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Posted: 9/28/2005 11:29 PM
(Edited: 10/2/2005 12:12 PM)
Post subject: Dune - The Battle for Arrakis
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Aqfaq
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Dune - Battle for Arrakis (or Building of a Dynasty) is clearly a real-time strategy landmark. I bet it would be amazing to see it being completed perfectly. So, I decided to record the first mission to see what it would look like. The movie file: http://www.freewebs.com/aqfaq/dune-level-one.gmv The ROM: Dune - The Building of a Dynasty (U) [!].bin The Emulator: Gens-9f I choose to play Atreides because the first mission of the Atreides campaign can be played faster than corresponding Ordos or Harkonnen missions. Also, Atreides mission 6 has only one enemy base (Ordos & Harkonnen have two). The units are balanced quite well, so none of the houses have obvious speed advantages. A complete analysis of all missions should be made to judge which of the three campaigns is the optimal choice. Anything goes for now. It was not very hard to do the first mission. I played long periods with 100% speed which will definitely be impossible in the later missions. I guess there's not much room for improvement unless the harvester can be manipulated to collect spice faster. Actually, sometimes it was faster, but that caused desync! Yeah, and sometimes the buildings were manufactured a few frames faster than normally which made the playback desync. I had to check the movie after every installed building. Irritating & strange... Interesting detail: I managed to be a pacifist. That seems to save 1 frame in the mission statistics screen. :) The 2nd mission will be quite easy to make. After that, it will be utterly difficult movie to produce. Hopefully the desync problems were only my own problems. Whoever wants to try doing this movie has my full support. There are 9 missions and it might even be possible to construct a full movie from single-mission files. So yeah, why not make a multi-author movie? Oh, I get it: no-one else is interested. (This movie may not look like superplay for those who don't know that the objective of the first mission is to collect 1000 units of spice.) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EDIT: I redid the first mission quite a bit faster, but did not manage to manipulate the harvester optimally yet. The file above is updated. I also made a list of all things that can be manipulated by moving/clicking with the cursor. I'll update the list when new things show up. * harvester movement * harvester's appearing square after unloading spice * mission ending time after objectives are completed (Seems to depend on the direction from where the reinforcements arrive, but I'm not sure. In the current movie, they come from the left.) * player & computer Death Hands Not verified: * harvester suck speed? * sand worm movement? * construction yard's production speed? * player/enemy units' facing (in guard mode) Here is a current list of things that need to be done: 1) test hex-editing single-mission movies together to see if any mission could be redone at any time (this would allow much more flexible movie production) 2) make demonstration movies for all 3 campaigns 3) find out more about the desync problem! Help is appreciated a lot! And finally... Mission ending times for Atreides: 1 - 3:17:02 by Aqfaq 2 - none yet 3 - none yet 4 - none yet 5 - none yet 6 - none yet 7 - none yet 8 - none yet 9 - none yet All - none yet Anyone can try beating these times. I think they can be regarded as the current timeattack world records. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Battle for Arrakis - Timeattack Project Status: Reinforcements needed! Estimated Production Time: 128 years
Posted: 9/29/2005 6:45 AM
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Highness
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OMG!! I think I requested this game long time ago! I will watch this right away.
Aqfaq wrote:
It was not very hard to do the first mission. I played long periods with 100% speed which will definitely be impossible in the later missions. I guess there's not much room for improvement unless the harvester can be manipulated to collect spice faster. Actually, sometimes it was faster, but that caused desync! Yeah, and sometimes the buildings were manufactured a few frames faster than normally which made the playback desync. I had to check the movie after every installed building. Irritating & strange...
