Making Cradle 3+ fully compatible with the Apolyton Edition

[Kull]

Too many Wonders (the solution):

In Cradle5 there are 8 "Great House" Wonders, each of which provides a historical Great Leader in the form of a Wonder Unit - and not much more. They offer some historical background and enhance the atmosphere, but primarily they are delivery mechanisms for Wonder Units. The slic code which does this (contained in the wonderunits.slc file) is remarkably simple; an Event Handler with nine lines of code which place a Wonder Unit in the city which completes that particular Wonder.

Next, a brief segue into a related area. Unlike the hard code limits which apply to Buildings and Wonders, CtP2 effectively has no limit on the number of Advances, i.e the scientific discoveries laid out in the Tech Tree. The rules are also pretty loose, so you can even have Advances which link to nothing else - true dead ends which can't be researched and don't lead to any others. Point being that the options in this area are essentially unlimited.

For testing purposes I created a new Wonder called "Sargon2" (a copy of the existing Sargon Great House) and placed it in the # 65 position. The enabling Advance was set for "Toolmaking" (granted to every civ at game start) while it also received an obsoleting advance - a newly created dead-end Advance imaginatively named Z_LAST. The slic file was then edited to include some "Great Leader" unit creation code, but also an additional section - also only 9 lines - in which "Z_LAST" was gifted to the civ which first built the new Wonder.

A new test game was launched and early on we can see that every civ began building the Sargon2 Wonder in multiple cities (see image #1). By 2340 BC the race was almost over, with Egypt on the verge of completing the "House of Sargon2" in Memphis (see image #2). As you know from the attachment in Post #223, that normally wouldn't matter much because the instant the Wonder was built, other cities such as Tanis and Abydos would continue to work on it - as would every other AI civ in the game.

But that's not what happened. Instead, on the very next turn (2330 BC) Sargon2 has been built (see image #3) and both Tanis and Abydos have switched production to Nomads (and given the mass of shields built up in the process of working on Sargon2, those units will be constructed immediately). And - tellingly - no other Egyptian cities are working on Sargon2. And in fact, EVERY Civ has switched production to something else. As additional confirmation (see image #4), a full 12 turns later we see that only Egypt has built Sargon2, something that is seemingly impossible given the parameters of the "Hard Code Limit".

So how can this be? Well, it's surprisingly simple. Once Egypt built Sargon2, the SLIC code gave them the Obsoleting Advance, and that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for any other civ to build this Wonder. To put the discovery in perspective, it means this: Rather than a hard-code limit of 64 Wonders, the real number is UNLIMITED. Kind of stunning when you think about it.
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[Kull]

Too many Wonders (the issue):

Let's start by reviewing the issue as it specifically pertains to Wonders. Like every other Wonder, those which are # 65 and higher in the "Wonder.txt" file are buildable by each civ from the moment it discovers the Enabling Advance. The problem arises upon completion, because the finished Wonder does NOT appear in the city which built it, and thus continues to be buildable everywhere. Exacerbating the problem, the AI continues to see the Wonder as a high priority structure, and will continue building it in perpetuity. In short, the "too many Wonders problem" will cripple the AI and is effectively a game-breaker.

That said, "Wonders" in CtP2 operate according to a number of fixed rules, and those rules apply regardless of where a Wonder might be positioned on the Wonder.txt list:
1) All have an Enabling Advance (the scientific discovery which allows them to be built)
2) All *can* have an "Obsoleting Advance", although many do not (the scientific discovery which cancels their powers and makes them unbuildable).
3) By definition, you can never have more than ONE Wonder. The "bug" masks this fact, but only because the game code does not see the structure in a City Inventory and thus cannot recognize that it was completed.

Now we can't do anything about the hard code limit and how it presents in-game, but it turns out that we CAN use items 2 and 3 to offset the worst part of the problem: A Wonder which is buildable forever.​

[Kull]

Too many Wonders and Buildings (revisited):

By now, veteran thread viewers will know that I've been poking at every aspect of this game, right from the beginning. There certainly are hard-coded game limitations, and even a few instances of Source Code team induced bugs that broke previous functionality (more than compensated for by the multitude of improvements, of course). But frequently, things which had long seemed impossible, turned out not to be.

