Hi everyone. I actually joined today specifically to share this bit of information. I've recently started playing Rebellion again and have it working on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop. It's great, but like many of you, I'm annoyed at the fact I can't skip the intro briefings. However, there is hope! (Hopefully, this isn't old news, so sorry if it is. I couldn't find anything about how to fix this issue and the Wiki lists it as a "problem" but doesn't offer a solution.)
I'm a computer engineering major, so I'd like to think I know my way around a system at least moderately well at this point so I decided to dive into the Rebellion data files and see what I could find. I started by individually removing MDATA files, as those are media files, but I quickly realized that the briefing isn't a media file. It's just a hard-coded progression of events in the game. Frustrated, I moved on to looking at some of the dll and resource files. Using Resource Hacker, I started examining the images and sounds contained within various DLL files. Thankfully, I didn't have to go far, as I quickly discovered that ALBRIEF.DLL contains the WAVE and BMP files that are used in the Rebels briefing. Looking for it's partner, I found EMBRIEF.DLL does the same for the Empire. Now to go about disabling these without breaking the game. First thing I thought was pretty simple: backup the file and delete it! So I did. I deleted ALBRIEF.DLL and started up the game. Splash videos and texts all appeared fine and the main menu opened without a problem. THen I started up a game as the Rebels. The Rebel cutscene loaded just fine and then the galactic map appeared. Suddenly things started flashing and dinging really quickly, but there was no briefing. I realized that the game was actually just cycling through the highlighting that occurs naturally during the briefing, but since it had nothing to play, there was nothing to slow it down. After about 3 seconds of various sectors being highlighted, the message panel containing advice from C3P0 popped up like it does at the end of the briefing. I closed the window and everything seemed fine! I've played through about 200 days on an Empire game with no problems since doing this.
TL;DR? Sorry if this is old news, but I couldn't find it anywhere and it's not on the Wiki so I thought I'd share. Backing up and deleting ALBRIEF.DLL and EMBRIEF.DLL from the installation directory will DELETE the briefings for both sides. It'll cycle through all the highlighting that occurs during the briefing very quickly but the game does not crash and is playable afterwards. If, for some reason, you want the briefings back in, just restore the files from the backups and enjoy a 4 minute lecture from a protocol droid.
EDIT: There's absolutely no reason this shouldn't work on any other OS or architecture so Windows 8, Vista, and 32-bit machines can handle this as well.
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Razgriz
Hi everyone. I actually joined today specifically to share this bit of information. I've recently started playing Rebellion again and have it working on my 64-bit Windows 7 laptop. It's great, but like many of you, I'm annoyed at the fact I can't skip the intro briefings. However, there is hope! (Hopefully, this isn't old news, so sorry if it is. I couldn't find anything about how to fix this issue and the Wiki lists it as a "problem" but doesn't offer a solution.)
I'm a computer engineering major, so I'd like to think I know my way around a system at least moderately well at this point so I decided to dive into the Rebellion data files and see what I could find. I started by individually removing MDATA files, as those are media files, but I quickly realized that the briefing isn't a media file. It's just a hard-coded progression of events in the game. Frustrated, I moved on to looking at some of the dll and resource files. Using Resource Hacker, I started examining the images and sounds contained within various DLL files. Thankfully, I didn't have to go far, as I quickly discovered that ALBRIEF.DLL contains the WAVE and BMP files that are used in the Rebels briefing. Looking for it's partner, I found EMBRIEF.DLL does the same for the Empire. Now to go about disabling these without breaking the game. First thing I thought was pretty simple: backup the file and delete it! So I did. I deleted ALBRIEF.DLL and started up the game. Splash videos and texts all appeared fine and the main menu opened without a problem. THen I started up a game as the Rebels. The Rebel cutscene loaded just fine and then the galactic map appeared. Suddenly things started flashing and dinging really quickly, but there was no briefing. I realized that the game was actually just cycling through the highlighting that occurs naturally during the briefing, but since it had nothing to play, there was nothing to slow it down. After about 3 seconds of various sectors being highlighted, the message panel containing advice from C3P0 popped up like it does at the end of the briefing. I closed the window and everything seemed fine! I've played through about 200 days on an Empire game with no problems since doing this.
TL;DR? Sorry if this is old news, but I couldn't find it anywhere and it's not on the Wiki so I thought I'd share. Backing up and deleting ALBRIEF.DLL and EMBRIEF.DLL from the installation directory will DELETE the briefings for both sides. It'll cycle through all the highlighting that occurs during the briefing very quickly but the game does not crash and is playable afterwards. If, for some reason, you want the briefings back in, just restore the files from the backups and enjoy a 4 minute lecture from a protocol droid.
EDIT: There's absolutely no reason this shouldn't work on any other OS or architecture so Windows 8, Vista, and 32-bit machines can handle this as well.
Enjoy!
-Raz
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