Hello, everyone! My name is FitterSpace and I want to start working on a Goldeneye: Rogue Agent TAS sometime this year. This game is extremely broken
due to many out-of-bounds glitches and also relies on clearing rooms with lots of enemies very quickly. I think it would make for a very entertaining TAS.
Unfortunately there are a few problems with this game. The biggest problem being that this is one of the very few multi-disk Gamecube games. I'm not aware
if Dolphin supports a single .dtm file for a multi-disk game. Please let me know if it does.
The second problem is that this game has unskippable cutscenes unless you play on a save file. There are other movies on TASvideos such as Luigi's Mansion
that play on New Game+ and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent should be no different. Playing this game on a save file is very similar to the original Goldeneye 007 on N64.
The gameplay itself is no different but being able to skip cutscenes would make the TAS much better in every way.
Kirchinator and I are currently the only RTA runners for this game, and I think it's very underrated. We are still finding many new glitches and time saves so a TAS
would be very awesome to watch. I will edit this post and add any time saves that get found.
Time saves currently known in this game
These are various time saves that are completely possible:
Strafe Slamming and Fort Knox skip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqRpg6-OxP4
Hong Kong Window Jump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4nq_nsNeDU
Midas Casino elevator skip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oof9H1yTM-4
OMEN device early: https://youtu.be/_Fc7Wzb3WrM?t=1m13s
Crab Key Mining Skip: https://youtu.be/2T-BlBmlolE?t=4m8s (We need a better name for this skip)
Small time-saves and Crab Key warehouse skip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex2Al9fWCBA(New!)Possible time saves
These are potential time saves that aren't possible right now, but may be in the future:
Volcano Lair last room skip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WixhXpHENw(New!)
Unfortunately there are a few problems with this game. The biggest problem being that this is one of the very few multi-disk Gamecube games. I'm not aware if Dolphin supports a single .dtm file for a multi-disk game. Please let me know if it does.
It does. I haven't used this functionality much myself, but in theory, you might run into these issues if you don't keep them in mind:
If you change disc and then save or load savestates within 1.03 seconds of emulated time (should be 62 frames at 60 fps), weird things might happen. The disc might not get inserted, you might get errors, you might get memory leaks, you might get memory corruption...
The filename of the second disc is stored in the DTM, and anyone who plays the DTM must use the exact same name for the second disc unless they hex edit the name in the DTM. There is a character limit on this (30 characters?)
I don't think you're able to change back to the first disc, but I'm not sure. Hopefully the game doesn't require it.
Other than that, there shouldn't be any problems. Just change disc, and Dolphin will save the disc change to the DTM.
Thank you for the response. I'll keep that in mind when switching disks. Thankfully there is a loading screen right after the disk change so there is no reason to use savestates in that time. You also don't have to change back to disk 1 so that's really good.
Thank you for the response. I'll keep that in mind when switching disks. Thankfully there is a loading screen right after the disk change so there is no reason to use savestates in that time. You also don't have to change back to disk 1 so that's really good.
Well, iirc the resident evil 4 TAS submitted here also uses disk swapping, and it synced for others, so at least it works.
You may want to have other people try and play it back on their computers just in case however.
If I remember correctly, nobody managed to playback RE4 TAS movie on his ccomputer (excepting SouldCal) because it desyncs after 2xxxx frame. You should ask SoulCal about that!
TASing is like making a film: only the best takes are shown in the final movie.
Does Rogue Agent have a "hardest difficulty" that is only unlocked after beating the game at second-hardest (or lower) difficulty? If so, I think you could make the argument of using a save file to play on the hardest difficulty, also letting you skip cutscenes.
Does Rogue Agent have a "hardest difficulty" that is only unlocked after beating the game at second-hardest (or lower) difficulty? If so, I think you could make the argument of using a save file to play on the hardest difficulty, also letting you skip cutscenes.
That's allowed, and runs like Super mario kart does this, but that still needs a verification input file.
Beating the game on Hard difficulty unlocks "one-life mode", which i believe is just the same thing as expert but it restarts the entire level if you die instead of putting you at the beginning of the section. To my knowledge it's exactly the same as hard difficulty but with one life instead of infinite lives.
So a TAS of this game would most likely be done on Hard difficulty unless one-life mode turns out to be different. I can also provide a verification movie to skip cutscenes.