Anyway, this particular issue - the hard-code limit of 64 Wonders and 64 Buildings - has been eating away at me for almost a month now, and consequently I've been dragging my feet at implementing the required changes. Removing functionality, no matter how you spin it, isn't a lot of fun. Accordingly, most of this time has actually been spent on various ideas for workarounds, all of which failed. So last week I finally "bit the bullet" and started to make all the necessary changes (many of which haven't been previewed yet), to include heavy testing to make sure all the new changes work properly.

During that process - in particular the efforts aimed at future Techs and Structures - I couldn't help but notice that some unbuilt Wonders were not appearing in my city build queues. And without exception, all of them had Expiration Advances. So a little itch started up in the back of my brain, and it wouldn't go away...."what if?"​

[Kull]

Removing Excess Wonders (Part 3):

4) Resurrection: Most of the "Religion" Advances (Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, etc) are associated with a "Book Wonder" (Torah, Pali Canon, Koran) but Christianity instead provides the "Resurrection" Wonder. Although truly the seminal act which served as the foundation of the religion, it must be admitted that this was not seen as a world changing event AT THE TIME IT HAPPENED, but only became so as the word spread. Which points instead to the Christian Book ("Holy Scriptures") which already is a Wonder, but one which becomes available much later with the "Theology" Advance.

Ignoring the religious aspect for a moment, the "Resurrection" Wonder provides a 1-point Happiness Bonus which never expires. However, the Christianity Advance already provides an additional 1-point Happiness Bonus (the same as all the other Religion Advances), so in that sense the associated Wonder is a bit overpowered. Accordingly, the change will be to remove "Resurrection" and shift the "Holy Scriptures" from Theology to Christianity. Game Impact? Minimal.

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[Kull]

Removing Excess Wonders (Part 2):

3) Internet: Another late game wonder, this puts Computer Centers in all cities. As with National Shield, it doesn't provide anything new, but rather repeats what is already available as a Building. The main difference of course is the "Internet" is a real thing - one of the most important developments of all time - and completely removing it from the game is just wrong.

More to the point, the way in which CtP2 portrays the Internet is completely incorrect. The main fallacy behind an Internet Wonder is the fact that only ONE CIV would get it. In addition, the benefit of the Internet Wonder - placing computer centers in each city - is a poor representation the true Internet reality.

The solution to all this is to remove the Wonder and replace it with an ADVANCE called "Internet" and associate that with a FEAT which increases Science. Game Impact? Improvement.

The new Advance follows "Quantum Mechanics" and is a pre-req for "Global Communications" and "Robotics" (see attached snippet from the Tech Tree). Implementing this requires changes to a LOT of files: Advance.txt, feat.txt, feats.slc, feat_str.txt, uniticons.txt, Wonder.txt, gl_str.txt, Great Library.txt, WonderBuildLists.txt, advancelists.txt, and the Tech Tree.

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[Kull]

Removing Excess Wonders (Part 1): As noted above, there are currently 69 Wonders and we need to remove 5 of them. The first two are quite easy:

1) National Shield: This is a very late game wonder which provides Forcefield buildings in every city. Since it does nothing more than repeat a benefit which is already available from the Force Field building, it's an easy choice for deletion. Game Impact? None.

2) Central Matter Decompiler: Another late game wonder which puts Matter Decompilers in all cities. As with National Shield, it doesn't provide anything new, but rather repeats what is already available as a Building. Game Impact? None.​

[Kull]

Too many Wonders and Buildings: So much for the Good News. Back in Post #191, I quoted Martin Guhmann as evidence that there was a workaround for the Hard Code limitation of 64 Wonders and 64 Buildings:

"Actually there is no database limit for buildings or wonders, it looks like the problem is that there is a limit of buildings a city can own, you can build the additional buildings but the city won't get them."

