Eternal X 1.2

Discuss and unveil current Marathon projects.
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The Man
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... More from Dr Sumner:
One other thing popped up last night. I was playing Unwired again and got all the way to the end of the level where you have the four wires to smash. That small room is guarded by four Troopers and a MOAH. By this time, the four Troopers were huddled together behind the post in the SW corner of the room and absolutely refused to move from there. For someone wanting to finish off the level with Fists only, that was very annoying. The MOAH would wander around. But the Troopers wouldn’t budge. Is there any way to force them to keep moving (other than firing a weapon at them)?
I'll add my own thoughts later
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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Pfhorrest
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Tonight I touched up "Once More Unto The Breach..."

First I mirrored the changes that I made to "Bug-Eyed", which conveniently fixed Ryoko's only specific complaints about lack of pattern buffers and chargers.

I fixed a mistextured floor that Crater Creator pointed out, and mirrored that change back to its counterpart in "Bug-Eyed".

I also replaced some anachronistic Controller Cyborgs with a cabal of Enforcers, per Crater Creator's comments.

I touched up platforms speeds and sounds, and ambient sounds, per Aaron's comments, and realized I had missed some of that on Bug-Eyed too and mirrored those changes back there.

And I made some minor improvements to lighting and alignment and stuff throughout.

It's all up on git.
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looks like i’m not going to be able to sleep for a bit longer still

i’ve literally been hallucinating today, which i’m pretty sure is a result of an antihistamine i took for the cold i’ve been dealing with the past five days or so. i’m not sure whether the cure was worse than the disease in this case. the disease was pretty fscking bad; definitely the worst cold i’ve had in years. in any case, if these comments don’t make sense, you have an explanation. i’ll hopefully be better tomorrow

regarding s’pht happens: i agree with john that the opening is probably too difficult. if you watched my vid film, you’ll probably remember that i actually just completely bypassed it by grenade jumping out, and i never actually bothered going back. i’m not sure if you need a recharger earlier in the level, but at the bare minimum, perhaps a recharge canister.

apart from that, i think there might’ve still been at least one part where you could trap yourself by grenade jumping. i know teleporters sometimes make monsters behave strangely – perhaps lia can clarify but i think sometimes they might refuse to cross them – but hopefully there’s a way to prevent players from getting stuck. i’ll find polygon numbers later.

…which reminds me, going back to s’pht’ia, i think if you go exploring like seen in lia’s film, there might be a few potential traps that way as well. i don’t remember for sure.

regarding “third rock”, i don’t have a problem with the troopers overall, but i do think perhaps they shouldn’t respawn in certain areas. i don’t remember how marathon handles this, so perhaps someone can clarify: if you make it so that only major troopers respawn, will troopers only respawn at places where you’ve specifically placed major troopers, regardless of the difficulty setting? that is, if you’re playing on tc, will major troopers not respawn at minor trooper placements, even though those minor trooper placements would still be spawning major troopers on tc? i hope that makes sense. i’m not even sure it makes perfect sense to me, but i hope i’ve explained it in a way that makes sense.

if the answer to this is yes, perhaps we should do that. i.e., set it so that only major troopers respawn. then, at points where trooper respawns can cause particular annoyance (particularly anything near shield rechargers), we can change all the trooper placements to minor troopers.

alternately, we could do a “hang brain” thing where there’s a separate physics slot for respawning troopers, but chapter 3 already has enough annoying physics changes to keep track of, so i’d rather not have to add even more of them.

one other possibility is changing the rechargers to 3x rechargers. it would reduce the challenge of the level a bit… but honestly, i’m not sure it would reduce it that much, because you’d still be facing a shitload of endlessly respawning troopers. that’s always going to be a challenge, because troopers are incredibly unpredictable enemies. even the most skilled player in the world (which if i had to guess is probably john) can get derailed unexpectedly against a trooper with a stroke of rotten luck.

i may still end up adding a bit to that level, btw. i find it to be a lower priority than the chapter 4 levels i want to modify geometry on, plus finishing up “burning down the corporation”, but i’d like to be able to get to it by late december.

the hulk thing john described in “flight of icarus” happens to me all the time. it’s in several of my films. it’s a weird thing that i’ve only ever succeeded at making happen with that level. the troopers in that level and “my own private thermopylae” also jump off into the water pretty frequently from the central platforms. again, never had that happen in any other level.

might have more to say later. brain is a pile of mush so i probably forgot something i wanted to put here
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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ravenshining
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Sorry I didn't get to S'pht'ia this weekend, maybe next. Haven't been feeling well. Anyway, I'll add making teleporters and/or lava to eliminate suicide traps to the list. The central area where the fight happens used to be made of teleporters, and that was causing the fight to not happen, but that area is really difficult to get into and has lava for you to die in, so it's not worth messing up. There are a few other, easier-to-fall-into holes I will deal with.

