find anything
of the sort, and we are unlikely to ever find any dev flags, as none have appeared while
looking at the level sprites in a flash decompiler. We can only dream. Car Skip- Car skip refers to the theory that
the car in level 8 of Red Ball could somehow be bypassed, in the hopes that this could
save some amount of time. Speedrunner norxor was able to travel down
the entire first red slope, which is intended to kill red ball upon contact, without dying,
using a series of slow, tiny jumps, which opened the possibility of this actually being
achievable. Later, Rare.xzc did actually manage to make
it all the way, but this was a result of his game having an immense amount of lag, with
the flag not even raising at the end of the level. A full car skip under a normal game state
is currently still unachieved, and it wouldn’t even save any time as red ball would be getting
no speed from travelling downward on the slopes. RB4 Water- In level 1 of red ball 4 vol.1,
there is a pretty glaring issue when it comes to the water sprite present. If we travel to this spot right here, you
will notice that the water abruptly stops, with the background being completely visible
for a small segment. This goes unnoticed by the vast majority of
people who play the game, with evgeniy clearly missing the small mistake during development. In red ball 4 mobile, the mistake is absent
due to the aspect ratio of the game being altered. Red Ball Hero- Red Ball Hero is the prototype
version of Red Ball 3, similar to the relationship between Red Ball Platformer and the final
release of Red Ball. In Red Ball hero, levels 15, a standard level,
and 20, the boss fight, are missing, as they were likely still being finished. Another quirk with this prerelease is that
the checkpoint flags just don’t work and never get activated; whenever the r button
is pressed, the player is sent to the beginning of the level. The absence of the NotDoppler branding present
in the full release indicates that, just like red ball platformer, this version of the game
was used to pitch to potential sponsors. However, unlike red ball platformer, this
game actually did manage to make it out into the wild, appearing on some flash game sites
such as friv.com. Min. jumps- Minimum jumps refers to the challenge
of beating Red Ball in as few jumps as possible, with inspiration being drawn from the A button
challenge present in super mario 64. Some of the strats are pretty inventive, such
as this one to complete level 3 in two jumps, but there isn’t much interest in the challenge
run due to the large amount of jumps required to beat the game and the difficulty of avoiding
these jumps with red ball’s extremely limited moveset. This is it, the bottom of the iceberg. Everything down here is pretty much pitch
black; with the surface of the water hundreds of feet up. Only select individuals know all of the things
that can truly be found here. Boss Skip Theory- Over the years, people have
tried to theorize various ways of how the bosses in red ball 3 and the red ball 4 volumes
could be skipped. In red ball 3, damage is dealt to the boss
every time it is jumped on, so if there was a way to continually jump on the boss at a
rapid pace, it would save a massive amount of time. As for the red ball 4 volumes, people have
sought the possibility of scaling the invisible wall on the right side of the screen, possibly
being able to activate the next level trigger that is there in the other levels in the game. However, when placing red ball above the invisible
wall by default, it can be found that the level end trigger is not there; the only way
to finish the level and activate the cutscene is to drain the boss’ healthbar to 0. Many other things were tried in the five volumes,
but nothing monumental could be found. However the community finally had their breakthrough
in Red Ball 4 Vol.1 after a new player by the name of xDiss found that phase 1, where
red ball is able to damage the boss three times, could be repeated a second time by
pushing the boss to the other side of the screen after damaging it for the third time. The player could then damage the boss three
more times in the second iteration of phase 1, killing the boss and completely bypassing
phases 2 and 3. After further optimizations were made, mainly
rolling the boss to the other side of the screen instead of pushing it, the trick ended
up saving a massive 25 seconds over the traditional strat, which takes a skilled player 54-55
seconds on average. RB4 Buttons- In the red ball 4 flash volumes,
the three buttons for pausing, resetting, and opening the walkthrough are actually the
exact same shape that red ball is. It is likely that Evgeniy didn’t want them
to be an exact circle but also didn’t want to have to make another organic outline, so
he just copied red ball’s sprite and changed it up a bit. Tournament #1- In may of 2020, there was a
very small tournament held between 7 red ball 1 runners that ended up with myself as the
victor and YellowSkarmory as the runner-up. This tournament was extremely closed off,
but it set the foundation for what would become the far more successful second red ball tournament
with double the amount of participants, 14, with rare.eg as the victor and myself as the
runner up. RB2 Checkpoint- In level 13 of red ball 2,
it is possible to activate a checkpoint flag in the level sooner than intended by jumping
into this spike pit. The player can then backtrack to collect a
few stars and reset again, where the level is then completed. This saves just around two seconds over the
normal method of completion, mainly due to red ball not having to lower out of the wind
section after collecting the three stars up there. The reason that this is at the bottom of the
iceberg is that we have no idea what causes this to happen; its’ a complete anomaly. Nothing really stands out as being off in
the code. If this checkpoint can be activated early,
what if other checkpoints can be activated early as well? Will we find more instances of this by pure
chance, or will we be able to find other examples by cracking the code of the early activation
in level 13. Its a deep rabbit hole that has everyone continually
