Game developer here. Obviously I didn't work on GoldenEye, but through acquired knowledge on general programming, I can guesstimate some of what's going on here. Firstly, regarding what Dr. Doak says, it seems that this glitch doesn't take into account if you pile up mines on the monitors. While I have no idea why that is, and it's hard to say without looking at the game's code, I assume there's a limit of objects somewhere, intentional or not, that gets hit when you blow up those mines. If this is true, you should be able to pull this off by setting mines on tables with stuff on top of them, for instance, or something like that. Again, hard to say because Doak say's those props are special, so we'd need to know what property makes them like this. Also, the fact that you can pick those objects up seems to indicate that you're placing item pick-ups into the game world instead of actual projectiles. Again, hard to say without knowing more about the game and how it' is built, but I assume that's a property from the knives that allows them to be picked up after they get stuck somewhere? This would also explain why guards aren't dropping their guns. I assume their held gun becomes a pick-up once it leaves their hands, but since the game no longer knows what's a pickup and what isn't, they don't get "tagged" and disappear. Finally, in regards to the back part of the rocket launcher, I have a theory. I assume it was possible to see a hole on the back of the panzer projectile; turning it into a "point" would make it noticeably ugly, and using a dedicated sprite to block it would eat up precious memory, so the devs just tell the game to pick up whichever texture is at a certain address and throw it there. Now, since the game keeps unloading and loading textures as needed, this address eventually gets overwritten by something else and you get a different texture there. It probably looked good enough to ship on N64, and so that's how they fixed a hole behind the rocket without spending memory and an art asset on it. Oh yeah, and about the "null" thing, it's not that Rare knew about it, but more that it is a thing in programming, which is put there to prevent glitches. It's good practice to have a "null" option in your inventory to fill your empty spaces with, so you don't leave them really empty. Kinda hard to explain, but it's more of a programming thing than something that came up and they didn't know how to solve and knowingly shipped the game with. I'd bet most games have those in their inventories as well and we just never get to see it, but putting GoldenEye in this weird, pickup-spawning state makes it's inventory get weird as well.
Awesome comment! Thanks for the insight. That does make sense about the rocket, especially given I could see "through" it from behind when the glitch first started.
Also a developer here, I think you're totally on point with your observation about the pickups. I have a further theory I wanted to share, that builds on what you are saying. I don't believe it is to do with an object limit being reached, rather I believe by destroying the monitor trees on the same frame as the monitors the physics loop gets interrupted or fails to go further at all due to the monitors failing to receive the message that they should drop, that the game is trying to send this message to those objects, it fails and then the game breaks out of that loop and doesn't continue with physics movement handled by that part of the code. By this any 'physics' processes like grenades, knives, mines that occupy the same physics loop as the monitors fail to progress by any frames after the object is spawned. I also think it is this interrupted loop that stops objects checking whether they can change states between being physics objects and being pickups and visa versa . So if they are held by an npc, they can't change states to being physically simulated, and pickups. I can't think how this could be tested however, only if a guard's unprimed grenade would float and then be pick-upable, however it shouldn't be droppable in the first place if this is right.
The texture changing on the rocket is undoubtedly the last texture drawn before that little square is drawn. The material is probably broken, and so it just uses what was last in memory.
I remember accidentally triggering this as a kid when playing on the Bunker multiplayer map with a friend. We ended up making a bunch of funny little patterns and shapes in the air with the floating mines. Wasn't aware this is as well-known a bug as it actually is.
Its amazing that the rockets are so well modelled and respond to lighting, because you'd normally just see the rear end and the propellant when you shoot them.
"The trees are special" there ya go. Awesome to hear from the Dr. himself. Still remember the conversation you had with him, think it was about the mine throws and lean speeds for Surface 2 or Runway, as well as other stuff.
Honestly it would be great if Goose could interview some of the devs and discuss certain aspects and strats and oddities. I would listen to hours of that.
I loved this glitch as a kid, it was so fun to mess around with. I never knew about the rockets displaying those textures though, but that might have just been a product of it being on a CRT and not really noticing it lol. now I have to see if you can still throw proximity mines on the body armor and ammo box spawns in multiplayer and see if they still do that invisible mine trick
My guess about the texture glitch. I don't have any insight into how Goldeneye works specifically. But my guess is the game could not load the texture for the end of the rocket. It may have not been included in the game by accident. Since rockets tend to move quickly you would never notice a problem usually. When the game goes to render the texture, it couldn't load it, so maybe it is pointing to a random spot in the game's texture cache. When other textures get loaded or unloaded the items in the cache change, so does the rendered texture on the back of the rocket. It did seem to me the texture was one that you had moved the camera AWAY from recently.
