https://youtu.be/S4gadhKYq98
This is a tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) of the first level in GoldenEye: 007 for Wii. It's not a perfect run, but it's a really solid completion of the Dam time trial that I am really proud of. This TAS is 28 seconds faster than the current world record run, mostly because of optimized movement and fast glitch execution.
After the intro cutscene, the player is tasked with killing two enemies in the guard tower straight ahead of the starting area. The fastest way I've found to kill these enemies is to shoot them from a distance as early as possible. I get a headshot on the closest one, which makes him take a step backwards. This makes him line up with the enemy beside him, which makes it possible for me to shoot both of them with the same bullets. The next four bullets travel clean through the first guard's body and hit the next guard in the head. A bullet that hits more than one enemy is called a collateral, and those will happen frequently in GoldenEye Wii TASes. With the first headshot and four collateral shots after, I am able to kill the first two enemies with five bullets. They don't die in one headshot each because they are too far away for one bullet to kill them. This damage drop-off is a frequent issue with killing far-away guards in this game.
Once the enemies are killed, it's time to run toward the guard tower and kill another enemy by the green truck. This doesn't save any time, but it's entertaining. There are two other enemies walking past the truck that Trevelyan is scripted to kill, which is why I don't shoot them. Once all that is done, I stand in a certain place so the next group of enemies will spawn. Then I run toward them as soon as I'm able to. I have to wait for the five enemies to come through the door before I can kill them, so that gives me time to pick up an AK-47 that a guard drops near the beginning of the level. I quickly headshot the five guards with four bullets then run to the green truck, where the next part of the mission will begin. It doesn't matter how quickly I do any of this since you have to wait for Trevelyan to finish his scripted actions, but quickly killing enemies like that is really entertaining, so I'm willing to spend more time to make the TAS look superhuman without looking robotic.
The next part of the stage is autoscroller, so there is not much to say about that. I try to make the gameplay interesting but there is not much to shoot at. There is a pretty interesting glitch near the end of it that makes the lighting act weird, but there isn't anything special about this part. There is no way to speed up the autoscroller as far as I know.
During the breach, I shoot the three enemies as quickly as possible, then I shoot a padlock on the door behind them. This opens the door during the breach, which means I don't have to shoot the lock during real gameplay.
At this point, I need to briefly talk about two important techniques we use in GoldenEye Wii speedruns and TASes. The first of which is Sprint Cancelling. If you interrupt a sprint half a second before it ends, you can start another sprint almost immediately. This means there is little to no walking time between sprints. You can cancel a sprint by shooting, reloading, switching weapons, falling, slowing down, strafing, etc. Anything that stops you from sprinting can be used to cancel a sprint. The later you cancel you sprint, the longer it takes. If you cancel it too early, you become unable to sprint for a short time, which loses about half a second. Each successful frame-perfect sprint cancel saves a little under 0.2 seconds. The next technique I use here is called Hovering. When you sprint down a slope, you temporarily reset your falling speed. It happens for such a short time that you may not even notice it. But if you interrupt your sprint with a reload, you can sprint again the next frame. This means that you can reset your falling speed every other frame for a short time, which allows you to almost hover in place while going down slopes. This is used to cut corners in many places, get out of bounds, and get over short walls if there is a downward slope nearby. It's a surprisingly useful technique.
After hovering down the first set of stairs, I turn to the right and reload a checkpoint right as I press the button to open the big sliding door. This saves about two seconds of in-game time, which is what this Time Trial TAS aims for (A future full-game TAS would aim to save real time instead of in-game time, so this wouldn't be done there). From there, I take good lines and sprint cancel everywhere to get to my next objective faster. The next important part of the run is at the chopper, a.k.a. "Holiday Snaps". There are two enemies that run down the stairs, which I completely ignore. They do a lot of damage to me, but I pulled through in the end. The problem with speedruns and TASes of this game is that you do not regenerate health while sprinting. As a result, health management is a crucial part of speedrunning this game on the higher difficulties. The top of the Dam is, without a doubt, the hardest part of a Dam Time Trial run because you will be sprinting constantly, which means you will not regenerate health at all. To make matters worse, there is a really insane sniper on the other side of the dam that was a nightmare to deal with here. The enemies inflicted so much damage that I could not avoid without losing time, so I had to kill more enemies than I would have liked. Killing enemies takes time because you have to turn to shoot them. So theoretically, a few frames could be saved for each enemy I have to kill here. I had to slow down slightly near the end of the dam to prevent the sniper from killing me. Otherwise, this TAS plays the top of the dam really well.
After completing the objective in the sniper tower, I head into the elevator toward rendezvous point. There is one final objective I'll complete on the way there. I have to shoot a locked door so I can go in through the other side. I also do what's called a "ladder skip", where I sprint at a good angle and fall down to the floor below insead of climbing down the ladder. Next, I head to the room with the last objective in it. Here, you're expected to complete the objective then turn around and head back down the stairs. Instead, I'll be falling through a small hole in the ground, which is a little bit faster. Normally, you would miss the objective here because Bond puts the phone away while he's falling. But there is a small ledge in the out of bounds space that I can land on. This means I can fall out of bounds, look around for a second, then clip all the way through as early as the game will allow. From there, I do a final few sprints to the finish and hover down another staircase to cut a corner a little tighter.
While this TAS was a blast to make, and I'm really proud of the end result, it is certainly improvable. Here is a list of improvements that could be made to this TAS some day:
1) I kill a guard at 6:24. It's possible for that guard to be in a different place, but I was unable to manipulate them. I'm sure a frame or two could be saved here if the guard cooperated a little better.
2) Starting at 7:00, I take a ton of damage that could have possibly been reduced or avoided. Taking this damage early on meant that I had to kill more enemies on top of the dam and slow down a little to avoid the sniper's bullets. There is potential to save a few frames per kill here, plus about 1/4 of a second for slowing down a little.
Aside from that, this TAS is really good and I'm proud of the final result. I plan to TAS another time trial mission over the next week or two. and potentiall start another full-game TAS in the near future.
