"The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

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pbpb33
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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#26 Post by pbpb33 » Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:24 am

hehe. I actually didn't think of the similarity with that when I made this name. I think I was eating peanut butter (PB) at the time, and chose random numbers.

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#27 Post by Johnathon » Wed Oct 13, 2010 3:00 am

No way, I'd thought you did that on purpose. Lol.

Here we are now, 2.5 weeks early for the update. How about that?

Image

P.S. For some odd reason, the file hoster keeps overwriting my newest version with a crappy looking one which was from a much earlier save state. If this screen looks a bit underdone, that's why. If I notice it happens again, I'll try renaming and uploading it again.

I began working on this sprite 3 months ago, but of course I hadn't spent as much time on it as I'd wanted. Progress with the script has been coming along great. Although communication and work with the team as a whole seems to be in a frozen state (we've all got lotsa life business to attend to), we've been keeping in touch, and are as enthusiastic as ever.

Tremendous improvements have been made for the ending game segments, introducing just the right pace of suspense, twists, conflict and climax. Characters have been fleshed out further, and much of the technical design and quality assurance "stuffs" has been contemplated and improved upon. (Yeah, I'm wording that kinda funny, but eh well).

In fact, I'd say plot and screenplay dev has progressed thrice quicker than the art dev. More ideas just keep pouring in, and it's overwhelming at times not being able to draw more quickly just to get the adventure into code and into action. Hurry up and wait, is what you could call how I've been feeling.

But I've also had plenty to tug me away and keep my attention split a little. Pushing myself to the fullest these past couple weeks, I've managed to bring my D minus average in physics up to a C. A bit of personal information, I know, but it has been intense juggling everything. I really wish I could do more and more.

But there's a good momentum going here, and sooner or later, we're going to strike oil. Please stay tuned. More updates in the next 3 months.

Sincerely,

Johnathon and the Outer Edge Dev Team

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#28 Post by MusicallyInspired » Thu Oct 14, 2010 12:03 am

Lookin' good.

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#29 Post by Johnathon » Wed Nov 10, 2010 12:59 am

Thank you, Brandon.

And... I almost forgot to mention this bit of news here, but I posted it on the JT almost a couple weeks ago:

...I've set up a website at the following url. The message board isn't really all that finished yet, in terms of looks and categories, but you can feel free to join so that you may follow progress of 'The Outer Edge' and provide feedback. If not, well, just be sure to check out the site every couple of months for updates.

http://www.theouteredge.org/

Oh, and there're just a few pages I haven't completed yet on the site, but I've added some interesting information to read if you're curious about the project.

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#30 Post by Johnathon » Mon Jan 24, 2011 11:07 pm

NEW UPDATE:

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Greetings Space Questers!

The time has come for our next update. Phew! It has been a busy past few months for all of us here on the dev team, but despite all this, we're still kicking like mad. Firstly, I would like to introduce you all to our newest member: "Icefoxer," who is a friend of Vroom's as well as a current student and aspiring artist attending the San Francisco Academy of Art! She has offered to work with us primarily (but not necessarily limited to...) as a concept artist for the project, and we are all thrilled to have her!

As you can see, via the thumbnails provided above, I have continued to chug away at the screenshots, though this is not the only area I've made progress in. Whenever I get a great idea for a joke, puzzle, plot twist, you name it - I record it. I've also made other minor progress on the basic compositions of some other screens as well. I had hoped to have at least one of these in complete form for your viewing pleasure, but wasn't able to do so by this here update (I'll tell you though, with myself - as with anyone - 75% of the work/time is simply in the benchmarking/sketching, laying out proportions and such (in other words, everything before the coloring and touch up), so you're sure to see these done in the very near future!