In the pc version of the game you can click like crazy on the harvesters in order to suck up spice faster! Not sure if it applies to the genesis version. But you could give it a try! Edit: I have now watched it. I can just imagine what this will look like in the final mission. Please make a couple of more levels Aqfaq! I was going to say "Perhaps you should go for 100% kills" but then I remembered that it will take longer time at the score board. So that might not be a wise idea. :) About the rom.. I think it's faster than "Battle for Arrakis". Atleast thats my imagination. I think the sound is too fast. :) But that doesn't bother me that much. Have you tried if you get the same desync problems in "Battle for Arrakis" rom? I got this game hardware for genesis and it's soo cool to see it being made like this. Damn stylish. :) If a full version makes it to submission I will not hesitate to vote yes I'm sure. :) Edit 2: You said that the missions after level 2 will be hard. Well.. You could use a code to reveal the entire map and studdy the AI. They will always do the same in the first waves. After that I think it's more random, depending on if you destroy their buildings etc. Oh.. And since you will have so much controlability over your units it would be sad to see any losses. But this can be extreamly hard to make, and not even necessary. :) You could for example take a trike or something and finish the entire last level by moving around the enemy when they are shooting at you. And perhaps manipulate their death hand missiles to hit their base instead? *drooooooool* :p
Posted: 9/29/2005 10:30 AM
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Truncated
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The idea about the reveal map code is very good. See what the computer is up to, check where the weak spots are, then redo it without the map. I haven't played more then 3-4 levels in the Sega version (I find the lack of mouse disturbing) but I've played this game trough countless times on the PC with all the houses. I like Harkonnen myself, but the Atreides are a close second. Ordos blows, sadly. No rocket launcher and crappy special tank. :( How much of this game is the same as the PC, by the way? Can you surround your Repair shop to have the Carry-all transport units to and from the battlefield for example? Do the turrets still not shoot at the Fremen? Does the sandworm actually count as a Fremen unit? Can the sonic tanks not hurt each other?
Posted: 9/29/2005 10:45 AM
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Highness
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Alot of changes between genesis and pc versions. I don't think you need to surround your repair shop for the carry-all to transport units there. They will fetch them anyways. I think the turrets shoot at fremen. In what way do you mean that sandworm counts as a fremen? I don't think it will attack you unless you touches it first. But I don't know in the later levels. Like last level for example. Not sure if the sandworm will touch you. When you play as atredies. Sonic tanks deal damage to each other I think.
Posted: 9/29/2005 10:56 AM
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>I don't think you need to surround your repair shop for the carry-all to transport units there. They will fetch them anyways. Yeah, they come and fetch them no matter what in the PC version too. But they don't fly them back to the battlefield unless the repair shop is surrounded. Then the tanks just appear outside the shop. Having them back on the battlefield immediately is _very_ helpful. >In what way do you mean that sandworm counts as a fremen? If you check a level editor (or just open the levels file, it's in plain text), you'll see that all sandworms are on team Fremen. You will note that Harkonnen and Ordos automatically attack the sand worm if it's nearby, while Atreides doesn't. I don't know about the general aggressivity of it towards the teams, perhaps it's the same. Fun fact: If you change the sandworm to be on your own team, it will have four commands available: 1) Attack 2) Attack 3) Attack 4) Attack How is that for aggressive? :) Perhaps I should check the movie and see if I have the patience to experiment a bit with this game.
Posted: 9/29/2005 11:01 AM
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Highness
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Wow! Aggressive sandworms indeed. :D I will search google a bit and see if I can stumble over some good genesis knowledge about the game that we might be able to abuse. Edit: Here are some codes that could be useful when it comes to experimentations! Level Codes Level Atreides Ordos Harkonnen 2 DIPLOMATIC DOMINATION DEMOLITION 3 SPICEDANCE SPICESABRE SPICESATYR 4 ETERNALSUN ARRAKISSUN BURNINGSUN 5 DEFTHUNTER COLDHUNTER DARKHUNTER 6 FAIRMENTAT WILYMENTAT EVILMENTAT 7 ASHLIKENNY SLYMELANIE ITSJOEBWAN 8 SONICBLAST STEALTHWAR DEVASTATOR 9 DUNERUNNER POWERCRUSH DEATHRULER Misc Codes: LOOKAROUND Reveals entire map SPLURGEOLA Provides you with more money PLAYTESTER Units can only be killed by Sandworms MONEYMAN Unlimited credits (not tested by me) POWERMAN Upgrade (not tested by me) Edit: A very good guide: http://ledmeister.com/dunexref.htm Edit: Some complement game genie codes http://ledmeister.com/dunecode.htm
Posted: 9/29/2005 1:38 PM
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Aqfaq
