https://youtu.be/dVYljQJQIrk
I've finally finished the 2nd level in this run. This took me a long time because I took a break from TASing for a few months to do some RTA speedruns of other games. I rotate between speedrunning and TASing every few months so I don't get bored of either one. Here is what I have to say about this level.
The movement in the first section of The Exchange is trivial, for the most part. When I gain control, I turn around, jump off the building, and move toward the first token. A few of the levels in this game have a token placed behind your starting point. After picking up the token, I turn back around and jump over a mound of snow to get a better line to the next area. Normally you move slower when going up slopes or stairs, but pressing the jump button temporarily puts you back up to full speed. So I mash the jump button every other frame while going up slopes so I’ll go a little faster. When I get over the snow mound, I shoot a bunch of times so the guard up ahead will hear me and run toward me. Yes, I have to shoot the P2K a dozen times for him to hear me from that distance. This means I can kill him and pick up his covert sniper rifle without losing any time. One of my soft goals for this TAS is to show off as many different weapons as possible, and this is the only chance for me to get a silenced sniper rifle. Anyway, I jump off a cliff to land on another token and pick up some body armor at the same time. I do a tight jump after grappling up toward the castle that allows me to skip the animation where Bond slowly walks along that ledge. I still have to press A to start the animation, but it ends after one frame because i’m already across the ledge when it starts. I have to walk forward for a few seconds after instead of strafing because starting and ending that animation affects my movement in a weird way. For whatever reason, this specific animation prevents left and right movement from working, so I can’t strafe immediately like I normally would. Anyway, now I get out the sniper rifle I picked up earlier and quickscope an enemy standing in front of the next door. I really enjoy the variety of weapons 007: Nightfire offers, and I’m going to take full advantage of that for the remainder of this TAS.
In the next section, I turn to the right and shoot over the civilian’s shoulder to kill another guard. When I go down into the wine cellar, I shoot a bunch of barrels to knock them over, giving me a more direct path to the next token. A Nightfire speedrunner named Matimbre found that the moving barrels can instantly flip you around if you move into them in the right way. A video of this glitch can be seen
here. This TAS doesn’t do this because it requires moving into the barrels for about half a second, so it was slower in the long run. I wanted to document that here because it was a really cool idea that unfortunately didn’t work in the end. After leaving the wine cellar, I make my way to the spiral staircase that leads up to the next token. This is the first time in the run where I take advantage of Nightfire’s aim acceleration. When you turn the camera with the c-stick, the speed the camera turns at increases over time. So the longer you hold the c-stick, the faster the camera will turn. If you are turning the camera to the right and you flick the c-stick to the left, the camera will turn left but it will continue to accelerate as long as you don’t let go of the c-stick. At this point in the run, I need to get up the spiral staircase as soon as possible by turning 180 degrees as quickly as possible. As I’m going toward the staircase, I flick the camera back and forth for about 2 seconds so I turn a lot faster while going up the stairs. Flicking the camera like this doesn’t lose any time over short distances and almost always saves time for 180 degree turns, but I chose not to do this too often due to the annoying nature of this kind of movement. I decided to only use it in cases where there are no alternative ways to get somewhere quickly. By the way, the horizontal and vertical camera movement have separate acceleration values, so flicking the camera up and down doesn’t affect the horizontal sensitivity, and flicking right and left doesn’t affect the vertical sensitivity. While I chose not to use this style movement unless it was the only option, there is an alternative to this camera acceleration that is slightly slower but much more pleasing to the eye. I’ll talk more about that in the next paragraph when it’s more relevant. Now that I’m up the staircase, I take advantage of the sniper rifle’s inaccuracy to kill the guard at the top of the stairs without looking directly at him. That saved a few frames over using a more accurate weapon like the P2K. After picking up the fourth token in the level, I clip through a little hole in the fence and get to the end of the map. As mentioned earlier, clipping is done by pulling out a weapon or gadget and standing up at the same time. By moving into small objects that you aren’t supposed to stand up under, Bond will get pushed through the floor, allowing him to clip through many walls and floors in this game.
Starting in section 3, Drake’s party, Bond is unable to do any suspicious activities such as jumping around or using his weapons. This part of the mission is all about optimized movement and creative use of the glitches available to us. Because Bond’s movement is a little slower than normal here, clipping through doors is slightly faster than opening them and walking through because clipping through will push bond ever so slightly forward. Clipping through the first door saved roughly 0.1 seconds. It’s not a lot of time, but small things like this add up over the course of the run. The next clip I do not only lets me go through a door, but also the person that opens it, since Bond can’t occupy the same space as another person. As a result, I get pushed several feet forward because Rook, the guy that opens the door, is a pretty big dude. There’s not much to say about the rest of the movement here. The next 20 seconds is all about optimized movement and not much else. However, once I talk to Dominique, I’m allowed to move at full speed and use my weapons. This is where the action begins. I pick up one of the remaining tokens and immediately clip through a bookshelf to cut off some travel time.
Normally, clipping out of bounds requires standing under an object you’re not supposed to be under. If you stand up and pull out a weapon or gadget at the same time, Bond will be in a weird state that is between crouching and standing up. Moving under a small object like a table or chair during this time is how most clips are done. But what if there are no objects to clip under? If you press the crouch button on a certain frame during this weird standing animation, Bond will crouch again and fall partially through the floor. Moving into certain objects or walls during this time will sometimes push bond all the way through the floor, allowing me to get out of bounds in rooms that don’t have objects Bond can crouch under. I call these “Squeeze clips” because it looks like Bond squeezes through the floor. After picking up the token, I take advantage of the aim acceleration trick I mentioned earlier to turn up the stairs faster. However, instead of flicking the camera left and right repeatedly to increase the camera speed, I chose to hold the C-stick just outside of the deadzone to preserve acceleration from previous turns. First, I turn to the right to go up the first set of stairs. When I’m done turning, I hold the C-stick barely outside of the deadzone. This means that the acceleration I’ve built up already can be used for the next turn. After the second turn, I continue barely holding the c-stick so my camera continues accelerating slightly, without being annoying to the viewer. You can see that the third turn going toward the door is much faster than the previous two turns because of this.
The first thing worth noting in section 4 is the out of bounds clip in the safe room. This clip works because of the weird collision Bond has with moving objects.
As shown in a video I linked earlier, walking into moving objects can cause weird things to happen. In this case, the safe door falls down and makes Bond flip 180 degrees. It also pushes him through the wall, which is convenient. It doesn’t save much time, but it looks awesome. When I jump down toward the final token in the level after getting out of bounds here, I go a little farther to the left than you might expect. This is because there is an unfortunate valley in the ground in front of the railing I need to jump over. As a result, it’s slightly faster to go a little to the left because you save more time going over the rail this way than you would with a better line. The only thing left to do now is get to the gondola with Zoe and shoot down the helicopter. I managed to save a bit of time in the boss fight by shooting the first rocket while I’m as far away as possible, then moving toward the chopper while shooting the other two. This means I can shoot the rockets a little earlier, saving a bit more time.