Personally, I am very satisfied with this progress, considering all the other priorities I've had to attend to. Mind you, I managed all this while attending classes full time, in addition to a half time job. These next three months, unfortunately, are also booked up with college assignments, but come our next update, I'll have a 4-month summer vacation to let loose like mad :)

Regardless, we'll continue to chug away. I have a vision, and I know where we're going.

a brief P.S. > Every one of those monolith burger tiles in that scrolling screen have been hand sketched, individually (that took up quite a bit of dev time, but anything to get the right amount of detail/atmosphere/perspective), and that facial closeup will look quite a bit more like Roger once it is done being polished. Also, this is a very brief, brief, BRIEF rundown of the progress made in the last few months, the story is really really, REALLY starting to take shape, as are the characters. My team is currently reviewing the script again as we speak, and we're gonna do what we can to get you a playable demo of Day 1 (only about 7% of the adventure, but quite long enough for a demo!) as soon as possible ;)


The next update will be three months from now


Sincerely,

Johnathon and the Outer Edge Dev Team
Last edited by Johnathon on Sun Jan 30, 2011 7:20 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#31 Post by DrJones » Mon Jan 24, 2011 11:10 pm

Love the way it's progressing. :)

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#32 Post by Johnathon » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:55 am

NOTE: I realize although I'd continued to make updates on the website this past year, I somehow drifted away from including them here and on other forums. I apologize if this has left anybody wondering, and hopefully it did not keep many of you from thinking to visit the site itself the see the updates. Remember, you can always feel free to check out what's going on here

December 28th, 2011

SPACE QUESTERS!

I have some good news, and I have some GREAT news!

I’ll begin with the good news…


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THE OUTER EDGE OF EARNON WILL USE 3D-ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNIQUES TO DERIVE ARTWORK:

No, no no!!! This will NOT be a 3D game, it shall remain the classical adventure style and interface. What this simply means is that, utilizing tools available from 3D programs, production of the 2-dimensional backgrounds, lighting/shadowing, reflection, and animation will be incredibly easier from this point on and even more convincing. Imagine not having to redraw every sketch as you imagine it, just to achieve a slightly different angle. View some of the examples below of the experimentation that has been conducted, and you will acquire an idea of what this means for the fangame project…


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…now, when working on a large area of the adventure, where there are many rooms or screens present which relate to one another, a model of the area need be built only once. Thereafter, camera angle and position keyframes can be utilized in order to take snapshots of these models form different locations/angles. Imagine, for example, if you desired to animate an introduction sequence which scrolled across Xenon City, viewing all its buildings and streets. You could program a camera to do this and take snapshots every so many frames, and then those snapshots can be later traced, colored and textured in a paint program, to acquire the 2D backgrounds necessary for your cut sequence.

Or… imagine wanting to cover a portion of the game both in day or at night, or with alternating atmospheric effects. The power of using a 3D pipeline system to support the derivation of these calculations is an immense time-saver. You could move lights in and out wherever you desire, shine different colors on things to see how they interact with other objects in the scene, or even apply a texture effect to an object to get a good idea of how specific surfaces should be later depicted in 2D, as with metal, water, or plastic, for example.

This new direction in art development will help the project more than can be expressed in words. And, in case you’re foolishly wondering, “No, this 3D method will not subtract from the uniqueness of the games artwork. The temptation to allow screenshots to become monotonous in their great numbers will be resisted at all costs!” ;)



And now… for the GREAT news…


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AFTER HARD DRIVE CRASH FOUR YEARS AGO, THE OUTER EDGE ENJOYS A MIRACULOUS SOURCE CODE RESURRECTION!!!

Yes, yes fans! The unbelievable has occurred. It all began a week or two ago, when I realized my desktop pc (which I’d built back when I was 19), would no longer boot up successfully without shutting itself down due to an overheating/hardware problem (it’d been growing worse and worse over the past year). The 3D progress I’ve just shown you in the screenshots above had become temporarily un-accessible, and I was determined to get them off that hard drive (which, as you can see, I most certainly did). However, as I was going through this process (which required the purchase of an external hard disk cover and the reading of some articles regarding hard-disk recovery utilities, the thought crossed my mind, how likely might it be that I could perform a deep scan that would turn up some really old stuff I’d REALLY forgotten about, and had accepted long ago that it was gone forever…???

For those of you who have only been following The Outer Edge of Earnon recently, I will provide you with the necessary exposition in order to comprehend the magnitude of this wonderful achievement of data recovery: You see, this project was begun back in December of 2003, and had slowly developed, until a team was eventually formed in late 2007. The team and I had a great but short run together; as many life issues and worldly circumstances more or less broke the team up and drove SQ:OEOE to a screaming halt. I, in my early twenties (22), had become quite depressed for reasons I will not explain, and it was at that time when I was being called to walk through the door from adolescence to adulthood, that I deliberately erased all the project files shortly before I entered college.