I added a new video to the first post. I made a new video that shows some of the smaller time-saves throughout the game. It also shows the Crab Key warehouse skip at the end.
I will continue to edit the first post when new skip or time saves get found.
I added another section in the top post for "Potential time saves" that show things that aren't currently possible, but may be possible in the future is someone finds a way to do it. The only thing on that list right now is a potential Last Room skip in Volcano Lair.
In the last section of the level you are at the top of this very large room and you have to fight many groups of enemies while making your way down to the "Last room", as I call it. When you get to the last room you have to fight in a huge Battle with dozens of enemies
that take a long time to kill. Lots of the enemies have shields so they can take a very long time to kill. Some of them even have the OMEN gun, which is always a one-shot kill so that can be really annoying to deal with. The video I added in the top post shows that there
is a wall that is not solid. You can walk through it and land on the bottom floor where this huge battle takes place. Unfortunately the final hallway where you kill Goldfinger is too far away to reach from the bottom floor. Even worse is that the only way to get the final hallway
to load is by going to the bottom floor. The 2nd floor is too high up, so you can't load it from there and fall down. None of the objects on the bottom floor are solid, either, so you can't use strafe slamming to get more height.
This skip would save about 2 minutes depending on how quickly you can do it, so it's a pretty major potential time save. I've had a few ideas for other ways to skip the last room but none of them seem to work.
I'm reviving this topic to let everybody know that I'm working on an any% TAS for GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. If you don't know already, this game has a lot of cool tricks that make it a really good speedrun. I don't know exactly how long the TAS will be, but I think it'll be a little under an hour.
I'm going to provide a verification movie so this TAS will be able to skip cutscenes. If you play through the game once, you can skip cutscenes the next time you play. This will be useful for making the TAS faster and more entertaining. It also plays on the easiest difficulty since the harder difficulties don't add anything to the gameplay or entertainment. It just makes the run slower. Rogue Agent is also a 2-disc game, so there will be a disc swap about 2/3 of the way through the run.
Link to video
edit: added the video
It also plays on the easiest difficulty since the harder difficulties don't add anything to the gameplay or entertainment. It just makes the run slower.
Can you please elaborate? Sorry, I've never played this game, so it might sound naive, but isn't that the point of a harder difficulty?
It also plays on the easiest difficulty since the harder difficulties don't add anything to the gameplay or entertainment. It just makes the run slower.
Can you please elaborate? Sorry, I've never played this game, so it might sound naive, but isn't that the point of a harder difficulty?
I recently finished a TAS for Goldeneye: 007 on Wii, and the hardest difficulty was chosen for that game because it makes the TAS more entertaining. There are more objectives that make the route more interesting (You don't simply sprint to the end like you do on the easy difficulty). Unfortunately, this game isn't like that. In this game, the hardest difficulty only makes enemies tougher. They take longer to kill and they deal more damage, so it ends up being slower without adding anything interesting to the run. For this reason, the easy difficulty was chosen.
It's been a while since I posted about the Rogue Agent TAS on here. I've spent the past two weeks or so moving, so I haven't had much time to work on this. But now I finally have my computer and everything I need to start working on it again. I'm nearly done with the 2nd level and I should have it uploaded finished and uploaded to YouTube sometime this week.
Link to video
I just finished Auric Enterprises. The level is pretty straightforward since there aren't any glitches or skips, but it's still pretty entertaining. You slow down a little bit when you get shot, so I kill as many enemies as possible. I also got some really sick grenade throws in there. I do take a little bit of damage but sometimes it's unavoidable. But I feel like I did a really good job of avoiding damage.
Link to video
I just finished the Hong Kong level. This is one of the longest levels in the entire game, so I'm happy to have finished it as quickly as I did. I wrote a huge essay about the little details in the YouTube video description, but I'll post them here as well.
I'm really proud with how this turned out. I normally don't finish TASes this long as quickly as I did, but I've been working on it almost every day since I finished the previous level. There are a lot of little things I did here and there to save time.
At the beginning of the level, the enemies don't know I'm there. So I'm able to run through most of the first floor without anybody seeing me. I can use my new-found eye power ability to disarm enemy weapons briefly. This will make it easier to avoid enemy fire, which slows me down. I do take a little bit of damage, but I don't think it's possible to run through the whole level without getting shot at all. I do everything in my power to reduce damage as much as possible. Shooting enemies (even without killing them), reloading, and changing directions slightly are some techniques I use to dodge bullets. I'm not sure why, but reloading seems to affect enemy RNG in some way, so I'll do that if I have time to.