Personally, the only sticking point on S'pht Happens for me is the first hallway where you've got three enforcers teleporting in at the far end. I love that setup though, and it makes for an interesting challenge. By the time you get into the basement, you'll already have access to a pattern buffer, just no shields. I suppose, grudgingly, a 1x charger could be fitted in that blank alcove in the last tower room before you reach ground level.

I mean, okay, fighting through the upper levels with only fists may be difficult. But, there's a war raging about you, if you're going to waste time punching things while S'pht are taking fire from Juggernauts for you, I say it should be difficult! That said, it is entirely possible to get the black S'pht to aggro against the teleportees, you just have to use some fancy footwork, as any fist-only player must do.
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Sorry you've both not been feeling well. I'll leave all of that stuff you guys are talking about to you, whenever you get around to it.

Tonight I'm going to touch up Genie in a Bottle, and prereading the reviews I notice Aaron mentions some stuck Enforcers somewhere. I can't locate them. Aaron can you give me directions? (or a poly # would be even better).
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The Man
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Taken care of in Discord, hopefully.

I think I’ll be a bit better tomorrow. I’ve stopped both the medications that were likely suspects in the hallucination (antihistamine and NyQuil).

Hope you feel better soon too, Lia.

Regarding S’pht Happens, I think it might still be on the tough side even when you’re not trying to do it fists only, but I haven’t played the latest revisions, to be fair. I might try that this weekend.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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Pfhorrest
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Tonight I touched up Genie in a Bottle.

I fixed those two Enforcers discussed before.

I made the level low-gravity and magnetic, and also went through all the other ship levels in the scenario to make sure they are, and that non-ship Pfhor levels are not.

I fixed some grammar in a terminal that Crater Creator pointed out.

And I ran through and touched up on lighting and alignment a little bit.

It's all up on git now.

Tomorrow I will package and upload beta 4.
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Eternal X 1.2 beta 4 is available now.

Next week I'll touch up Echoes of Eden on Tuesday, The Dead Live In The Catacombs on Halloween, and These Caves Can't Be A Natural Formation on Nov 1.

Failure branch the week after that, success branch the week after that, beta 5 some time around Nov 15th.
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General-RADIX
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Question: would it be alright to post that group pic I drew back in April to dA/my blog? Unless you still think it could be used somewhere.
welcome to the scene of the crash
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Pfhorrest
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Go right ahead :)
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Heyo, I actually am in the midst of playing Eternal through again, I had such a good time and I have been Marathon starved for quite a while now, I figured I'd revisit what was one of my favorite scenarios, this time trying to go down a different path (I am under the impression that I missed a whole bunch of levels by going down different failure/success paths). I am stuck on Core Done Blew. I can't even make it out of the first area. The switch in the room to the north activates nothing as far as I can tell--none of the doors, none of the switches become active. I have tried for probably fifteen minutes and just said "whatever" and came here. Maybe I should download a newer version of the game? I'm on 1.1.

Still love this scenario!
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neeeevermind, duh.
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Pfhorrest
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glad you figured it out :)
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tonight i made an attempt at improving Echoes of Eden.

none of the reviews had many specific suggestions, so I just touched up platform sounds, ambient sounds, and some differential shading. it could still use a lot more in the more "indoors" parts (I mostly touched up the huge corridors), but I'm out of time for the night.

also there's something weird with the Banshee behavior upstairs, and I'm really unsure of how well the monsters behave in general, but I am shit at that kind of stuff so maybe someone else can take a look at that?

I'm afraid that this is once again going to be the part of the scenario where everything runs out of steam and the last chapter remains a steaming pile of crap like it's always been because I'm too exhausted to do it right and there's too much left to be fixed.
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took a swing at The Dead Live in the Catacombs tonight, appropriate for the holiday, though this level really doesn't feel as spooky as it should. I think maybe it's the music. I changed it to Flower in Heaven, that feels a little more foreboding.

