Joined: 5/28/2007
Posts: 45
Oh okay, sorry. I wouldn't know, not having yet made a TAS past an optimized menu screen. I just remember than when I uploaded the WIP to my FileDen account people were all like "You could upload to the MicroStorage thing but what you used was fine." Sorry for my ignorant comment. Cheers, Franklint
Mitjitsu
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Joined: 4/24/2006
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Wyster, could you upload the file unzipped to somewhere I may be able to reduce the filesize for you.
Joined: 10/31/2005
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Location: The Netherlands
lol, unzipped. remove the zipper!
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Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
Hey everyone, my name is Mavalock, and I speedrun TWINE. Since the current TAS for this game is nearly 10 years old at this point and several new strats have been developed since then, not to mention we have much better general knowledge of how the game works (coughCoW2helicoptercough), I figured it was about time for an updated version. I've done the first two levels so far, and notes about each level are in the description for the video. Courier: https://youtu.be/lxmeccH1X68 King's Ransom: https://youtu.be/plBbBNZ9lo0 Here are the in-game times for comparison: Courier: IL record: 0:09.xx Wyster's TAS: 0:09.87 My TAS: 0:09.80 King's Ransom: IL record: 1:47.xx Wyster's TAS: 1:53.53 (old strat) My TAS: 1:36.97 Enjoy!
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Joined: 9/2/2006
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Wow nice. The runs seem really good as far as I can tell, both speed and entertainment-wise. Looking forward to the next one! In my IL runs, I did a speech skip when rescuing M to make her start run faster. Do you know how that compares time-wise to the far shot?
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Joined: 3/30/2012
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Mavalock finished Thames Chase the other day. He hasn't posted it here yet, so I'll post it for him. Check the YouTube description for his comments on the level. https://youtu.be/Bv1jqvJK77A
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
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Fitter: Thanks for posting the vid! Wyster: If you're talking about what I think you are, I haven't looked into that. You have to be close enough to M to get her to talk, and she seems to get stuck more getting out of the first two rooms if you're closer to her. I'll test it out later. EDIT: I did a quick test of the speech skip and it looks like the speech skip could be faster by at least a half second, probably more. I'm early enough in the run that I'm going to go back and redo it, plus I understand guard manipulation much better now and there are a couple other time savers I want to try. Long story short, I'm starting over. Round 2, fight!
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Mavalock went back and improved some parts of the TAS. First, he saved another frame on Courier (3 frames total over the previous TAS). He added the speech skip in King's Ransom to save 15 frames, plus better movement optimization to save a total of 48 frames over his previous attempt. He also found the memory address for RNG, which will be useful. He told me that Bond's footsteps, gunshots, and various sound effects can affect it.
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
King's Ransom 2.0 is complete, and I managed to save just over a second and a half! I saved a total of 48 frames: 15 from speech skip, 7 from finding a way to open the door at the bottom of the stairs, and the rest was from optimizing movement/guard boosts. In the previous version, I was hesitant to take guard boosts because I was concerned about lag and health, though in this version I actually saved a frame of lag and ended with 1.24 health (Bond starts at 100), so neither of these turned out to be an issue. I also figured out that since Bond turns so slowly, it's generally better to brush against walls and lose a bit of speed as I turn so that I can have a better angle sooner. Oh, and I saved another frame on Courier somehow, so there's that. Vid: https://youtu.be/_xzDNxWRLy0 Notes: https://pastebin.com/5NydBwUJ On RNG: The biggest things that seem to affect it are on screen NPCs, explosions, and various sound effects, including Bond's footsteps and using weapons/items. RNG only cycles as needed and seems to be unaffected by inputs, so shooting is by far the easiest way to manipulate RNG. There are also certain cutscenes where it cycle infrequently (or not at all!), notably the intro to A Sinking Feeling, where I have to manipulate Christmas's starting position, so it's far more efficient to alter the ending of the previous level here. I don't know how much more I'll look into this since advanced RNG manipulation doesn't seem to be terribly necessary for the run, but it is nice to have a basic idea of how to affect it without wasting too much time.
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
Thames Chase is done, and I managed to save exactly one second off my previous run. Nothing really new here, just tighter movement and a few more guard boosts, though I did decide to leave out the hostage fail glitch since it created a bit of lag that didn't seem to be there last time. Oh well... https://youtu.be/Nywjb9uQQb0
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Amazing job on both of these. Looking forward to seeing the rest.
