ISoT/Remains Escape Frame Data

ISoT/Remains Escape Frame Data (Twinmold's Remains)

EDIT (6/24/2023): Ennopp tested it on English and JP and got X + 16 and X + 17, instead of the X + 17 and X + 18 I wrote below. I am not going to change what is written below (so I don't make another mistake), simply make this adjustment for everything to make sense.
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Before discussing Remains Escape frame data, it is important to discuss ISoT frame data.

When you play ISoT, a cutscene plays. As most people know, it is possible to shorten this cutscene by pressing A (or B, but I'll only say A from now on -- also, it is worth noting that pressing C-Up does NOT shorten this cutscene). But how many times do you need to press A to shorten this cutscene? How much time do you save by shortening it? I will answer these questions.

First of all, it turns out that you only need to press A a single time to shorten the ISoT cutscene. However, you can't simply press A on any frame of the cutscene, only some frames work.

If you press A to say "Yes" to ISoT on frame 0, then if you do not press any buttons during the cutscene and you hold a direction on the control stick to make Link immediately walk in a direction when the cutscene ends, then Link will face the new direction on frame 105. If, instead, you decide to press A on frame 43 of the cutscene, Link will face the new direction on frame 65. This means that pressing A on frame 43 saves 105 - 65 = 40 frames = 2 seconds. Similarly, if you were to press A on frame 44, then Link would be facing the new direction on frame 66, so only 105 - 66 = 39 frames were saved. This pattern continues up through frame 62.


43 -> 65 [40 frames saved] (Press A on frame 43 -> face new direction on frame 65 -- this saves 40 frames)
44 -> 66 [39 frames saved]
45 -> 67 [38 frames saved]
...
61 -> 83 [22 frames saved]
62 -> 84 [21 frames saved]

If you press A outside of this range (i.e. outside of {43, 44, ..., 62}), then the cutscene will not be shortened at all. So we have:

1 -> 105 [0 frames saved -- the cutscene is not shortened at all]
2 -> 105 [0 frames saved -- the cutscene is not shortened at all]
...
41 -> 105 [0 frames saved -- the cutscene is not shortened at all]
42 -> 105 [0 frames saved -- the cutscene is not shortened at all]

and

63 -> 105 [0 frames saved -- the cutscene is not shortened at all]
64 -> 105 [0 frames saved -- the cutscene is not shortened at all]
...
etc.

So we have a 20-frame window (frame 43 or 44 or 45 or ... or 62) to press A to shorten the cutscene and you save less time with later frames. If you only press A before or after this 20-frame window, the cutscene will not be shortened at all (so A presses only do anything if they are input in this 20-frame window, otherwise they do nothing).

Now that we understand the frame data for shortening the ISoT cutscene, we can talk about frame data for remains escape. When you pick up Twinmold's Remains, you get two textboxes. The first textbox is at a set speed and thus pressing A will not speed it up. However, the second textbox is quick text, so pressing A will make the text scroll faster so that pressing A once will make the blue box appear much sooner than if you were to let the text scroll on its own. It is worth noting that pressing C-Up does NOT speed up quick text in this manner.

Now suppose that you stand in the blue warp, with hookshot in hand, and play ISoT. If you say "Yes" on frame 0 and if you were to text mash frame perfectly (e.g. by mashing C-Up), then your input on frame 42 will close the first textbox from Twinmold's Remains.

Suppose you close the first textbox on frame 42 (i.e. as soon as possible), then suppose you press A on frame 43 to shorten the ISoT cutscene (recall that frame 43 is the first possible frame that we can input on to shorten the ISoT cutscene). If you quickly mash A after this, you'll get a crash. This crash results from closing the second textbox of Twinmold's Remains too early. However, if you close this textbox too late so that the ISoT cutscene finishes before the textbox is closed, then you will warp to the giant's cutscene. It turns out that there is a 2-frame window on which you can close the final textbox to avoid either of these undesirable results. These are frames 60 and 61. In order to close the second textbox quickly enough, it is necessary to advance the quick text (e.g. by pressing A).

If instead we were to press A on frame 44 to shorten the ISoT cutscene, the there would still be a 2-frame window on which we need to close the second textbox. This 2-frame window consists of frames 61 and 62 (the 2-frame window corresponding to frame 43, but shifted up by 1). Similarly, if you press A on frame 45, the 2-frame window consists of frames 62 and 63, and this pattern continues.

So if you press A to shorten the ISoT cutscene on frame X (where 43 <= X <= 62), then you must close the second textbox on either frame X+17 or frame X+18. In terms of RTA viability, this is not good news. This means that we cannot use a consistent visual cue from the cutscene to time when to close the second textbox. In theory you could react to seeing the blue triangle appear on the first textbox (which first happens on frame 43, so this is a valid frame to shorten the ISoT cutscene), then react to a certain amount of text scrolling on the second textbox, then mash A to close the textbox so that it closes on frame X+17 or X+18. To close the second textbox quickly, you need to press A to speed up the text, then wait 1 frame, then you can press A to close the textbox. So it takes 3 frames to close the second textbox. If there is to be a viable RTA method for this, then I imagine visual cues based on the textboxes similar to what I described above will be used.

Just for completeness (although I expect most people reading this will already know this), I should say that the safe strat is to use C-Up to mash through the text and to not shorten the ISoT cutscene at all. The point of everything I described above is discussing frame data for trying to save more time on Remains Escape by shortening the ISoT cutscene, something that people have avoided RTA due to how easy it is to crash.