Most of Crater Creator's suggestions had already been implemented, it seems.

I patched up the transitions between ambient sounds per Aaron's suggestions, but I think maybe the ambient sounds on this level just suck. Maybe with the new music it will seem better, but all the buzzing and sparking and so on is just loud and annoying and not dark and scary.

I also ran through the level and touched up alignment and lighting.

I had hoped to have time to do more of that to Echoes of Eden too but ran out of time now.

This is probably the best level in this entire chapter and I still feel like this whole chapter is shit and there's nothing I can plausibly do about it :(
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As I said in Discord, Chapter 5 is already pretty good as it is. The biggest problem by far used to be the enemy balance, or rather, the complete lack of it. That’s fixed, for the most part – I might’ve erred a little bit on the easy side, actually, but that’s better than unfairly difficult, as it was before. Most of the levels have interesting designs, and the missions are diverse enough for the gameplay not to get repetitive. I wouldn’t worry too much about making everything perfect. If it’s worth delaying the final release a month or so in order to give people time/inspiration to polish everything off, that might be worth it, too.

Dr Benji: I’d recommend playing the latest 1.2 beta if possible. It might not work on Windows with A1 1.2, but I’ve experienced little trouble running it with the A1 1.3 beta. It’s beyond me why 1.2 has such issues with textures, but in any case, it’s worth the upgrade. The graphics are a substantial improvement, and the gameplay has undergone some night-and-day improvements on several levels.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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Pfhorrest
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Replaying Catacombs late last night with the new music, I think I liked it a little better.

Tonight I touched up These Caves and was surprised at how good the level already was. I remember this as being one of the cheapest shittiest levels in the game but it already had pretty good differential lighting even. I touched it up some more, and texture alignment, and sped up some platforms, and patched over some ambient sounds.

I also decided that since I don't actually have the proper Bob sprites that I wanted for Eternal, that would include Jjaro Bobs, that I'm just going to remove Bobs from all of the Chapter 5 levels. They just feel tacky and in the way.

Also I've decided for these first three levels to change most but not all ZPMs to fusion batteries, so that they player can't just rely 100% on their wave motion cannon and has to save it for tight spots, using fusion weapons otherwise. Now that none of the monsters are 100% immune to everything but the WMC and grav blades, I think that should work out fine. I haven't made the change on the previous two levels yet though.

Maybe hopefully if life doesn't go to complete shit again as it is currently threatening to, tomorrow night I might have some time to go over the previous two levels and make those same adjustments to Bobs and ammo, and maybe a handful of other little things too.

As far as delaying the project by a month, I already have other stuff scheduled to start in January, so by the end of the year I'm done with it one way or another because I just won't have any time. That doesn't mean nobody else can go through and improve anything at their leisure afterward; I was thinking that maybe annually I would package up any further modifications that might have been made into a point-oh-one release. (Or on the off chance anyone comes out of the woodwork and does something even bigger, a bigger release number).
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tonight I went back and retouched a bunch of Eden and Catacombs. Removed Bobs and converted ZPMs to fusion batteries on both, reduced the volume on Catacombs, and finished relighting all of Eden, though it's really subtle and I'm not sure there's much point. I also sped up some platforms on Eden, and looked into why the Banshees all congregate by the water upstairs but couldn't figure out what might be causing that.

I also fixed a bug in the window texture, and tried to fix the spherescape lansdscape texture bloom problem by adjusting some levels in photoshop, but that didn't seem to help.
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Tonight I touched up Deep Into The Grotto.

Most of the recommendations in the reviews had already been done, but I removed the orbs as Aaron suggested, and then went through and adjusted ambient sounds, platform speeds, texture alignment, and differential shading. The interior spaces might maybe need a little more shading work still but I'm out of time tonight.

This seems to be considered the worse level of the scenario and I don't know how much any of this changes any of that, so I'm mostly relying on Aaron's previous adjustments to the combat to be the most major improvement to it.
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ravenshining
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i have been attacked by my carpal tunnels. as such, it may be a while before i can do things i said i'd do earlier
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Sorry to hear that Lia, hope your hands are better soon.

Tonight I touched up "Frog Blast The Vent Core".