I spoke a little with my team members, at least one or two of them, during that April of 2008, but things really didn’t hold together for long. I had almost immediately regretted my upset and having given up on the adventure, and so I was able to retrieve the “majority” of the important stuff from a zip file I’d uploaded into an email account for backup purposes. (Do bear in mind, this file had to be kept small enough to email). The rest, I began to rebuild, very slowly, but college kept development at a near freeze.

I had a couple of good development bursts, and you all heard from me quite a bit these past three summers.

Now, at this present day, I could not possibly be more pleased to tell you that I have recovered GIGABYTES worth of information!!! The reason this number of bytes is so large is because back in the earliest days of the project, I had literally played through every SQ game, taking snapshots of the backgrounds and of the dialogues, and even of the descriptions of certain areas and objects. I did this because I strive for a great degree of organic transition (or, think of it as coherency) between this fangame and the official other 6 adventures. These image files I had saved as bitmaps. This is one mere example of why there is so much information.

But the best stuff I’d recovered is the stuff I’d lost JUST before the “Great Down”, as I call it.

For starts, how’sa ‘bout these two images below, which I’d earlier released in very old updates:


(VISIT WEBSITE TO VIEW FULL SIZED)
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(VISIT WEBSITE TO VIEW FULL SIZED)
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Other things I can’t show you, but will be glad to explain ;)

First off, fortunately, all this time, because I’d been VERY good about protecting the script via email backups, the script had never suffered anything more than about a paragraph (or one page) of loss, which I still had fresh in my memory, but much of the original penmanship in this precise area had been compromised. The biggest things I’d lost were the most recent “team development chats,” which the guys and I had enjoyed with each other over yahoo messenger between November 10th of 2007 and April of 2008 – of which I have recovered ALL!!!

These chats include the latest ideas and innovations we’d collaborated on for the plot of the adventure, and other design areas.

In addition to this, I have recovered documents upon DOCUMENTS of information, regarding plot ideas, character ideas, deaths, eggs, YOU NAME IT! You see, although there had been but one single “screenplay” file, many other documents had separately comprised design aspects for other facets of the adventure game project.


HOW DID I GET THIS LUCKY…???

Articles online will tell you that the odds of recovering computer files that had been deleted from your hard drive FOUR YEARS ago are slighter than the odds of winning the lottery. However, I had always been in the habit of having my computer’s drive split into two virtual partitions. Whenever I needed to format and re-install my operating system, the other half of my drive would remain intact with all my files (DELETED AS WELL AS NON). This no doubt protected this old lost information from being forced too deep below the hard disk’s surface after all these years, minimizing the number of “overwrites” that had occurred. Furthermore, because my hard drive was so large, in terms of needed usage (I hadn’t done much heavy, hi-res gaming during my college years) , this allowed for more free space the hard drive could write over, rather than cramming and compressing within the same small amount of sectors.

But the recovery was a bit of a challenge. The entire process took about 9 hours; that is, to search through and find the correct files. For the first several hours, I’d recovered bunches of individual and some partially corrupted images and documents, which fueled my excitement to thoroughly complete the search, no matter how long it would take, and eventually, EVENTUALLY… I’d stumbled upon a compressed zip file (quite large in size), which was perfectly intact and which extracted with no trouble. I checked the output folder, read the description of the unzipped folder, ”Fan Game,” and my eyes lit up like a Spiny Alien Thang about to grab an unsuspecting, wandering hero janitor. Every single file from the fan game project had been preserved: EVERY SINGLE FILE, IN ITS ORIGINAL LOCATION IN RELATION TO THE MASTER FAN GAME FOLDER, WITH ALL THE CREATION AND MODIFICATION DETAILS, PERFECTLY PRESERVED IN THEIR ORIGINAL DIRECTORY STRUCTURE!!!

And along with the great progress and growth that this project has continued to enjoy over these recent years (despite the adversities), this amazing triumph will just... PHHHHFFFF!!! Forget words!