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Great to have more brains interested on this! There is an amazingly huge amount of different ways to do things and manipulate events in this game. Here are some of the most important tips (from the Ledmeister guide) that could/should be used in a timeattack: 1) The parameters on credit usage are somewhat flexible. For example, structures and units can occasionally be produced at a cost which is slightly below the documented price. 2) In general, a carryall will attempt to retrieve any unit which is ordered to move to a location that the unit cannot reach on its own. 3) When a starport is first placed on the battlefield, it will show a random number of units available, and each unit type will have a random price. 4) Prices of units available at a starport will change every few minutes of Game Time. 5) A player's spice/credit status is subject to entropy. As a game progresses, spice/credits will disappear intermittently, at a rate which can vary from game to game. 6) Individual enemy buildings may be targeted for attack, whether or not they are visible to the attacker. A player can use the Targeting Cursor to click on enemy buildings, even if they are in unrevealed/undetected areas of the battlefield. 7) To shorten the long delay between weapon/ability regenerations at a palace, quickly destroy and replace the palace after each use. (Whenever any new palace is placed on the battlefield, its weapon/ability will be available for immediate use.) 8) It takes 11 to 12 minutes of real time for a Harkonnen palace to produce a new Death Hand, 15 to 16 minutes for a Sardaukar palace to produce a new Death Hand, about 4 minutes for an Atreides palace to regenerate the summon-Fremen ability, and 6 to 7 minutes for an Ordos palace to produce a new saboteur. The next question may cause brain damage to anyone attempting to make an optimal movie: what kind of things cause lag? For me, battling against lag while maintaining all other things would kill any motivation. 9) Game Time (time elapsing within the game environment) generally slows down with an increase in units on the battlefield, speeds up with a decrease in units, and is suspended whenever the Game Screen is not displayed. Game Time may also slow down when units on the battlefield experience difficulty in carrying out orders. I'll try doing the 2nd level soon. It would be great if someone tested attaching (with hex-editor) some single-level movies together to see if the playback desyncs. Also, it would be great if someone tried improving my movie just to see if the harvester behaves differently and to check the desync phenomenon.
Posted: 9/29/2005 4:39 PM
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Highness
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A thing that I always imagined helped reduce lag when playing on console was to zoom to an unexplored place where the shadow has not been revealed yet. Not sure that it actually helps anything, but you could try. Further more I think the fastest possible game would be played with harkonen by abusing that palace building/destroy/rebuild/launch loop. It would cost alot of money though. A strategy for the last level could be: Build slabs and put a couple of wind traps there. Build a couple refineries. You will get an additional harvester for each refinery you build! Build a radar. Build what ever you need in order to get a palace. Start abusing. Also for easier targeting you should send a trike in the opponents base to reveal all his building. Not that this will trigger a death hand from their side. So watch out! First of all take out their command central. This will disable them to re-construct any buildings. That building should be taken out by the first death hand you send. Unless you can rush with all your units and take it out. But that's really hard since they are armed to their teeths. I don't know if you can order orni's from the star port. But when I play normally I do prefer those as they most of the time gangs up on one target. Allthough easily destroyed they sure can be bitches to get rid off. When I play as atredies I normally have a couple of hi-tech facilities to multi produce orni's. Rocket launchers can shoot rocket turrets from out side the turrets reach. From the right or left. I don't think you can do it from top or button, because the grid is diffrent that way. Not 100% sure though. I don't know how much credits you could save by building something else first. I woulden't bother about that in a V1 run. Maby later when it really comes down to crunching frames. I woulden't mind watching a run with all three houses BTW! Ordos can probably be sneaky and funny to watch when they receive their special unit. There are probably alot of tactics which can be deployed playing that house! I think sonic tanks deal diffrent kind of damage depending on how close / far away they are. And some times I think lag helps dealing damage as the sonic wave sort of stops over a target. Maby there is some sort of pause glitch to be exploited eh? About carry-all's.. Are you suggesting that building a wall one unit outside the facility, around it if course. Blocking any units and then target the enemy base to get a carry-all make a drop there? Could work. I always wanted to exploit the usage of carry-all's. About the star port. I think the prices goes up when you buy alot of things there. If you find that prices are cheaper than in the vehicle factory, buy in the starport of course. But then you will need to wait or manipulate so that the prices doesn't change.