There weren't any comments on this level in the reviews, except Aaron's. I tried to make platforms less annoying, converted all bobs to monsters, added more monsters because Aaron said it was to easy now, added a recharger because I thought it needed one, and touched up alignment and lighting.

I also fixed a texture misalignment on Deep Into The Grotto and adjusted the Nightmares' hover height in all the physics templates.
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I've got a bad feeling about this level.

Which is to say, I feel bad after touching up the level "I've Got A Bad Feeling About This".

Basically did the same thing as last level: turned bobs into monsters, touched up the platforms speeds and sounds, and ran through and touched up lighting and alignment.

This level was a pain in the ass because access to the whole thing is controlled by tag switches and even worse, chip inserts, that I have to change and then change back to operate to get to other part of the level in Vasara without them staying like that when I save the level.

Also for some reason some platforms are still silent. I can't figure out why. They have sounds On Platform on them.


That's it for this week, and next week is the final stretch of actual editing:
Tuesday I will touch up This Message Will Self Destruct
Wednesday I will touch up We Met Once In The Garden
Thursday I will package and release the final beta, b5.

Then there's going to be a crazy rush through the end of the year just to playtest everything in time.

The last week of November will be mostly dead because of Thanksgiving, but on Tuesday the 20th I'll look over all the "Forerunner" textures once more and make final adjustments to them as much as I can squeeze in there.

The first week of December I will spend Tuesday playing the back half of chapter 5 in reverse and fixing anything I find that I can along the way, do the same thing for the first half of chapter 5 on Wednesday, and then make final checks of the Jjaro textures on Thursday.

Second week of December I'll run through chapter 4 in reverse over two days and then make final checks on the S'pht textures.

Third week of December I'll run through chapter 3 in reverse order over two days and then make final check on the Pfhor textures.

Fourth week of December I'll run through chapter 2 in reverse order over two days and then make final check on the Human textures.

And after Christmas, on the 26th and 27th, I'll run through chapter 1 in reverse order, and then post 1.2 final before leaving for New Year's weekend.
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The Man
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This is probably obvious, given how much less I’ve been posting lately (though some of that’s also attributable to my communicating a lot more through Discord), but I’m not going to be able to contribute all that much here over the next few weeks. Finals are coming up the first week of December, and I’ve got some major class projects to get done before then. I’ll try at least to get standard-def versions of the textures made over the next few days, but I suspect that’ll be as much as I can manage. On the plus side, once December 7th arrives, I’ll be able to spend most of my free time working on game stuff for about a month, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish the Eternal levels I still want to touch up. In any case, I figured I should probably make that explicit.

I’m sure the chapter 5 stuff is mostly fine. Like I said, the biggest problems were already taken care of.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V, V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit

Last.fm · Marathon Chronicles · Marathon Eternal 1.2 · Where Monsters Are in Dreams · YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
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Pfhorrest
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Understood Aaron.

Tonight I touched up "This Message Will Self-Destruct". There weren't a lot of specific actionable comments in the reviews, and I think the general things that Ryoko hated about the combat, Aaron already fixed. I just touched up ambient sounds and texture alignment and lighting, and removed the fusion drones at the start because they annoyed me.

One more level ("We Met Once In The Garden") tomorrow, and then beta 5 on Thursday night.
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Tonight I made some very minor changes to "We Met Once In The Garden" which overall seemed to be pretty good already (even Ryoko's review thought so).

I also fixed the Spherescape bloom bug and generally improved landscape bloom thanks to Treellama's comments in another thread.

While testing landscapes I discovered two misaligned textures, one each on Pissing on the Corporation and Second to Last of the Mohicans, and fixed those. I'm sure the latter has a lot more misaligned doors, but since some bug in Vasara is causing them I don't know how I'm supposed to fix them. (Any insights here most welcome).

Oh also while testing textures I noticed that somehow The Near Side of Everywhere was an exact duplicate of The Far Side of Nowhere, like not even the level name had been changed, so I re-differentiated that how it should have been.

And I preemptively distributed the physics changes in prep for beta 5 tomorrow.

Tomorrow night I will take one last look at why the banshees behave weirdly upstairs on Echoes of Eden (I'd really appreciate anyone else's input on this because I have no idea what's causing it), and if Aaron or Lia haven't done it yet by then, I'll copy low-res textures into the shapes file, and release beta 5.
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