Reading this source code and document details, and seeing my initial plans for latter stages of the adventure, has in a way patched small gaps that had been nearly patched already, but still not completely. I feel almost as though I’m there again, four years earlier, and the feeling and awareness of suddenly seeing what I’d typed – all my ideas and progress – which I haven’t seen in nearly half a decade, has immensely jumped the motivation factor.


Stay tuned, more great updates to come. This baby’s about to take off and I mean for real. By the way, I survived my first semester at university with a cumulative 3.38, and I’m minoring in digital production, and working under a previous Hollywood special effects master and recipient of an Oscar award. I couldn’t possibly be happier to be where I am this day, and I would say the prognosis for this adventure to turn into everything I’ve ever dreamed it would be, is undeniably positive.


Sincerely As Always,

Johnathon and the Outer Edge Dev Team

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#33 Post by Johnathon » Thu May 03, 2012 8:01 pm

NEW UPDATE:

May 3rd, 2012

Space Questers!

How have things been in your quadrant? I doubt given the incredible events of late that you've been capable of being caught sleeping in a broomcloset somewhere (if you have been, you've missed out on a lot).

You don't need me to tell you about the Two Guys' reunion, the return of Frans Van Hofwegan to his administrator panel, the merging of SQ.net with the VB, nor the release of three awesome fangames!

The bar has been set high, time to keep it up.

So, now for the latest scoop on "Space Quest: Roger Wilco and the Outer Edge of Earnon":

The team has been knocked down to three of us: Myself, Mad_C33, and Questcollector. Vroomfondel, while remaining a great supporter, has had to step away for the time being, due to a dual enrollment in the medical field (best of luck, Vroom!), though he says if he can ever find the time, he'll be glad to come back. As it turns out, Icefoxer, the priorly to-be assistant conceptual artist, never had genuine interest in the project, and our correspondence was quite brief.

No matter, the three of us will do it, and I assure you, had it turned out it were only myself, I would do it even on my own. It will be done.

And things are turning up fantastically. I have such great excitement for this summer, and the entire coming year. My skillset and resources have finally leveled with my unceasing passion, and there is nothing that is going to stop great things from happening.

The team and I (Myself, Sam, and Jeff) are immediately setting to work on completing that demo I've mentioned before. Now, when I say demo, I do want to be certain to allay your previously instilled conception of a "demo." This thing is going to be a hefty piece of game. We do not intend to release the game in installments, yet nor do we intend to create a demo that is not part of the actual game. We just want this one chance to impress you, because we realize it's been quite a long wait, and to get your feedback before the completed game is ready; therefore, we are, on this one occasion, going to release to you the beginning of the adventure through Day 1 on Xenon (One third of the beginning game section; being there are three game sections, beginning, middle, and end).

Now, would you believe that in-between all the other hell I had to deal with during this crazy semester (which is over as of today!), I managed to make very nice progress on 7 more screenshots, and even played around with design for a gamebox using my newly-acquired copy of adobe photoshop...? I'll hold on to the screenie progress, cause you'll be seeing them in the demo soon enough, but take a look at the template for the game box: (See website for image...)


I'm gonna sign off now. There's much to be done. Stay spacie, cyberspace jockies!

- Johnathon & the Outer Edge Dev Team

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Re: "The Outer Edge of Earnon..."

#34 Post by Johnathon » Wed Jul 18, 2012 12:37 am

NEW UPDATE:

July 17th, 2012

Space Questers!

I've decided to make this update a couple weeks early. I've got quite a few things to share with you, but first, I want to give you a good, STRONG reminder to go to guysfromandromeda.com, if you haven't done so, and PLEDGE a few buckazoids to help the Two Guys improve the new SpaceVenture, starring Ace Hardway!!! They have listed on their website a set of goal promises for specific features, provided they can receive enough funding (examples include translation of the final game into other lagnuages, and things like extra mini games and pixar-quality 3d character animations.)

Now for the status update:

Roger is... blonde...?

