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User:KathleenHartnett
Control (Part ii of Mission 7: Cuba) is the sixteenth level in GoldenEye 007. The formal name of this level is Control Centre. With the long protect sequence, Control has traditionally been the longest level in the game.
| Control | ||
|---|---|---|
| 150px | ||
| World Records | ||
| Difficulty | Time | First achieved by |
| Agent | 3:55 | Rayan Isran on 2019-10-11 |
| Secret Agent | 4:01 | Rayan Isran on 2019-10-24 |
| 00 Agent | 4:02 | Rayan Isran on 2019-10-26 |
| LTK | 4:16 | Blake Carroll on 2021-01-11 |
| DLTK | 8:35 | Bryan Bosshardt on 2016-01-26 |
Overview
Control is primarily a knowledge-based level (more so than other levels at least) and in order to get a good time, you need to know how Natalya works.
Control can experience the Time Not Saved glitch.
Objectives
All Difficulties
- a. Protect Natalya
- b. Disable Goldeneye satellite
- c. Destroy armored mainframes
Facts
First Room Sequence
Initially, the game waits for Bond to destroy all 3 (existing) drone guns as well as the 6 guards present in the very beginning. Once this is done, Natalya starts running to the computer terminal as soon as she has a direct line of sight to Bond.
More details on Natalya's movement in the first room is available in this forum post by Wyst3r
First Encounter
As soon as Natalya stops at the computer, but before taking the very last step, a timer is started. The game waits 60 frames and then starts playing an animation. After this, it enters a loop where it simply waits for her current animation to end. Once this is true, the text "Natalya: The blast doors have been locked by the security computer" is displayed on screen. [1]
Now a bigger loop is entered, where the game starts playing random animations. Before selecting an animation though, the game first checks to see if the timer has reached a value greater than 900 frames (15 seconds). If so, it displays the text "Natalya: Got one open! Head for the control room, James, I'll do what i can from here." on screen. It also sets a flag which causes another script to open the door, as well as preventing the "Has timer reached 900 frames" check in future iterations of the loop.
Once an animation is selected, the game enters a loop where it checks if the computer has been destroyed and waits for Natalya's current animation to stop. When that happens, a second loop is entered where the game checks if Natalya is currently visible on the screen. If true, the game returns to the beginning of the loop where it checks if 900 frames have passed and selects another random animation etc...
Here we can also see the reason why the "look straight down" strat works for making Natalya's message appear as early as possible. If Natalya isn't visible on screen, the game can't return to the beginning of the loop and select another random animation, which in turn would cause the game to wait until this animation has stopped. Instead, we can time this well and look up as soon as 900 frames have passed, which instantly causes the game to open the door for us. A similar effect was caused by the previous strat, in which you'd shoot Natalya so that the damage animation stopped exactly when 900 frames had passed.
Second Encounter
Natalya is still looping around with random animations.[1] Once Bond has entered the yellow area "Natalya: I'm coming, James!" is displayed on screen and Natalya starts jogging to the next computer.
The beginning of the next script is virtually identical to the previous encounter. Once the computer is reached (but before the very last step), her timer is reset to 0 and started. After 60 frames an animation is played. Once the animation has ended "Natalya: The Goldeneye is set to fire on London!" is displayed on screen.
Now a similar loop to the previous encounter is entered, where the game first checks to see if 900 frames have passed. If so, "Natalya: I'll try to override the guidance controls" is displayed, and the alarm goes off. Otherwise, a random animation is selected. Once selected, an inner loop begins where the game checks if the computer screen/keyboard has been destroyed. It also checks if Bond is within 150 units of Natalya. If not, "Natalya: James! I need cover while I'm doing this" is displayed and the timer is temporarily stopped.