I interpreted that to mean "individual cities can't hold more than 64 buildings and wonders" and thus the solution is to restrict the number which each city can build. However, that is INCORRECT. Here's how it really works:

The 64 buildings and 64 wonders limit is NOT based on how many can fit in a particular city, but rather on the COUNT and SEQUENCE of items in buildings.txt and Wonder.txt. Any structure which comes sequentially after # 64 on either list (regardless of when it is chronologically available) can be selected and added to the build queue, but after completion it does not appear in the list of city assets and is thus buildable again by the same city (and any other). In the attachment you can see evidence of the problem. The "Wonders" screen shows that "Torah" (#65 on the list after Magellan was added) has been constructed 4 times (albeit no "owning cities" since it isn't present in any of them) and yet is still under construction in the city at the top of the screen.

This is a BIG PROBLEM in Cradle 5, because the count of Wonders is now at 69, while for Buildings it is 67. Since there are no workarounds, the only solution is to remove structures from buildings.txt and Wonder.txt. I've been working the problem for almost a month now, and will soon discuss a path forward. Don't despair (as I did at first), since the solutions make a lot of sense and should have minimal impact on game-play.

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[Kull]

"Array index out of bounds" Errors (see attached): When playing any CtP2 mods (and even the base game), it is always recommended that players change the settings in userprofile.txt from "DebugSlic=Yes" to "No". That's partially to cover up poor modder SLIC coding but (at least prior to the Apolyton Edition fixes) there were even disconnects between the hard code and otherwise functional SLIC. Most of these errors aren't fatal, so the general feeling was, "if they aren't causing CTDs, just hide them from view"

Anyway, being something of a perfectionist I've been working behind the scenes to track down and eliminate ANY errors that pop-up, even the supposedly harmless ones. That's been pretty successful, but I kept getting persistent "Array index out of bounds" messages associated with two lines in the traits2.slc file, each of which contained this text: "tmpPlayer = city[0].owner;"

That seemed odd, especially since the same code does not kick out errors when used in other files. Long story short, I finally worked out a solution and - at least for now - there are ZERO SLIC errors in Cradle5! Of course that's only from playtests down to 1500 BC, so we'll have to see if others are still hiding out there.

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For those who are interested in this sort of thing, the process of tracking and fixing went roughly like this (omitting all the incorrect guesses and useless fishing expeditions):

The traits2.slc file had code which specified first that "int_t tmpPlayer" and secondly that "tmpPlayer = city[0].owner". The latter is in two places (lines 681 and 709) and those are the lines kicking out the errors. Looking at other slic files, I saw a few cases where tmpPlayer wasn't used, but rather the code specified "city[0].owner" directly. I made that change in four locations, specifically changing "(PlayerCivilization(tmpPlayer)" to "(PlayerCivilization(city[0].owner)" (in rows 684, 688, 712, and 716). Additionally, I commented out the now unnecessary "int_t tmpPlayer" and "tmpPlayer = city[0].owner" lines (rows 678, 681, 705 and 709). After that, I ran a few quick test games which proved the "extra population" code was working as intended, but now without the errors.

[Kull]

Fifteen Fixes: Given all the many changes implemented in association with the new "Wonder Unit Upgrade" system, it was clearly time for a long playtest to make sure everything was working properly. And needless to say, that turned up quite a few issues:

1) Inadvertent loading of units aboard ships: The "sentinel" command is a great way to park units in locations where they won't activate unless a foreign unit appears in their vision radius. Unfortunately, that is a problem in Port Cities since units set to "Sentinel" are automatically loaded aboard any Transport-capable ship that passes through, whether intended or not. The only other way to "park" a unit in a city is to fortify it, but 10 of the civilian units did not have the "Entrench" attribute. Fixed.

2) Capturing foreign settlers automatically results in war: This used to be hard-coded, but the SC team altered the code so it only effects Regard. Even so, it was still causing a declaration of war with every capture, so I dropped the regard cost in diplomacy.txt from -60 (Cradle 3) to -40 (AE Default), but to no effect. In fact, it had to go all way down to -10 before the desired result was achieved - war is no longer automatic! This doesn't eliminate the chance for war, since if Regard levels are already low the AI will respond. And likewise, repeated enslavements will not be tolerated for long. But it is nice to have a level of uncertainty.