I encountered a floating mine glitch on Facility. I was trying to cross over into the other side of the vents by detonating a mine where you would normally fall into the bathroom stall. Then one of the mines just froze in mid-air.
I love one of your last quote stating that back in old cartridge games there was no patch or fix or updates. The bugs were there for ever and that's both nostalgic and philosophical!
This bug has to do with space exhaustion in an array (programming term), destroying the ceiling monitor holder is just the way to trigger it. It has nothing to do with a message not being passed to mines. The bug causes the projectiles array to be filled to max capacity and is never emptied again, thus projectiles like mines, grenades, knives get created as inert objects just like things standing on a table or on the ground. If you shoot a hat on a guard's head, it's made a projectile until it falls on the ground for example. Things must be made a projectile so physics can be applied to them. Source: I reverse engineer the game.
I remember finding this by accident by using cheats to have enough mines to put on each screen. I remember not blowing them up until I did. I went around the level and quietly bopped each guard, then would go to the main room and try again. It made discovering this glitch very, very intense. Then i put on invisibility and did it first, and just wow, it makes the game feel so weird.
When you activate/ deactivate the "Bond Invisible" cheat using the button combination while in game with the "Fast Animation" and Enemy Rockets cheats, with this floating mine glitch active you can cause severe lag to the point where you make the game crash and freeze once you get all of the guards attention by running around the entire level collecting them all making them chase you firing endless floating rockets everywhere and you finally detonate them all within a single room with every last guard on the map.
I think that explanation gives some insight. When games like this have things attached to things they often have pointers to each other so when something happens to one thing it can communicate it to the things attached. It sounds like the system was not made to go 3 levels deep. so I'm guessing it goes to the base level but that never bubbles back up leaving dangling pointers. These dangling pointers could be pointing at nothing which is they we get this null glitch. It could also be why projectiles don't activate their physics also because something is missing in their starting process (maybe also looking at blank data for physics values). I'm sure whats going on is more complicated than that.
The mines' are placed on a 'special object' like Doc said *BUT* The glitch doesn't happens with 3 or less mines; the most accurate thing i can guess is: Detonation process. The screen holder 'needs to explode' in order to the screens to fall (we can't do it with sync gold pp7 or gg on multi either) where as we know, the explosions are based on priority; screens have small ones, holder have medium and mines have big ones, so when we detonate 4 big explosions, the screens and the holder trigger another two big explosions as well; 2 small = 1 medium, 2 medium = 1 big so when we blow'em there are *six big explosions* happening (there are the small ones and the medium as well but in-game code is like that, as of adding small to generate medium) and, as i've said, the bigger ones replaces the medium and small ones, making the holder's explosion 'boom-less' and not triggering the fall. "So how our stuff glitches too ?" Same case: our guns are 'attached' to a someone who's attached to the map (non-fixed object) and that's it. I'll be happy if this makes sense and help everyone and more happy if this explanation is actually accurate lol
There is another floating mine glitch on Frigate! I dont know if it works on Xbox (im still playing/getting cheats), but it worked every time back in the day on N64. You have to have Infinite Ammo turned on. you go to the helicopter and absolutely cover it with tracker bugs. Then, with any gun, shoot them off until you shoot them and they don't come off. Then mines, grenades, rockets, etc. will float.
I stumbled upon this glitch once in my childhood and have never repeated it since, I didn't know there was a way to deliberately trigger the glitch, I'm gonna have fun with it now! :D
In all my time playing GE, I have never considered the rockets or launchers actually having rendered rockets and nades firing out of them. Always thought they lacked it and covered it up with the fire effect.
I guess they forgot to assign a texture to the rocket's end, so it just uses whichever was most recently selected. The nested props thing explains why it hapens when destroying the monitors, but not why it makes everything float...
Out of all the videos I've seen on this channel so far about glitches this is the first video about a glitch that I have experience with. Used to always bunch up a load of mines on top of each other and then shoot them when guards got close. Being invisible while you're doing this and having guards just standing motionlessly makes it seem like Bond has stopped time. The fact that you can also do this glitch with throwing knives makes the whole thing seem like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure.
