Projectile

A projectile is something that can be thrown in GoldenEye 007.

Facts

Strafing a throw only adds 5% to the speed.

Unloaded mines always skip and skid, potentially traveling a lot further than the original throw.

Unloaded mines can warp objects such as the glass or boxes, though not commonly.

Unloaded mines do not collide with walls, ceilings or seemingly doors at all.

Technical Details

Throw mechanics

If you manage to unload (more on that below) a mine, it will always follow the same pattern of motion:

Example of Caverns SA mine throw

1. Air: arcing through the air under constant gravity
2. Skip: when it first lands (on the ground) it immediately gains a specific upward speed (20/9 or 2.22222), and arcs under gravity. This low arc 'lands' if the ground rises up suddenly (i.e. up to the dais on cavs), and so it proceeds to skidding early.
3. Skid: The horizontal motion changes for the first time. It decays exponentially, seemingly losing 10% per frame (though this may be an in-game frame or a 1/60th I'm not sure yet). This makes the total distance linear in the initial speed.

Release speed

• Disclaimer: only measured standing still, when Bond is moving this doesn't quite seem to hold *

No units for simplicity! Throw speed is 16.6666.. .. but it also gets an upward motion of 5 added (as vectors) for free. This is why if you throw directly forward, the mine rises slightly initially. Very kind of Rare really, since this essentially gives us more than 0.5s extra in the air for free.

Bond's movement

A projectile's motion adds to Bonds (very sensible, but also the way r-leans work).

Even throwing at 25 degrees inclination (up) (00a strat idea angle shouldn't exceed this) the forward component is 15. +10.5 from bond running gives 25.5. So strafing the throw only adds 5% (sqrt(25.5^2 + 8^2) / 25.5 -1) to the horizontal speed (and none to the vertical). It also makes a significant angle (~20 degrees) between where the throw will go and where Bond is heading, which is a nuisance for consistency. Even throwing at 42 degrees inclination (optimum for distance is somewhere around there, below 45 due to the free upward motion & Bond's height) forward motion is still 22.885 (12.38 + 10.5) so the % benefit of strafing is essentially unchanged (5.2).

Skipping

With a bit of SUVAT we can expect the mine to skip to a height of ~9 (gravity is -0.27777777). It may exceed this a little due to lag, but it's worth bearing in mind that Bond's diameter is 60, so this is miserable. The step in Caverns is height 22.4, and the dais is a further 26.1 above that. If it the mine skips into either of these, then the mine 'warps' up to the step / dais and begins skidding 'early'.

This is potentially very handy as it can 'absorb' quite significant changes in your throw (angle & release timing)

Unloaded primer

If it means anything, it turns out unloading collisions for a projectile are seemingly completely independent of unloading guards. The broad idea is throw and quickly look away / down.. but what happens?

As is generally known there are portals between sections of the game. If you look away so that these are no longer 'visible' or in-view (imagining that they weren't invisible), the collisions for the walls and ceiling of that part seem to instantly be removed. Moreover, collisions with objects change. The mine seems to no longer check if it has passed through an object, but just whether where it wants to go to will have a collision. This makes it quite easy to 'warp' through thin objects.. such as a pane of glass. It can (less commonly) even pass through all of the boxes. Just 'warping' into a box is reasonably common.

Then it gets even weirder, as once a mine has left through the ceiling it seems to get somewhat 'forgotten'. (Picture's *) In fact the corridor on Caverns has arches which stick from the walls and ceiling: I think if the mine passes through these unloaded then it also gets forgotten, but I'm not sure. The mine can then fall back down and pass clean through the door at the end of the corridor on Caverns every time (you can even watch it do so yourself). This is very reminiscent of the train shot in depot, where the bullet can pass through the wall (or even of a certain s1 strat)