GoldenEye's Luckiest Speedrun Explained!

random number generation is a speedrunners worst nightmare you can play perfectly but if the numbers don't go your way you'll be left empty-handed don't be fooled though speedrunning is not just a game of luck it is a disciplined grind of consistent execution and so long as you're consistent the odds will eventually sway in your favor in Goldeneye double-oh-seven nothing encapsulate s' the fight against RNG better than frigate the level is infamous for hosting speedruns that are incredibly dependent on luck factors it's also a very complex level and finding that balance between speed and consistency is something that speedrunners have battled with since the game's release in this video series we will explore the world records on this stage and find out just how much luck is needed on these runs through this exploration we will uncover how random number generation has shaped the strategies into what they are today so sit back and relax as we take a deep dive into goldeneyes most a lock dependent speedrun frigate the classic goldeneyes Speedrunner well to Y Anson has set the most world records in the entire history of the game one of his most famous and longest lasting was a time of 23 seconds on frigate agent which he set on the 24th of September 2005 the time would remain the world record for over 13 years and took a grind of 120 hours to achieve given the short length of the level this would total approximately 15,000 attempts the large number of attempts didn't have much to do with speed being an issue as realistically completing the level in 23 seconds is a fairly trivial task for top players rather it all ultimately revolved around waiting for the required luck frigate speedruns are centered around a single dynamic rescuing hostages from their hostage takers and waiting for them to escape in order to rescue a hostage the following steps need to take place first the hostage taker which is a single guard pointing their weapon at the hostage is killed once the death animation has completed and the guard has fully faded away the hostage will pick one of six locations on the frigate as their escape point when the hostage has reached its chosen escape point it will be considered rescued and will fade out of the level not every escape point is equal and the hostage will take a different amount of time to escape depending on which escape point they choose because of the way the parting of the hostages works there is a single escape point that is the fastest for every single hostage we are going to talk about the specific odds of getting the correct escape point a bit later in the video there are six hostages you can choose to release located throughout the level assuming they choose the fastest escape point the hostages in order of possible escape speed are as follows I'll show you the theoretical optimal escape time on screen as well but these times are too realistic and would never happen in a real run they are a pretty good guide to tell you just how fast each hostage is relative to each other though the quickest by far is the bridge hostage this hostage is unique because even though it chooses the same escape point as the other hostages it can actually reach the escape from the interior of the frigate it only has to run a few meters into this small room before it is considered rescue and that only takes a few seconds the second and third fastest are these two hostages on the upper levels you can see that they are pretty close to each other so their escape times are pretty similar this hostage here is a couple of seconds slower going down to the lower levels this hostage is the fourth quickest the hostage in the engine room is number five and this hostage here is the slowest by far this slowest hostage is actually pretty close in location to the fourth fastest hostage but the problem is that he doesn't actually run the same way instead of taking the logical route which would only be a few seconds slower it chooses to run all the way around the engine room instead the total number of hostages you need to save is different for each difficulty on agent you need to save two hostages on secret agents you need to save four hostages and on double O agent you need to save five hostages the speed run on the agent difficulty is really simple we only need to rescue two hostages and place a tracker bug on the helicopter the two hostages we choose to save are the second and third fastest hostages these are chosen for a couple of reasons the first is that they are very close together so you can kill them both at the same time while you might think you'd want to save the fastest hostage you actually lose any potential time gain because it's so far out of the way the two hostages are also near the position we complete the tracker bug objective from instead of going all the way up to the helicopter we throw it from this doorway once the tracker bug is thrown it is imperative that we continue to look in the direction of the helicopter if we look away the helicopter will become unloaded and the tracker bug will not be able to land on it which would fail the objective the agent speed run is entirely capped by the speed at which the first hostage we release can escape I like to break the speed run down into two parts the first part is the beginning of the run up until we kill the first hostage taker ideally this should be done as quickly as possible the speed at which we can kill this first hostage taker will essentially act as an upper limit for how fast the run can ultimately complete the second part is simply waiting for the slowest hostage to be rescued the time it takes to kill the second hostage taker throw the tracker bug and make it back to the boat to finish the level is theoretically slightly less than the time it takes for the slowest hostage to escape in practice however these two events coincidentally line up pretty close to each other the overarching strategy for achieving the world record is simply to repeat as many runs as possible and hope that the hostages escape in time as I mentioned previously there are six different escape points hostages can choose it is absolutely essential for both hostages to choose the fastest escape point on the agent difficulty the probability of any specific hostage choosing the fastest escape point is 15.6 percent the chances of both hostages choosing the fastest escape point is 2 point 4 4 % or approximately 1 in 41 this is not the only random number generation that affects the speed of the hostages released though as we also have to consider the death animation of the hostage taker when you kill a guide in Goldeneye that aren't always