guessing. Missing Runs- Missing runs refers to the fact
that many speedruns have been removed or deleted from leaderboards across the red ball series,
one of them being a time as fast as 3:28 in red ball 1. Most of these runs have been deleted by the
people who uploaded them, but some runs were also purged due to the 4:30 game audio cutoff
that was implemented in red ball 1 in 2017. Though many of these runs were restored to
the boards after the cutoff was lowered to 4:00 in 2020, some were probably just never
added back. Additionally, many runners have deleted the
videos attached to their runs from youtube, leaving a couple of spots in the history of
these games incomplete. These runs could have featured new strategies
or inventive gameplay that have now been completely lost to time. R&BB Bounty- When the red ball community first
started exploring Red & Blue Balls, the side series of Red Ball, we became quickly frustrated
at the lack of speedrunning skips, being forced to complete the inconsistent, unintuitive
puzzles present in each level of the game. Hell, we even struggled to complete the game
at all in the first place due to the sparse amount of information on how to solve some
of the puzzles and the nonfunctional hint button. Unfortunately, the pause jump strategy used
in red ball 2 barely gave the player any height, rendering it pretty much completely useless. At a dead end, I decided to put up a whopping
five dollar bounty for anyone who would be able to find any form of useful double jump
glitch in the game. Not long after, motorjam discovered the aforementioned
buddy jumping, allowing him to claim the bounty. Raindrop- In his speech at a flash game conference,
Evgeniy mentioned that he made a game called raindrop before creating red ball, with a
blurry photo displaying some of the gameplay. Unfortunately, no traces of this game have
been found online, leaving the community to wonder what the gameplay was like, unsure
whether the game was ever even released in the first place. Obfuscated Secrets- The red ball 4 flash volumes
all feature heavy obfuscation in their code which makes it pretty much impossible to read
and decipher what is really going on. JPEXS, a piece of flash decompiling software,
sometimes fails to decompile extremely crucial methods in the game’s code, leaving us completely
unsure what the code there even is. It is possible that, shrouded in all of this
secrecy, there are crucial bits of information in the game’s code that could give us a
better understanding of the game, possibly allowing us to invent new speedrunning strategies
with the newfound knowledge. However, with the code effectively locked
up, we can only sit and imagine what secrets may lie within. Early GF- Similar to the boss skip theories
mentioned before, early girlfriend describes the theory that red ball could somehow clip
into or break open the cage that the pink ball is lowered down in earlier than intended,
creating the potential for a massive timesave. The level ends when red ball makes contact
with pink ball, a possibility that is separated by just a thin shim of metal. DankShibara- DankShibara is currently the
world record holder for slowest time on the red ball 3 leaderboards. All of their speedruns on speedrun.com are
in around a 4 month period from late 2015 to early 2016, with no apparent activity being
recorded since then. Their blazing fast red ball 3 time of 45:36
actually used to be the world record due to no other runs being present on the leaderboards. The description of this run reads “Pretty
good run. Will be hard to improve.” The world record as of recording this video
is a 5:36, exactly 40 minutes faster than this run, a run which, once again, used to
be the world record. Truman- Trumantegood is a speedrun.com user
that never submitted any runs, but still managed to change the course of history of red ball
speedrunning with just one guide on the 17th of october, 2017. It reads: “If you pause and jump while on
the ground your game will be paused but when you clicked p again you will jump. Knowing this if you press p and jump at the
same time then hold space and click p you jump twice as high. I found this messing around so this should
make the run a lot easier.” That’s right, this random person who created
a speedrun.com account presumably to just make this post discovered pause jumping, the
most important glitch present in both red ball 2 and red ball 3. This post actually went unnoticed for quite
a while, as red ball 3 was extremely inactive at the time, and because guide posts are far
less likely to be seen than forum posts. It was only after Motorjam noticed the post
that I used it to beat Jandawg with a 6:38 on the 17th of october, 2018, exactly a year
after the trick was initially discovered. On the same day, I achieved a 13:52 with the
glitch in red ball 2. Vol.4 Prune- In Volume 4 of red ball 4 mobile,
the second phase of the boss had a massive change with the update released on July 8th
2020. A once difficult moving lazer section was
trimmed down to just a short squeeze, reducing both the difficulty and length of the boss. Though it could have been removed because
of the moderate difficulty, it is still completely unknown exactly why the change was made; for
all we know, it could have been a complete mistake. The patch notes for that July 8th update only
mentions bug fixes in the patch notes, saying nothing about the substantial change to the
boss. And, there you have it. The Red Ball Speedrunning iceberg fully explained. From common-knowledge to theoretical pipe
dreams, this two part series has revealed a great deal about the Red Ball series and
the secrets that lie within. While this iceberg is by no means a fully-comprehensive
knowledge base of the Red Ball Speedrunning community, it still holds a massive wealth
of knowledge, with it still having many holes that we hope to fill in one day. I thank you for watching to the end of the
video, and I encourage you to check out some of the other flash and red ball related content
present on my channel if this was of interest to you. Also, consider following me on twitch and
joining my discord server; both are linked in the description.