Thanks for the video i did this glitch back in 1999 and nobody on the bus believed me. I recall an item called Null in my inventory appearing by some point too. I didnt know how i got it to happen back then. 24 years later i can finally quit losing sleep! Edit: ah you even showed Null. Sweet!
This glitch would happen all the time to me as a kid because I would just spam tons of grenade launcher shots and blow up mines and stuff, and I don't think I needed to mess with the monitors. I could also get the knives to fly again after floating by just popping the mines I placed in the air until enough objects unloaded and the turned back on, which would murder whoever I surrounded
Goldeneye was patched and the mine behaviour changed. Each region's edition was not published at the exact same time, giving Rare the chance to make some changes in the master ROM for each.
Man, that Rocket texture glitch is giving me SRM vibes, I wonder if you could get properties other than textures passed on to other objects. Imagine throwing a grenade in Aztec and it turns into the glass door key. That's probably a bit too out there to ever happen, but who knows...
There’s another level that glitch happens on too, and it’s not the second bunker one. I can’t remember which level but another way you could float a mine was by putting it on glass then breaking it
You know what, Ryan. Haven't you ever tried to get some of the GE devs on for a prolonged chat, commentary, discussion thing? Are they that difficult to get ahold of? I wouldn't think so in this day and age and those would be some awesome vids - in fact it could be its own series.
Goose when you get a chance, can you do a Double 00 run on Xbox and see if guards throw way more grenades than ever before on the N64? Control and Aztec I expect to see grenades but I was almost getting 3 grenades average per level.
I found this myself as a kid, I found myself particularly impressed that the fired rockets and grenades were actually destructible while traversing the air. gave me confirmation on times where I accidentally did it in actual combat that I wasn't seeing things.
Truly an iconic and legendary glitch in the world of video-gaming. That such a enormous breakthrough was achieved over 20 years after release is truly a testament to the vast determination and fortitude exhibited by these courageous speed-runners. Efficiently grinding and achieving your goals is the hallmark of Western Civilization. If only speed-runners ruled the world instead of an oligarchal elite only then would we have a truly egalitarian and harmonious society
Are the trees actually the cause of this issue though? As destroying the trees or monitors doesn't seem explicitly tied to the issue. I just performed the glitch on xbox (series x) as i remembered that putting mines on the screens wasn't 100% required, and that simply throwing a heap of mines on the ground beneath them in multiplayer and then detonating them is enough to trigger the glitch. Not a single object was destroyed just now that wasn't a mine, and I've replicated the results. It seems you need to use at least a certain number of mines as simply placing one beneath each tree isn't sufficient
Can i suggest a video series? Since Goldeneye 007 has recently been re released, why not do and updated walkthrough of the levels on 00 agent difficulty with tips/tricks for new players? I’m struggling with getting these target times.
Goose, I have a question that you may or may not be able to help with. When playing around with this gravity glitch you can pick up rockets that you fire since there's a brief window where you're one rocket down before infinite ammo restocks you. Could you, theoretically, using frame perfect timing, pick up a rocket fired at you from an enemy?
So from a code standpoint, it's not entirely surprising actually that this bug still works on Xbox, since 007 is running in an emulator. and much of the original code is probably unchanged.
Great and interesting video, just like always. I also enjoyed a lot of the speedlore episodes. watched the first season years ago, but kind of dropped out, when the channel switched. But after playing the game myself the last few days again on xbox - and realising, how hard 00Agent really is, I got into the lore again. Just so impressive. Right now I am almost through, only three cheats / achivements are missing. Keep it up, looking forward to the next videos.
Could you imagine if the glitch at 4:15 wasn't a glitch at all, But rather a feature on 00 Agent in order to up the difficulty (like limited guard drops) Though that's not the case here, It'd definitely be interesting if the ROM modding community added such a detail into a campaign
Used to love doing this in multiplayer. Proximity mines floating in air were hilarious. People come around a corner and come face to face with it before dying 😂 I never thought it was a “glitch” though. I always assumed it was an Easter egg, because I couldn’t see HOW that would be a thing if not intentional lol so weird.
Why is no one mention the fact, while you aim with the crosshair, you still can move? A video about the difference in the org. N64 and XB version would be great.