3) Unit issues in Mountain terrain: Some chariot-borne units were able to move into un-roaded mountains (Great King, Sargon, Hammurabi, Khufu, Nebuchadnezzar and Ramesses) and the same was true for the Teutonic Knight. Also, while the Composite Archer can move in mountains, it could not attack there. All fixed.

4) Dromon can carry units: Historically incorrect. In addition, it upgrades to and from naval units that cannot carry troops, so that ability is clearly a disconnect. Fixed.

5) Longship tweak: The GL Entry says it only carries ONE unit but the actual value in units.txt was TWO. Changed back to one. In addition it has very weak Attack and Defense values (10, same as the Ancient Era Coracle), so to give it a better chance of surviving in battle, I changed the ZBRangeAttack from 0 to 10 and gave it the "IsFlanker" attribute.

6) Mounted Archer bombardment: This unit only had half of the "bombard attributes" (so it didn't work) but it really shouldn't have any. Fixed.

7) Raider is Stealthy and can "see Stealth": Stealthy is fine, but there's no historical analogy by which a unit such as this could spot Stealthy civilians. Fixed (removed the latter attribute).

8) Legal units can't be expelled: Which means the only way to remove them from your territory is to kill them. And if you do it with military units, that incurs a heavy "Regard" malus. Fixed (added "CanBeExpelled" to all legal units)

9) Commercial units can't be expelled: Similar issue, so I added "CanBeExpelled" to the Corporate Branch. However, the SubNeural Ad is not a person and so killing it shouldn't produce the same global outrage effect (think "Chinese Spy Balloon"). The solution in this case was to remove its "Civilian" attribute.

10) All 4 Plunder Units have "CanAttack" attributes: Not appropriate for units which represent "captives" of various types, so those have been removed.

11) Missing "Wooden Ship" attribute: Affects Bireme, Galleon, and Ship-of-the-Line. This is necessary to identify whether a defending vessel is subject to the "AttackWoodenShipBonus" factor. The only ship which had that bonus was the Dromon, but I've now given it to the Ironclad unit as well, since historically that ship was VERY effective against wooden ships, and basically made them obsolete (as war vessels anyway). The Ship-of-the-Line has also been given a small bonus against wooden vessels so it's not underpowered when facing the Dromon.

12) Cities on Mountains: One of my long standing "pet peeves" is that when you are building out the early empire, sometimes there are large areas dominated by mountain terrain, and it's definitely NOT a good place to create a city. However, if you don't settle it or post guard units, the AI will persist in sending Nomads and creating worthless cities there. Annoyances aside, historically there weren't large cities built on top of Mountains, especially in the early eras. Villages and Forts, yes, but not Cities. Anyway, the "Settle: Mountain" attribute has been removed from Nomads but is still included with Settlers (who arrive late in the ancient Era) and Urban Planners. The effect is to keep Mountain cities out of the early game, but allows them to appear later on. In the attached screenshot, the "Settle" button is being pressed, yet nothing is happening

13) Colosseum attribute: This Wonder has the "IncreaseFoodAllCities" attribute which doesn't really make sense. It's clearly intended to replicate the "free Bread" aspect of the Roman "Bread and Circuses" system, but the Colosseum itself was just the entertainment aspect of that system. And giving food to ALL cities seems wrong, since it was a feature provided just to the citizens of Rome, not those in every city in the Empire.

14) Lighthouse of Alexandria attribute: This Wonder grants an international trade route bonus AND one for every water trade route. I'm removing the "international" bonus, partly because it's duplicative with "Magellan's Voyage", but even more because a "Lighthouse" is certainly beneficial to water trade, but not necessarily "international" (since that can involve purely land routes).

15) Duplicate "CityWalls" attributes: The Castle and City Walls improvements both have the "CityWalls" attribute. Since the player (and AI) will always build BOTH structures, it adds questionable value and might even have an unseen doubling effect on Defense. Removed from the Castle.

[Kull]

Revised Unit Voices: There was a fairly extensive project in which unit voices were re-worked and re-activated (see post # 70), but the addition of the 4 new "General-type" units caused me to take another look.