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
I just finished Underground Uprising, and I ended up saving just over 10 seconds off the previous TAS, which is quite a bit more than I expected. I'm kind of disappointed that I couldn't push the mission time down to 1:17, which is the Agent record, but I'm still pretty satisfied with this one. https://youtu.be/UTuiRzvj8eE
Mavalock
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After taking a bit of a break, I finally managed to finish Cold Reception. Not much room for improvement here, but I did find a few small time saves, which was enough to save just over a second total. https://youtu.be/e1YpfSm1w2A
Mavalock
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Night Watch is done, and I'm really happy with how it turned out. I had a bit of trouble with this level at first, and I had to reroute the beginning several times. Gabor starts at a random location in the first part of the level, either in the area immediately outside the bedroom, in the area with the pool, or in the area before you reenter the villa. In RTA runs, Gabor starting in the third area almost always results in a mission failure, as several guards spawn as you enter the villa, and their gunfire will alert the nearby Gabor. I figured out that these guards spawn only if one of the first two cameras see you, so I destroy the cameras as I fall from the balcony. However, there is a group of three guards in the first area that you must avoid by running behind the bushes, which is a half second slower, or knock out or they will shoot at you, which will alert Gabor if he is anywhere in the first two areas. You fail the mission if you kill the guards, so you have to switch to watch darts to knock them out, which cannot be done in time unless you start switching before exiting the bedroom. You also cannot switch back to the P2K quickly enough to destroy the first camera before it sees you. The final solution was to do the opposite of what RTA does and have Gabor start in the third area. By doing this, I could destroy the cameras while leaving the first 3 guards alive (and even getting boosts from them, saving a few frames), and not only is Gabor far enough from the area that he won't hear anything, but by avoiding spawning the extra guards, the other guards in the area won't notice me as easily, so I can run right past them without them alerting Gabor. As an added bonus, I even run right in front of Gabor as I enter the third area and he doesn't notice Bond. I also discovered that switching to a weapon after using an item cancels the cooldown timer, allowing me to do the ending much faster. Overall, I saved just over 10 seconds from the previous TAS on this level! https://youtu.be/_QvtFhjEEPk
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Didn't even notice you had continued this lol. Awesome work on CR/NW. Insane NW ending! The in-depth info about these levels is a fantastic read as well. I looked into alot of things when I ran this in 2014 but nowhere near this detailed.
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
Thanks! If only this game had more runners to make use of all this info... Anyway, here's Midnight Departure. I figured out that killing the air traffic controller fails the mission, but doesn't actually fail any objectives, so I use that to skip the ending cutscene (similar to how Courier works). Other than that, this one is pretty straightforward. https://youtu.be/wuySskkdcXY
Joined: 10/23/2009
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Just posting to tell you that I can't wait to see the final product. :) Loved everything so far.
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
Thanks, Niamek! I finished Masquerade and ended up saving nearly 11 seconds real time from the old TAS, despite losing 4 in-game seconds. This is due to a cutscene skip that lets me get the locator card while a cutscene would normally be happening, which saves 4 real time seconds but loses 10 in-game seconds since the timer pauses during cutscenes. Also, most of this mission is on a script/timer, so there's plenty of playaround time here. https://youtu.be/RxkqcCwGEg8 Coming up next we have City of Walkways I, which has seen a number of major discoveries in the past couple weeks, so I'm excited to see what the end result of that will look like!
Mavalock
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It's been a while, but I finally got around to finishing City of Walkways I. A few years ago, Wyster discovered that it was possible to get out of bounds in the bridge area, and by climbing the boat and running from the mast, Bond would float above the ground, allowing you to run directly to the bridge switch and activate it from the outside. However, there didn't really seem to be a use for it in a speedrun at the time. A few months ago, I started looking for a way to make use of this trick, and I stumbled upon something even better: after the first warehouse, I could manipulate a guard into pushing me under the railing, which not only let me skip the second warehouse entirely, but it gave me a perfect setup to use Wyster's previous discovery! Overall, I cut nearly 32 seconds from the previous TAS (26 of which were from the OoB sequence), making this the most improved level of the run. https://youtu.be/SxjbYHiu9zg
Mavalock
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Joined: 5/22/2017
Posts: 14
City of Walkways 2 done! The helicopter fight has easily been the most time-consuming segment of the TAS, and I tried out at least 5 or 6 different strats. The helicopter is invincible until it reaches a certain point in its path, then you have to hit it with 6 rockets to defeat it. It's also invincible for 15 frames after each hit, so the fastest theoretically possible fight would end 80 frames after the first hit. However, you have to reload at some point, which takes ~80 frames, so the idea I had was to fire the first set of rockets from farther away so that the rockets take longer to hit the helicopter, then get closer to the helicopter while reloading before firing the last set. The fight here takes 27 frames longer than a theoretically perfect fight, and while it is possible to defeat the helicopter faster (the best I got was 13 frames away), it leaves you much farther away from the bridge, which would lose time overall. Only 4 levels left, and the next 2 should probably go fairly quickly... https://youtu.be/b-YWm_shdYc
Mavalock
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Turncoat: https://youtu.be/74v8zxqRy6w Fallen Angel: https://youtu.be/JEdcDb_1XHo I saved 5 seconds on Turncoat and 6 on FA, mostly through a bunch of small optimizations. Not much to say about them other than that. In the next mission, it's theoretically possible to skip the Christmas escort. The escort objective doesn't activate until about a second and a half after the find Christmas objective completes, so by blowing up the steering controls and then rescuing Christmas afterward, it's possible for the level to end before triggering the escort objective. The only problem is that you only have 5 seconds after destroying the controls before the level ends, which may not be enough time to get back to Christmas. We'll see what I can do with this, though...
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Awesome work, as always. If my memory serves me correctly, I tried that escort skip at some point, though I used the pause trick to get back to her. Would be amazing if you could somehow pull it off without it.
MarbleousDave
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Joined: 9/12/2009
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There's a bug in the 64-bit version of BizHawk where the game crashes with voices on. The Dynarec RSP core fixes it in the 32-bit version. We have no choice but to turn voices off. If we can use the CEN64 core we can use voices. For now, disabling voices is the only workaround as the 32-bit version of BizHawk has been deprecated.
Joined: 9/12/2014
Posts: 540
Location: Waterford, MI
Has this project been forgotten? How many seconds total have you saved over the published run?