If Bond was within 150 units, the game will check if Natalya's current animation has stopped, and if so, go back to selecting another random animation. Before jumping back however, it checks to see if Natalya has a direct line of sight to Bond, if not, it resets Natalya's position/angle to the default in front of the computer. (This also happens at the previous encounter, if Natalya wasn't visible on screen)
If Natalya's animation hadn't stopped, the game now starts checking the timer to see if certain texts should be displayed:
| If Timer > Value | Text/Event: |
|---|---|
| 2400 (40 seconds) | "Natalya: If i can just get the yaw oscillation above 5 degrees." |
| 3600 (60 seconds) | "Natalya: James, do you think you could be a bit quieter? I can't hear myself think." |
| 4800 (1 minute(s) 20 seconds) | "Natalya: The bounary-layer temperature stays pretty steady until re-entry." |
| 8100 (2 minute(s) 15 seconds) | "Natalya: Did it! The satellite's orbit is decaying." + Objective B Complete |
| 8400 (2 minute(s) 20 seconds) | "Bond: Get back to the surface, Natalya. I'm going after Trevelyan." |
| 8700 (2 minute(s) 25 seconds) | "Natalya: Good luck, James, I'll be waiting for you." + Natalya starts jogging back to the elevator |
If none of these are true, or if the current message has been on screen for more than 60 frames, the game returns to checking if computer has been destroyed.
To end things, once Natalya reaches the elevator, Objective A completes and she fades away.
Guard Spawns
Once the alarm goes off, 2 black-hatted guards instantly start spawning.[2] What you might not now is that their spawning is actually dependent on Bond having killed 2 guards in the very beginning. Of course, you are required to kill those guys anyway so there's no way to utilize this fact.
Each guard has 7 separate spawning points, shown below:
Red points belong to one of the guards, blue to the other. The probability for each location is #2-6: 15.625%, #1: 16%, #7: 9.765%.
Normally the games does regular "Have any of the guards died?" checks at 60 frame (1 second) intervals, and if so, respawns the guard(s). This interval actually changes once Natalya says "Good luck, James, I'll be waiting for you" and starts running towards the elevator. What's the new interval you ask? 40 seconds. So killing the black hat guards just after Natalya's message means no more black hat guards for 40 seconds.
There's one exception though, and that is if you enter the final big room where Trev is. If you do this, the game starts doing 1 second checks again. (if you go back and leave the room, it's back to 40).
Fast Second Natalya
Did some testing on how to get "optimal" Natalya's after meeting up with her the second time ("I'm coming, James"). Turns out the fastest way is probably to move out of the door, and instantly look back (Not too far left though!, since that will cause her to open the door instead of warping it), wait for her to come into view and then keep her in view all the way until she reaches the computer. [3]
Compared to perfect or near-perfect execution of the regular method of blowing up the glass, shooting screen, looking towards Nat, this method should be faster 99% of the time (at least according to my emulator tests), on average between 10-20 frames (0.16 - 0.33 seconds) and with a maximum of around 30 frames (0.5 seconds).
The problem of course is what to do with the drone guns. On Agent, you can simply run into them, which might be worth it if going for 3:57? You probably have time to at least throw the remote mine in though, after Nat has reached the computer, to kill most guards and the nearest drone gun.
Might also mention that going for the Body Armor, although you never get the "James, I need cover" message, will lose a minimum of around 30-60 frames simply by not looking at Natalya properly.
Backing Nat up
Natalya has 10 health and 10 body armour, so can be injured (and react) 5 times on agent and 10 times on SA / 00A. You can strip Nat's body armour during the dead time at the start: 1 headshot on agent will bring her down to 2 body armour, and the first limb shot will injure. Likewise 2 headshots and a limb shot on SA / 00A will bring her down to 1 body armour and the first limb shot will injure.
Historically, runners risked Nat running up the wrong stairs if they backed her up too far, but this is because they used leg shots. Instead you want to land shots on Nat's left forearm / hand, since these animations carry her back and slightly to the right, keeping her on the right side so she still takes the right stairs.
Nat teleporting
Any time that Nat
- Isn't busy in an animation (typing or injury)
- Can't see Bond herself
She'll teleport back to the desk. This doesn't really present any problems once you are aware that it happens.
