TWINE Questions for Henrik (posting here for exposure & cool info)

[RWG]

My friends,

The next video I want to work on is a simple telling of the story of Cold Reception, bcks' destroyed VHS tapes, and various elite anecdotes around the era when it came to getting runs mailed & captured by someone who owned a rare capture device.

However, there is still some information which I could use to fully complete the story, mostly technical details about TWINE and how the Cold Reception strategy works.  Obviously I pose these mostly to Henrik, as he currently has a (near) sweep on WRs in the game (if you discount Bcks' claimed WRs) but anyone who knows the answers to these questions, absolutely feel free to chime in.

----

1) Any more information on the Cold Reception strategy Bcks used to get 209/207? Apparently he pause buffered the entire level, taking 2 hours to complete a 2 minute mission. Why does this work? And why only on Cold Reception? Something about how Cold Reception is a sort of auto-scroller going downhill, progressing manually for you?  What exactly is the mechanic at play here?

2) Was this strategy outright banned, or is it simply considered “too troll” and not something you and others wanted to use? Did you all just mutually agree to not use it?  If someone submitted times to speedrun.com with it, would you allow them?

3) Does any video of the strategy exist? Any theorycraft or TAS? Or were Bcks’ destroyed VHS tapes the only recording ever?  Why haven’t you or anyone else tried it/recorded an attempt, even if just for theory?

Anyone who has any other experiences or thoughts to add about TWINE, any little anecdotes or anything interesting at all, please share!

[Wyst3r]

1) Any more information on the Cold Reception strategy Bcks used to get 209/207? Apparently he pause buffered the entire level, taking 2 hours to complete a 2 minute mission. Why does this work? And why only on Cold Reception? Something about how Cold Reception is a sort of auto-scroller going downhill, progressing manually for you?  What exactly is the mechanic at play here?

Essentially, pausing gives you a free extra position update. So you move two steps forward instead of one (at the cost of just one). Auto-scrolling is definitely why it works so well on CR, but I demonstrated back in the day that it works on all levels, by getting a Courier 9 on a run that would normally give 10. That was ultimately what killed TWINE speedrunning back then (Pause buffering was already kinda OP before this, due to easy aiming and reaction times, but this just made it even more ridiculous). It saves WAY less compared to CR though, I think I tried pause buffering the entire Turncoat Agent at some point and failed to beat the WR. Not entirely sure about the reason (Mavalock probably knows more than me), but it's probably related to how Bond's speed is reset when you pause.

2) Was this strategy outright banned, or is it simply considered “too troll” and not something you and others wanted to use? Did you all just mutually agree to not use it?  If someone submitted times to speedrun.com with it, would you allow them?

The TWINE PR topic has the entire discussion resulting in the current ruleset/rankings, if you read the posts from 2013 and onwards. Long story short, you are allowed 1 pause per gadget usage. This indirectly bans Brandon's strategy and also means you can't pause buffer difficult shots etc... (which would also benefit from Brandon's strat, although very little). The point is simply to keep the number of pauses to a minimum, without requiring spamming A+B for every gadget use (or switching watch mode to the grapple hook manually).

3) Does any video of the strategy exist? Any theorycraft or TAS? Or were Bcks’ destroyed VHS tapes the only recording ever?  Why haven’t you or anyone else tried it/recorded an attempt, even if just for theory?

In theory, I think you can get times of 0 seconds on all levels with frame perfect pausing. Knowing that, I can't really see the point in making any long TAS/test run with it. I have tried it in order to pull off a Christmas escort skip on A Sinking Feeling (by destroying the submarine controls first, and then pause buffering my way back to Christmas before the fadeout), but that's about it. I used to have Brandon's 2:07 vid on my harddrive, but might be on my oldest drive which I don't have access to atm.

[Mavalock]

Funnily enough, I was planning on making a Courier 0:00 TAS for April Fools' Day, but it didn't pan out. Here's what I found, though:

After unpausing, there is one frame where the timer doesn't update. In this frame, Bond's position will update, but you actually lose a bit of speed, all the way down to the minimum speed (in other words, zero EXCEPT for Cold Reception). So in most cases, you would eventually stop moving, so you would need to reaccelerate, which would cause the timer to update. You also can't perform any actions (shooting, opening doors, etc.) in the unpause frame. So basically, 0 seconds isn't possible on most levels.

However, in Cold Reception you have a nonzero minimum speed, which is why it works so well here. Assuming that you don't die, you could theoretically get as low as 13 frames of in-game time here (first pause at 11 frames and 1 frame to shoot each of the 2 fuel dumps).

Also, if you're not aware, I've been working on a TWINE TAS for some time now, and I'm about a level and a half from completing the whole thing. There's lots of information in the video descriptions, so surely you'll find something interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQBTYkrfJC4tX-FAc66125g/playlists?sort=dd&view=1&shelf_id=0

3) Does any video of the strategy exist? Any theorycraft or TAS? Or were Bcks’ destroyed VHS tapes the only recording ever?  Why haven’t you or anyone else tried it/recorded an attempt, even if just for theory?

I have a TAS of a short segment of Courier (about 1 in-game second). If I knew of a way to record Bizhawk with lua outputs, I could make a comparison of pausing vs. normal play showing certain memory values.