die in the same manner there are a total of 17 different death animations that God can choose when killed with the bullet these animations take varying lengths of time to complete and range from 2.1 3 seconds all the way up to twenty point one eight seconds once the death animation has completed the guard will then fade out which will always take approximately 1.6 seconds given that the hostages only choose their escape point and start running once the hostage taker has faded out this means that the death animation the god chooses will affect how long it will take for the hostages to escape a slower death animation will cause us to need to wait longer now it's reasonable for you to jump to the conclusion that the faster the death animation the better but that may not necessarily be the case the reason for this isn't obvious at all and has to do with how NPCs move differently when they are either loaded or unloaded when an NPC is loaded it will react to obstacles and other NPCs an NPC will remain loaded as long as it or the room that it is located in is visible when an NPC is unloaded it will completely ignore and run straight through obstacles and even doors this ends up being a pretty important dynamic because as you can see if I keep this first hostage loaded he has a lot of trouble getting around this chair but if he was unloaded he would pass straight through it without a problem in the world record strategy you can see that after killing the second hostage taker we immediately turn around so that the hostages and the room the hostages are located in are completely absent from view this immediately puts them into an unloaded state which is obviously what we want but unfortunately there is another mechanic that can cause NPCs to become loaded and it is extremely difficult to control this mechanic has to do with how characters paths find when they are unloaded the term pathfinding simply means the paths npcs choose to take when moving from point A to point B when a guard or hostage is unloaded they will move along predetermined paths that are stored within the game this diagram is a top-down view of the rooms housing the two hostages we free on agent the red lines between each circle are individual segments the green circles represent the beginning or end of each segment when a hostage or God becomes unloaded it immediately selects the beginning of the next segment as its target location it then calculates the distance to that location from its current position now that it has a value for the distance it needs to travel it then starts another counter that stores the value for the distance traveled in its current segment when the value of the distance traveled reaches the value of the distance to the beginning of the next segment the NPC is then placed at the beginning of the next segment for example if an NPC calculates that the distance to its next location is a hundred units and the NPC is moving at 10 units per frame each frame the distance traveled will increase by 10 units until its value reaches a hundred the NPC will then teleport to the start of the next segment given that distance traveled is the only value that the game is keeping track of any obstacles that may be in the way are completely ignored however if another unloaded NPC is already standing on the same location a guard or hostage is attempting to move too it will change from an unloaded state to a loaded state and will need to run the entire segment again now that it's in a load of state it will need to navigate around obstacles and other end pcs because of this mechanic it is imperative that the death animation of the second toss hitch taker is not slower than that of the first hostage taker even though the second hostage escapes quicker we release him last which means that most of the headstart has already been removed if the death animation of the second hostage taker is too slow the first hostage will get in front of the second hostage and cause him to begin his segment again this loses far too much time we are about to see how this all plays out in an actual run but one final thing we need to know is that when you kill the second hostage taker a guard is alerted and starts to run to your location this guard is standing in the back corner of the room with the second hostage it is this guard that causes most of the problems and drastically reduces the odds of a quick completion when we turn around and pause to get out the tracker bug this alerted guard will be running towards the position we were standing when we shot the second hostage taker unfortunately because this guard is in an unloaded state he will be occupying the same position the first hostage will be heading to if the guard has not reached his destination by the time the first hostage taker arrives the hostage will become loaded and start his segment again this will obviously lose time by having to repeat the segment but it will also mean that the hostage will get stuck behind the chair eliminating any chance of a fast completion this introduces even more luck into the equation as it turns out that the speed at which this alerted God will reach his target location will be different for each run when an npc goes from a loaded state to an unloaded state the speed at which he travels along that first segment will differ depending on his speed and direction at the exact moment he becomes unloaded as these factors are impossible for bond to control this becomes yet another random element that needs to go our way to summarize everything we've learned we need the following luck factors to go our way in order to successfully complete the optimal run one a relatively quick death animation on the first hostage taker to a death animation on the second hostage taker that is either as fast or faster than the first three both hostages need to choose the fastest escape point and finally the alerted guard must have a high speed when traversing his first unloaded segment by 2019 routers record of 23 seconds had been tied by 20 other players tying the world record was already seen as a chore and often required vast grinds so the prospect of going loyal was rarely taken seriously there was one player however that did put a lot of effort into this task arguably the most talented Goldeneye player of all time Brian is ron sporadically played to the level for years he would routinely finish sessions grinding for other records with a few frigate attempts he had accumulated a respectable total of failed runs finished in 22 seconds but the luck required to get a completed run eluded him in 2018 he started putting a lot more effort into the grind for 22 dedicating entire sessions of clay to the