Nat spinning
Nat can sometimes spin as she starts her gentle jog back to the elevator. The main cause of this is thought to be her picking a bad starting pad for her path, and which pad she picks is completely understood.
The pad that she starts from is her near pad, and the areas that she'll pick each pad from are shown on the right. Then the route that she'll pick is deterministic:
| Near pad | Route |
|---|---|
| 7B | → 7B → 79 → 78 → wrong stairs |
| 70 | → 70 → 6A → 6D → 67 → 68 → .. |
| 6A | → 6A → 6D → 67 → 68 → .. |
| 65 | → 65 → 67 → 68 → .. |
| 67 | → 67 → 68 → .. |
As she jogs her path, she looks to see if she has a line to the next pad in the path (ignoring the desks). If so she'll drop the first pad off of her path and target that second one instead. This shortcutting process isn't instant, and her turning to face these various pads makes her spin.
The cleanest solution on SA / 00A is to back Nat up into 67's area, which is the purple squashed L shape in the diagram. This means she won't have any shortcutting to do at the start of her route, so should just spin to face 67 and get on with the job.
Nat angling
A modern improvement, used in Ace's 3:55 / 4:01 / 4:02 sweep (less successfully in SA), is called 'Nat angling'. Natalya starts her all important timer on the frame that she starts turning to face the computer after jogging up to the desk[4]. As such you can injure her as she starts turning to the right, and fix the angle that she's facing further to the left. This is normally done with a leg shot since it's easier to hit.
This is important because none of the injury animations actually rotate Nat, they just move her in slightly different directions. With a good angle on agent you can back her up into 6A's area rather than 70's, for a slightly better route. On SA / 00A you can back her up deep into 67's area. Be aware that you might be able to make it all the way into 65's area, which would cause a bad spin.
Also note that you can adjust for mistiming the angle-fixing shot by your choice of arms for the rest of the injury animations. Each will pull her back and push her a little off to the side, i.e. left arm pushes her slightly to her right.
Nat nudging
More extreme Nat manipulation is only really seen in TAS at the moment. But by placing yourself in Nat's way 'nudges' her off of her route. This gets pretty precise but you can make her take corners earlier than if she was left to see them by herself, and in particular you can set up a more extreme angle for the backing up. You could also stand in front of Nat before she starts jogging back to the start, to stop her moving forwards as she rotates.
Gun shots
Shots to the gun do no damage and select one of two injury animations, one of which backs her up a little. This is not seen on console runs but in TAS you can back her up arbitrarily far as demonstrated .
Strategies
Watch Natalya to the first computer
When Natalya runs towards the first computer, keep her in sight at all times [5]. You can't gain any time from looking away and then reloading her after a while. In fact, you can lose over 200 frames doing this (if badly timed).
Don't look straight down as Natalya approaches first computer. Again, you can't gain any time this way and if you look down before Natalya starts walking = Instant 50-60 frames lost.
So basicly, always look at Natalya while she's moving.
Trap black hat guard spawns
Using Cinema + 16:9 and breaking 2 of glasses on the top floors, you can get all the "bad" black hat spawns (see above) in a single view, thus making it impossible for the black hat guards to spawn there. [3] Simply stand as in the picture below, then move down to the screen as soon as alarm goes off. This should guarantee that both guards get trapped at Boris' desk. This is useful for DLTK.
Tutorials
Agent
Secret Agent
00 Agent
LTK
- Tutorial Video: - Adam Bozon - Control LTK Tutorial (turn captions on)
- Tutorial Video: - Icy - Control LTK Tutorial (turn captions on)
DLTK
Misconceptions
Faster initial Natalya
The idea that Natalya can have faster reaction by turning earlier is simply wrong. Her "I'm coming, James" message can differ by a few frames but not in any significant or manipulatable manner. Even though the message can seem to come up faster when watching in real time, a frame-by-frame analysis shows that there's no difference whatsoever, no matter which method you use (look up, down, turn right, left, early, late etc etc...). [6]