Many of the original CtP2 unit voices were shared between different types and some of them weren't very accurate. For example, the Diplomat and Slinger used the same voice files. By contrast, many of the CtP1 voices were very specific-to-the-unit and used phrases like "Shields Up!" (now assigned to the Cradle Hoplite), "Aim your arrows (Archer), "Fix Bayonets" (Brigadier), and "Let 'em Burn (Dromon). There were also opportunities to use better accents - f/e Cortes now has a Spanish accent while the Knights & Charlemagne use a French voice from CtP1.

Even within the existing CtP2 voice files, there was an opportunity for additional differentiation. As noted in the earlier post, the game uses the "Acknowledge" voice while "Select1" and "Select2" are never heard. However, most of those work well as Acknowledge replacements. For example, Alexander , Caesar, and the Legion all shared the Legion "Acknowledge" ("form up") but now all three are unique: Alexander ("For the Empire"), Caesar ("form up"), and Legion ("centurion here")

All told, this sub project assigned 35+ unused voice files (most from CtP1) to many of the units which previously had to share.​

[Kull]

Revised Norman Schwarzkopf Wonder Unit: While working on the Wonder Unit Upgrade project, I took another look at this unit. In Cradle 3 & 4, it's an "Interceptor" air unit, but Norman Schwarzkopf was a US Army General, most famous for planning the armored assault in the Desert Storm campaign. Yes, air power was a huge component of that operation, but an air unit is not a proper representation of his military branch. Additionally, all the other Wonder Units are Land units, so this is likewise an oddity in that regard. Lastly, this era in Cradle 5 now features the "Heavy Tank" which uses an M1 Abrams-like sprite, the armored ground unit most emblematic of Schwarzkopf's famous campaign.

Changing this in-game required a new 2D Unit Card, new stats in Units.txt (obtained by increasing those assigned to Eisenhower), a revised link in Newsprite.txt (from 46 to 38), and changing the 2D art linkages in uniticon.txt (from UPGP212* to UPGP209*). The result is visible in the attachment below.
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[Kull]

New Renaissance Era Advance (Age of Discovery) & Wonder (Magellan's Voyage): While researching the existing Wonder Units and their capabilities as part of the Wonder Unit Upgrade project described above, I came across an old post in which somebody made a good point about using the "East India Company" as the Wonder which delivers "Hernan Cortes". The time frame is wrong for Cortes (by over a century), plus having a British Wonder deliver a Spanish Arch Enemy is, well, weird:

Initially I thought about adding a replacement Wonder Unit that uses a "ship sprite", but the reality is that we don't NEED a wonder unit associated with "East India Company", but rather a better link for Cortes. That reminded me of a much earlier version of Cradle which contained a victory option involving Magellan, and - as the title of this post clearly indicates - that led to the solution.

Cradle 5 now has a new Advance, "Age of Discovery", which appears in the Tech Tree just prior to "Chronometer" (the pre-req for the "East India Company"). This new Advance allows construction of the Galleon unit (moved up from Chronometer) and features the "Magellan's Voyage" wonder (see attached) which must be built in a coastal city, provides extra gold from overseas trade routes and eliminates the "distance from capital city penalty". And of course, provides the "Hernan Cortes" wonder unit!

There is new 2D art for the Advance and the Wonder, a new Spanish-accent voice for Cortes, and a new movie as well.

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[Kull]

Wonder Unit Issues (Part 3) - Before moving on to the related changes, here are some additional details:

1) Cradle has three other "ancient era" units that will upgrade using this new system:
- Great King upgrades to Brigadier
- Hero upgrades to Brigadier
- Great General upgrades to Field Marshall

2) Besides "better" stats, there are additional differences between FM-General and Brigadier-Colonel:
- FM-General exert ZOC and are Ranged units
- Brigadier-Colonel do not exert ZOC, are Flanker units, and can Beach Assault

3) To compensate for the loss of Victory Enslavement and Siege Attack attributes, all four of the new Leader Units can now generate Plunder.