cause on the 1st of June 2018 Brian achieved this run [Music] [Music] for the first time in history someone had seen hostages complete on a 22 second pace run but unfortunately for Eon he had missed the tracker buck throat aside from all of the luck factors surrounding the hostages being able to complete the level in 22 seconds is far from trivial only a few players have demonstrated the ability to do this consistently by far the most difficult part of the run is throwing the tracker bug onto the helicopter this has to be done extremely quickly and there is barely any time to set up your aim at this pace the throw is incredibly precise and it's not something you'd expect to be landing every time usually when a player misses the tracker bug throw they would quit out of the run immediately the last thing you'd want to happen is to have the hostages complete on a run where you missed the throw at least when you quit out you'd never know planning out the run is risky and has resulted in heartbreak several times before rayons 22 was definitely one of the most crushing fails in Goldeneye history there's one final thing we need to talk about and that's the very end of the run you'll notice that the message stating that objective a has been completed never shows on screen objective a is the one relating to the hostages escaping you'll also notice at the end of every run there is a short period where the level fades out for obvious reasons this is simply called the fade-out the fade-out lasts exactly one second and during this time objectives can still complete the in-game timer stops as soon as the fade-out begins which means that the objectives can still complete even after the timer has stopped to give you an example of when the timer stops here's a clip that actually shows the in-game timer on screen you can see that as soon as bond enters the boat the timer disappears signifying that the timer has stopped the time shown on the very last frame the timer is visible will indicate the final time in order to give the hostages the maximum amount of time to escape our goal is to exit the level at exactly 22 point nine seconds given that Goldeneye rounds down to the full second there is literally no benefit in exiting earlier than a point nine decimal twenty two point zero and twenty two point nine will show 22 on the final screen but at least 22.9 gives the hostages almost an entire extra second to complete one great way week in time went to exit is by listening to the music Goldeneye players have learned to use specific music cues to tell them how fast each run is I've been asked so many times in the past if I ever get sick of listening to the same music over and over again but the reality is that I don't even hear the music as music anymore it has become more like a stopwatch giving me real-time feedback on the pace of the run by 2019 it appeared as though rayon had relaxed from his efforts to attain 22 frigates agent was now the second oldest lasting world record on the ranks no one else was playing for the record so I decided to go after it myself what should have taken weeks or months of grinding was amazingly achieved in only 30 hours of play on the 31st of January 2019 I achieved this run because I guys see he turns [Music] so what exactly happened in the 22 second run the first death animation was 2.8 seconds which in my opinion is absolutely ideal this should almost always give the alerted guard enough time to get out of the way the second death animation was the fastest possible at two point one three seconds this gave the second hostage a large head start this combination of a slightly slower first hostage and the fastest second hostage is probably statistically speaking the most likely to result in escape times quick enough for the world record and as you would expect this almost perfectly mirrors rayons failed 22 run which had the exact same first death animation and a second death animation of 2.5 seconds of course this doesn't mean that it isn't possible for a quicker first hostage to escape in time it just means that the likelihood of it occurring is much much lower besides he may not do any good as goldeneye times are measured to the second so you would need to save an entire second to bring the record down to 21 we have never seen hostages escape this fast in the entire history of Goldeneye speedrunning so it's probably impossible on the world record run the pace was particularly fast because I got boosted by a guard that we would normally kill at the very beginning goldeneye boosts save approximately 0.3 seconds which put me well ahead of my target pace you can even hear me say this is too fast as I'm heading to the boat just before the very end you can see that I slowed down and briefly stop and I use an Arlene to time the exit this helped me lose approximately 0.25 seconds the final timer was likely around twenty two point eight to twenty two point nine seconds frigate has always had a bad reputation among speedrunners due to the extreme RNG required to achieve records many players in the past have spent up to hundreds of hours trying to beat their personal bests due to how the level works there really isn't any concrete way to ease anyone's suffering hopefully at the very least this video will help to explain why the level is the way that it is so it's not such a mystery based on everything I know it doesn't seem like the hostages will be able to escape quick enough to complete the level in 21 seconds I'd predicts that 22 seconds is where the record will remain using the current strategies there is one theoretical strategy that may mate 21 seconds possible but it is so hard to execute no one is even trying to make it happen this strategy is definitely one for another video though this analysis was pretty complex but we've only covered agents so far on secret agent and double O agent you need to save even more hostages this rabbit hole goes far far deeper let me know in the comments if you'd like me to explore the secret agent difficulty where things get a lot crazier thank you so much for watching I hope you're having a fantastic day and I will see you in the next video you

Channel: Karl Jobst

Views: 617,832

Rating: 4.9431324 out of 5

Keywords: speedrunning, speedrun, speedruns, goldeneye, 007, james bond, n64, karl jobst, speedrun history, speedlore, gdq, games done quick, best speedruns, gaming, gaming history, nintendo 64, n64 classic, n64 mini, world record progression, world record, rng, speedrunning news, luck in speedrunning

Id: ZUOv_wtnzRM

Length: 21min 24sec (1284 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 19 2019

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