After getting the briefcase on the second floor, I start moving backwards. It doesn't matter what direction you strafe in, you'll always be moving at the same speed. So it's faster to move backwards here than to turn around and move forward. I also think it's pretty funny to see Goldeneye running backwards for a short time.
While I'm going down the first zipline, I shoot as many enemies as possible because it saves time later. You can't speed up the ziplines, so I have more than enough time to kill a few enemies so I don't have to shoot them later. There's a strafe slam just after the zipline that saves a few seconds. Normally you're supposed to go to the right and kill all the enemies in that area, but the strafe slam lets you skip doing that.
After the zipline in section 2, there is a set of stairs that I skip over. You're intended to go down the stairs and Climb up a ladder to access the next rooftop. But if you strafe down the stairs, you can turn to the left and land on the railing. Now you can strafe onto the rooftop without going around the building. Because I didn't climb the ladder as intended, I had to go to the back corner on the roof to load in the next area. You will fall out of bounds and softlock the game if you don't do that.
Another cool skip happens almost immediately after the last one. After climbing up a red ladder, I do the infamous "potted plant skip". Many speedrunners hate this trick because it can be tough the execute quickly. But that's not a problem for the TAS. I strafe into the corner and get through the window in under a second. After going through the window, I walk along the building itself to get to the next area more quickly.
At the start of section 3, I do yet another strafe slam to climb over the railing and skip going down the stairs. Then I hack a terminal from a distance. I need to activate two terminals in this room to unlock the door, so using my eye power from a distance saves a few seconds here. I managed to prevent some enemies from spawning near the end of section 3 for some reason. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but my theory is that the TAS was just too fast. If I wait there for a while, they will spawn in eventually. So I assume the enemies are scripted to spawn after a certain amount of time and the developers didn't expect anybody to get there as fast as this TAS does.
At the start of section 4, I need to kill enough enemies to unlock the next door. It doesn't really matter how quickly I kill them. I only need to kill them before the door is able to open. So I had some spare time to play around before the door opened.
The triad boss is on the next floor, but he isn't much tougher than any normal enemy. I headshot him once and move on to the aircraft battle. This is probably the coolest part of this level. One useful thing this TAS does here is swapping weapons to skip recoil animations. If you shoot a rocket and pick up a different rocket launcher afterward, you will skip the recoil animation. This ends up saving several seconds over the course of the boss fight.
The final part of the level is the rendezvous. There are several groups of enemies I need to kill before the level will end. However, I can't kill any enemies too quickly or else other enemies may not spawn, which softlocks the game. So I strafe past the first group while shooting them, then I wait for just a moment before shooting the second group. This is where the softlock can happen. So I shoot the two groups of enemies here as quickly as the game will allow me to. But here's the confusing part: For some reason, the last two groups of enemies didn't spawn, but it also didn't softlock the game like it normally would. Instead, one single enemy spawned on the other side of the building. I killed him and the level ended. I don't know why the other groups didn't spawn, but I won't complain about it.
The next level is Midas Casino, and it's gonna be crazy. There are a ton of out of bounds glitches that skip boring parts of the level. There is also a two-minute waiting section at the end, so I'll have more than enough time to play around and do funny stuff with the enemies.
Link to video
Here is an unfinished TAS of the next level, Midas Casino. The last time I worked on this was exactly 2 years ago, but I thought I may as well upload this since I don't plan to work on this TAS again any time soon. Unfortunately, I believe this TAS will not be publishable here on TASVideos since it relies on a save file I was unable to recreate. I plan to try again whenever I get around to working on this, but that won't be any time soon. Right now, my priority is GoldenEye: 007 for Wii. I'm not sure what I'll do after that.
Besides a few out of bounds glitches, this level is pretty straightforward. The newly-acquired shield powerup is really useful because it completely absorbs enemy gunfire. This is great because you lose speed when you take damage, so the shield makes it easier to get through areas without losing time. However, it doesn't last forever and can only absorb so much damage before it has to recharge, so managing eye power from this point on will be crucial.