4) There are three remaining Wonder Units, and they are treated differently from the others:
- US Grant is an Industrial era unit who arrives after the "Age of Reason", and will upgrade to General (see attached) with the discovery of "Electricity"
- Eisenhower is a Modern Era unit and never upgrades
- Schwartzkopf is also a Modern Era unit and never upgrades

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[Kull]

Wonder Unit Issues (Part 2): Among Cradle's many neat features is the slic code which allows the player to upgrade Elite Units (described in post # 67). For example, after the discovery of "Bronze Working", Elite Spearmen can be upgraded to Elite Hoplites. This is controlled by code in the updater3.slc file, which is quite large - over 1700 lines!

I'll spare you the details, but after a huge amount of editing and testing, I was able to identify the necessary portions of code and developed a 300-line file which automatically upgrades selected units from one type to another, without player intervention, upon the discovery of a particular Advance. The code can distinguish between civs, so it applies individually as each civ discovers the triggering Advance.

Once that became possible, I developed 4 new "Age-specific" leader units, none of which have the Siege or Victory Enslavement attributes:

1) Field Marshall: This is an early Industrial Age Leader unit, which has the sprite and most of the statistics of it's near-equivalent, the US Grant Wonder Unit. All of the "Great House" Wonder Units will automatically convert to Field Marshall with the discovery of "Age of Reason". It also has a new unit card which combines features of the Elite (a large letter in a strip on the left side) and Wonder Unit cards (a number of stars indicating relative strength).

2) Brigadier: Another early Industrial Age Leader unit, the Brigadier makes use of the Ctp1 Musketeer sprite, dismantled and rebuilt so it now has Idle and Death animations (and thus full on-map movement). The statistics are "similar-but-less" than those of the "Field Marshall" (hence one star instead of three - see attached unit card example). Most of the remaining Wonder Units will upgrade to Brigadier, the exception being those with "Religious Conversion" capability, all of which convert to powerful "Patriarch" units instead.

3) General: With the discovery of Electricity, both leader units upgrade to modern types. The FM becomes a General, and uses the CtP2 Brown General sprite from the WW2 scenario. It has all required animations and features a new unit card, similar to those in the attachment. The stats are a level below those of the Dwight Eisenhower Wonder unit.

4) Colonel: This is the upgraded Brigadier, and uses the fully animated CtP2 US Paratrooper sprite (also from the WW2 scenario) and a new "Leader Unit" card. As with the FM-Brigadier duo, the Colonel's stats are a reduced version of those given to the General.

This new mechanism resolves all of the late game Wonder Unit issues, but that wasn't the end of the process...

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[Kull]

Wonder Unit Issues (Part 1): Wonder Units (those which are awarded by the construction of certain Wonders) are a fun feature in Cradle, and definitely add to the atmosphere, particularly in the early game. Having Caesar, Hannibal, or any of 20 others leading your armies into battle is pretty cool, especially since each one of them has unique skills. Among the many "Special Attack" abilities, some can generate plunder, others perform sieges, and many have the "Victory Enslavement" ability (sending slaves to nearby cities).

The issue is that some of these abilities become problematic as the game moves along, in particular:

1) Enslavement: The Emancipation Wonder abolishes slavery worldwide after it's built. That includes turning all slaves into citizens and killing off all slaver units. But it has no effect on Wonder units with the enslavement attribute, and soon your cities will start to fill up with slaves again. Definitely a disconnect.

2) Siege Attacks: I spent a LOT of time analyzing and reviewing the many special attacks (see post # 95) and there is now a mechanism which changes the graphics and unit abilities so that ancient era attacks are converted to modern with the implementation of the "Modern Era Swap file" (see post # 146). However, I was not able to fully convert Siege attacks since they share graphics with the Infector's modern era "Plague" attack, and there's no way to change that. And once again, this is an attack which is performed exclusively by Wonder units.

3) Era Disconnect: The final issue is that while it's really cool to have your ancient and medieval era armies led by historical characters such as Nebuchadnezzar and Attila, that becomes increasingly strange once the game stretches on beyond the Renaissance. By the Modern Era the visual effect is quite ludicrous, with chariot-archers and sword-wielders operating in tandem with tanks! (see attachment)

One solution was to simply kill them off as the game proceeds, either through slic coding or by making them government dependent. Which would solve the problem, but was kind of a blunt force approach. So I played around with some other ideas, and one in particular became increasingly attractive....

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