[Shadow]

I wasn't aware of this. I used to be fairly happy with my Cold Reception time way back in the day (no turbo buttons, just mashing c-up). Then I looked at the TWINE scores a few years ago and was disgusted. I didn't know this technique may have contributed to those times.

[RWG]

Thanks for the info guys! Very useful stuff which helps a lot.

Mavalock - could you post the 1 second Courier TAS somewhere?  Even without a comparison it's fine... I just want to see the pausing trick done in practice to really grasp its trollery.

Also - would the 13 frame theoretical Cold Reception run read out as 0:00 or 0:01?

--

EDIT - wtf Henrik you used to have the 2:07 on your harddrive? I thought the VHS tapes were destroyed by Mouser????

[Wyst3r]

EDIT - wtf Henrik you used to have the 2:07 on your harddrive? I thought the VHS tapes were destroyed by Mouser????

I could be wrong but Im pretty sure Ive seen the vid. Think it was 2 hours long.

[Mavalock]

Mavalock - could you post the 1 second Courier TAS somewhere?  Even without a comparison it's fine... I just want to see the pausing trick done in practice to really grasp its trollery.

Here you go: https://youtu.be/h8zQVzuFic4

I got curious, so I looked into things a bit more. Bond's normal max speed is .25 units/frame (in other words, you're moving 1 unit every 4 frames). By pausing every frame, you can gain nearly a full unit of movement before you stop, or nearly 4 frames of movement for one tick of the timer. I did this by pausing at the first available frame, so this distance would have been a bit more had I accelerated to full speed first.

Pausing every other frame seems to be optimal. Here, Bond's speed fluctuates, but stabilizes around .15-.19 per frame, which roughly averages to .33 per tick of the timer, or 1 unit per 3 frames. So basically, by pausing optimally, you can save up to 1/4 second for every second of normal gameplay. This is what I used in the above video. In the normal TAS, I open the first door at 2 seconds and 8 frames (68 frames), and with pause abuse I get there in 1 second and 24 frames (54 frames). I would guess that 7.xx is possible if I were to finish out the level.

If you're curious, here is a spreadsheet demonstrating a few different strats I tried: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QBglv5zhWY2m-iwQeBFGH9eBZP6vsph79ORkO9ITnXI/edit?usp=sharing

Also - would the 13 frame theoretical Cold Reception run read out as 0:00 or 0:01?

It would be 0:00. The timer keeps track of minutes, seconds, and frames, and it chops off the frame count when displaying the end time, no rounding or anything.

[AForgottenEvent]

Mate where's the TWINE elite

[Shadow]

Only rankings I know of are here:
http://www.angelfire.com/crazy2/the_sexy_rivalry/TwineRivalry/elite.htm

[RWG]

Thanks for the video and info Mavalock, very useful!

EDIT - wtf Henrik you used to have the 2:07 on your harddrive? I thought the VHS tapes were destroyed by Mouser????

I could be wrong but Im pretty sure Ive seen the vid. Think it was 2 hours long.

From what I heard, the video was indeed 2 hours.  At least, that's how long it was "according to legend."  I asked Axel Z and Flicker about it, as they downloaded the whole torrent file Mouser uploaded, but neither of them recall seeing any TWINE stuff (particularly not Cold Reception.)

I don't doubt that you have the video, but it would be an absolutely major revelation in this story.

[Wyst3r]

Mate where's the TWINE elite

Only rankings I know of are here:
http://www.angelfire.com/crazy2/the_sexy_rivalry/TwineRivalry/elite.htm

www.speedrun.com/twine

[Mavalock]

I've started doing a quick () test run of Cold Reception just to see what would happen, and it turns out that frame-perfect pausing has some interesting side effects there:

Bond retains his height, which means he will start to hover above the ground, and he can actually go over the loading zones that cause enemies to spawn. However, if you hover for too long, you will eventually break the path and get stuck. I've also found a specific frame where I get stuck between two rooms if I pause, and I have no idea what causes it...

For reference, I'm about 1/8 of the way through the level, and the movie is already just over a half hour long!

UPDATE: It seems like the pause frame delays certain calculations, including checking to see whether Bond is airborne (at least on Cold Reception, other levels may work differently), checking for inputs, and determining bullet paths. This means that occasionally throughout the level, you're forced to lose a few frames for various reasons, such as dropping down to avoid breaking the path or shooting the fuel dumps. 0:00 may not be possible, but some other ridiculously low time (probably 0:01.xx) is, and it would take about 3-4 hours of real time and somewhere around 6000-8000 pauses.

[AForgottenEvent]

I didn't know speedrun.com did stuff like that. That's pretty cool.

[RWG]

Well, this was the result of that whole investigation.  Thanks for chiming in with info guys, I hope I did the story justice!

[Clichejon]

Great video! However socks and sandals!?

[Shadow]

Very entertaining. Thanks.

I was thinking it's a shame that TWINE was so broken, but honestly there were ever only a couple of levels I enjoyed running. Underground Uprising, Cold Reception, Night Watch, and maybe one of the last stages.

But multiplayer sure was fun. I think that ski lift level was called Skylink and I figured out that you could walk on top of the cables and if you fell off, you could press the jump button (c-up) just before hitting the ground and you wouldn't die. That really made the level even more engaging and opened your options for capture the briefcase scenarios.