The problem: The code for TWHG1 (Flash version) only checks keyboard inputs once per frame. As a result, if a key is pressed and then released before the next frame starts, the game will not register that input, and the player will not move. This is called a 0-frame input. This can obviously be very frustrating when attempting to do 1-frame taps, as the game will often not register your input. In addition, certain keyboards (e.g. Keychron) give users the ability to customise their keyboard debounce time. I won't go into detail about debounce here, but effectively this allows Keychron users to substantially reduce the likelihood of 0-frames.

The change: The newest version of TWHG1 speedrun mod (twhg1speedrun v10 (beta).swf, at the time of writing) now includes the "0-frame fix" (also "0fix") which means that inputs on any keyboard that are less than a frame long will still be noticed by the game, and last for one frame. Players are allowed to use this modification for TWHG1 speedruns.

Further information for interested readers: This change was implemented in the Redball community in January this year. The redball community voted in favour of the change with an 83% majority. If you are a member of the Redball speedrunning server, you can view their announcement/poll here: https://discord.com/channels/669649577846243328/669651177465446401/1461186285715587082 which also includes more detailed discussion about the pros and cons of this change. Because of the strong overlap between the WHG and Redball community, this change was noticed by TWHG players and considered for implementation in TWHG speedrunning. No official vote was taken, but the change was supported by top runners, and has now been implemented.

The change: As of November 14, players running TWHG1 (Flash version) are permitted to use a modification that means holding space bar over a tip will skip the tip immediately, without the one-frame delay that occurs if using the original level select version.

Why this change? In the original version of the game, the only way to skip tips was by clicking the "GO" button with the mouse. However this was quite awkward since the game is predominantly a keyboard game. The updated version of the game hosted on coolmathgames added new features such as level select, and also the ability to bypass tips using the space bar. The way this was coded means that if you hold space before the tip appears, the tip screen will be rendered for one frame and then you will proceed to the text. Up until recently, most whg1 runners used the level select version or a modified version of it and so they spent 1 frame on each of the tips, and no one really questioned it. However, in early 2025 it was discovered that clicking on the tip could actually be faster than holding space, because you if you clicked at the perfect time, you could pass the tip on the same frame that it appeared (see this message for more details: https://discord.com/channels/479178247217872906/479178247217872908/1352961950103109662). Because of this, players became aware that actually the fastest way to pass tips was to click instead of using space. However you would have to either time your click very precisely, or spam click very fast to get a 0-frame tip. Because TWHG is supposed to be a game about movement, and not a mouse spamming competition, the moderation team decided to allow a modification that enables runners to get a perfect tip transition just by holding space, rather than needing a precisely timed mouse click.

Concluding remarks: This change has its drawbacks, the main one being that now anyone using this modification basically has a 6-frame advantage over exisiting runs on the leaderboard (1 frame for each of the 6 tips). We considered reducing existing times by 6 frames for consistency but ultimately decided against it due to various factors. Since 6 frames is a relatively small amount, this change only really affects top runners and doesn't have any major impact on most players.

I know the timing was changed several months ago but I just wanted to make this post to explain the timing changes in case anyone was unsure.

The original timing method for this game was that individual levels would end when the final checkpoint was reached, and a full-game run would end when the final checkpoint in Level 5 was reached. This was, in part, based on Curab's timing that he used in 2014.

This was a simple system, and it worked fine until people started speedrunning Level 4 100%. In this category, the gray paint is collected AFTER reaching the final checkpoint, meaning that the player is making meaningful inputs after the timer stops. This is a problem.

The solution that the community agreed on was to change the timing system so that the end of each level was when the game cut to the next scene, not when the player reached the checkpoint. This adds about 2 seconds to IL runs (4 seconds if speech bubble are on) and adds about 33 seconds to full-game runs (since there is a cutscene in Level 5 that plays after the player reaches the checkpoint).

These changes are inconsequential to any major milestone runs (e.g. everything that was sub-hour is still sub-hour) and means that the game now has a more logical timing system that still makes sense even if players get collectibles after reaching a final checkpoint. Overall I think it was a good change and I thank Hsblue and Aaron for taking the time to sort out this issue and retime all the runs.