Posted: 9/29/2005 9:23 PM
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Aqfaq
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One of my friends just pointed out that the different houses are actually quite like skill levels: Atreides - Easy Ordos - Normal Harkonnen - Hard Sounds reasonable, huh? I think Atreides is the best to start with. I checked out the last level of Atreides. The enemy is attacking so frequently that some kind of defense is necessary even in a timeattack! Ofcourse, it might be possible to lure attackers away with trikes. There is a limit for the amount of units on the battlefield, so the enemy might not build new ones if the old ones were still running all over the desert.
Highness wrote:
A thing that I always imagined helped reduce lag when playing on console was to zoom to an unexplored place where the shadow has not been revealed yet.
Yeah right, and it would be nice to watch black battle-screen for about 1,5 hours. I would appreciate if someone recorded a simple full game movie, no matter how fast. Highness? Truncated? Someone? EDIT: After some testing, it seems that Harkonnen can use Death Hand missile quite effectively in the last 2 missions. Death Hand is not very accurate in real game, but can be manipulated to hit any square. All enemy Death Hands can be manipulated to hit sand or their own attack force. Oh well, speaking of the last mission is mostly useless at the moment. I'm afraid my motivation will end at the 3rd mission.
Posted: 9/30/2005 7:32 AM
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Highness
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Err.. I do not think that the diffrent houses are like difficulty settings. Atleast it would not be in that order. :D Atredies - Sure. Easy to play with and finish the entire game. Ordos - Probably the hardest to play with because of their sucky deviator. Harkonnen - You can just build defence, sit back and launch death hands in the two last missions. Nothing hard there if you ask me? Defence atleast in the last two missions would be needed yes. Because in the second last mission two houses + the emperor will team up on you. The emperor randomly sends troops with a carry-all to land somewhere in your base. So rocket turrets would be good to have on strategic possitions in the base. It could be a funny thing to lure the enemy around with a trike. But I do not beleive that you could do this when the opponent has maxed out his units? But I'm not really sure they produce that many units. They only produce those semi-staticly placed units to defend the base. Then they produce units to send an attack wave. What they usualy do btw is to super-produce infantry units. Sort of like lemmings. They just walk forward to a garanteed death. :) Normally when I play as Atredies I get some rocket vehicles along with some heavy tanks. I send them off left of the base and then straight upwards. Thats mostly where the enemy harvests their spice. So I can get a resonable control of their money income, as well as reach all turrets with my rocket vehicles. The heavy tanks will help defend my rocket vehicles as they are rather weak. To distract the enemy I would send ornithopters to hit randomly in their base. Fremen doesn't help that much. But they cost hardly nothing and can help to distract the enemy from my real targets. I might record a movie of it during the weekend if I get some free time.
Posted: 9/30/2005 8:03 AM
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Watched the movie. Although I would rather see all-out kill everything, that's your choice, but you missed one important timesaver: You should move your harvester so that it's as close to the base as possible just when it finishes harvesting. I think it was 2-3 seconds away from the edge now. I consider Ordos the hardest... probably Harkonnen is the easiest because you only have to deal with one death hand (from Sardaukar). Don't care about the lag. Everyone wants to see the action! Aim for entertainment instead of time if it matters.
Posted: 9/30/2005 10:36 AM
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Another thing:
7) To shorten the long delay between weapon/ability regenerations at a palace, quickly destroy and replace the palace after each use. (Whenever any new palace is placed on the battlefield, its weapon/ability will be available for immediate use.)
This is generally a bad idea. If you have the space, it's smarter to just build two palaces. You will get the immediate special, and the next time you will get double specials. Only if you have no space to place a new palace should you destroy the old one.
Posted: 9/30/2005 12:49 PM
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Highness
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Thats a major diffrence between the Sega and the PC version Truncated. You can only build ONE palace in the Mega drive version. ;) And killing more units would mean longer status screen after finishing a mission. Even though it would only mean a second or so extra. Sure. Do as much of the time as you can! :) And in the first version. Don't care about the lag.
Posted: 9/30/2005 1:00 PM
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Truncated
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>Thats a major diffrence between the Sega and the PC version Truncated. You can only build ONE palace in the Mega drive version. ;) WHAT?! No Fremen spamming?! :( That was like the best part of the game. I also read in some guide that the Palace can be repaired for free. What the heck is up with that? >I would appreciate if someone recorded a simple full game movie, no matter how fast. Maybe. Do you want it in Atreides campaign specifically?
Posted: 9/30/2005 1:17 PM
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Highness
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Hehe.. Yeah. The palace can be repaired for free. But I don't see how that can help in a speedrun if you're going to exploit the building/re-building thingie. Best would be to place it directly on a rocky area without concreat on it. If this game is made it would be the first RTS on this site right? *drools*
Posted: 9/30/2005 3:31 PM
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Aqfaq
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Truncated wrote:
You should move your harvester so that it's as close to the base as possible just when it finishes harvesting. I think it was 2-3 seconds away from the edge now.
You are right, but it seemed that when the harvester is on the move, it does not harvest. Player can't move a harvester without slowing down the harvesting. Moving the cursor and clicking units makes the harvester behave differently. I managed to have quite effective harvesting, but it may still be improvable by many seconds. Truncated, could you please record the whole Atreides campaign? Highness, it would be very great if you made it through with the Harkonnen. You can play with 100% speed if you like. Even better, record with the LOOKAROUND code on! Yeah, beware the desync and have fun! I'll test how fast the Atreides' 2nd mission can be done. OK? Are we the only ones interested in this?
Posted: 9/30/2005 3:35 PM
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Aqfaq
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Truncated wrote:
I consider Ordos the hardest... probably Harkonnen is the easiest because you only have to deal with one death hand (from Sardaukar).
Every Death Hand in the game can be manipulated to miss. EDIT: Highness, shooting the enemy harvesters is useless. The computer does not need spice to buy things.
Posted: 9/30/2005 5:38 PM
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Ah, Dune... Precursor to Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn... This game, much like Star Control, is like twenty times better on the PC or Amiga. Regardless, it seems to be a pretty faithful port of a classic game. I'd be interested to see this game speed-ran. Unfortunately, I don't know of any tricks or anything for this game.
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Posted: 9/30/2005 5:59 PM
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Highness
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"Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn" Wasn't it called Tiberian Sun? I'll see if I can make a record of Dune some day though. Just not right now.
Posted: 9/30/2005 6:09 PM
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Bag_of_Magic_Food
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Is this game based on the book Dune?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Posted: 9/30/2005 6:18 PM
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Aqfaq
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Oops, major mistake spotted. Building concrete plates under refinery makes harvester drop it's load very much faster. Yes, Dune is better on PC. Yes, there exists a Dune book.
Posted: 9/30/2005 8:27 PM
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JoLiKMC
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Highness wrote:
"Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn" Wasn't it called Tiberian Sun?
Game Hierarchy(By Release Date): Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn, the Covert Operations, and Sole Survivor Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and Firestorm Command & Conquer: Renegade In short, "Tiberian Dawn" is the official (sub)title for the first Command & Conquer game.
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Posted: 9/30/2005 10:24 PM
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Highness
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Cool. Didn't know that. And yes. Dune is book and movie in it's original. Written by Frank Herbert. The movie is by David Lynch I think. Can't remember.
Aqfaq wrote:
Oops, major mistake spotted. Building concrete plates under refinery makes harvester drop it's load very much faster.
Are you sure that it has to do with the concreate slabs and not the health of the building? Because if you don't build on any slabs the building will deploy with only 50% health.
Posted: 10/1/2005 12:50 AM
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Aqfaq
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Yes, that's what I meant. Some buildings' performance is weakened if they are damaged & buildings are damaged enormously when installed on pure rock instead of concrete. I'll keep editing the first post of this thread as the project goes on.
Posted: 10/1/2005 1:10 AM
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Highness
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Aqfaq wrote:
1) test hex-editing single-mission movies together to see if any mission could be redone at any time (this would allow much more flexible movie production)
I think this could be a problem depending on if the in-game clock goes between missions as well as during a mission. But of course you should try this so that you can prove me wrong. That would be the best. :) Just make a quick test of making two level two version and paste it after level 1. :)
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