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Yes, after quite a bit of contemplation, awhile back, I had decided that, while this game will ring true to the classic SCI art atmosphere, I should make Roger's hair blonde, because... well... do I really need to explain it to you? Nah, didn't think so. Though, when I'd finally decided to go back and change the screens I'd released prior, to make Roger's hair blonde, I realized that the whole strawberry red face and yogurt yellow hair provided by the original 16 colors just wasn't cutting it for me; so I proceeded to toy around with a most unforgiveable and HEINOUSLY WICKED idea, one which purists everywhere will no doubt find unforgivable of an offense...

"Super SCI" means... 20 colors?!

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Yes, after experimenting with color values over a two-day weekend (not the entire time, folks, the rest of the time in-between I was hanging with some local homies and drinking 'Keronian Ale.' Oh, and eating some of the world's greatest 'Monolith Burgers,') I settled upon four additional colors which I reasoned to be crucial for the game. I began rationalizing my rape of the "untouchable, original 16" when I recognized that the official pallette from the 1980's, while possessing some subtractive secondary colors (like purple and green), did not possess the secondary common ORANGE. In my art design I have found this to be quite an awkward setback, and it is also the reason why depicting skin and hair tones is especially difficult to pull off in 16 colors. I wondered to myself, if computer game designers had enjoyed the freedom to expand beyond 16 colors, which ones would they choose? Which shades would be considered most crucial to add to the pallette?

Remaining somewhat of a 'purist'/16-color-enthusiast myself, I proceeded with great care, making special note of pre-existing hue/sat/lum values and blah blah blah... I decided that if I wanted to add any colors, I wanted to add only as few as possible, and only those which complimented the existing ones by sitting on the oppposite end of the color wheel (those that appeared missing); and by systematically mimmicking the original values (only plugging these same values into alternate RGB fields to yield new results), I settled on the four posted above.

RATIONALE (technical babbling; only to be read by offended purists): Looking at the original 16 colors, the first thing I made note of was that while most of the colors came in obvious shades of two (that is, dark and light red, dark and light blue, etc...) bright yellow had often been employed in the games as the lighter alternative to medium brown. I began by considering to add one new shade to each brown and yellow. To the original yellow, "255,255,80," I added a new, darker shade, "160,160,0," which is justified by the existence of the official dark cyan, "0,160,160," residing on the opposite end of the color wheel. For the original medium brown, I added a new, lighter shade, "255,160,80," by using increments in the same numerical values across the original pallette, and by stepping those values up the same amount as original lighter shades had been stepped up from THEIR darker ones (ie: when looking at the 16-color pallette, one notices that when a shade is stepped up from darker to lighter, 0 becomes 80; 80 becomes 160; and 160 becomes 255; generally speaking (purple is the rebel)). After this point, I decided to add the completely new shade of orange, "255,80,0," which rings consistent with the original light green, "0,255,80," (possibly it's opposite on the additive/electronic color wheel). In my experimentation, I came to realize why orange had not originally been done. It can be difficult to determine when working with an additive color system as used in electronics. One cannot simply mix values of red and yellow together, because it often results in some form of brown (computer screens do not depict colors via light in the same manner that paint depicts colors when mixing subtractively in the physical world.) This is why when I continued to follow the logic of stepping the values from lighter to darker, my second, lighter shade of orange resulted in the newer light brown just above mentioned (or perhaps this had to do with the fact that, not being able to raise the red field any higher than it had already been, 255 became 255 for the "R" field.) I saw no violation with this, because, after all, when analyzing sierra's original light and dark green, 0 steps up to 0 when changing from light to dark green.) So, at this point I had three new shades, all of which seemed to subtly slide in with the 16-color pallete, in a constructive way, seeming to complete it, but because my new light brown had become the light orange (and honestly, it LOOKS just like light orange when placed next to the dark orange), I would have to find a new suitable partner for the medium brown. I reasoned that, because the most difficult thing to pull off in 16 colors had been the human skin and the hair, I should try adding a darker shade of brown. This way, I could succeed in more obviously differentiating the brunettes from the blondes (and their own hair and skin from background brown objects like mud/dirt). Using the above mentioned logic, I added the dark brown shade, "80,40,0." Below is the entire pallete, with the 4 newer shades arranged logically into the original, official 16. All values are also clearly listed. I find that this new pallette really helps to improve the potential of the game, in a way that is respectful and complimentary of the classic SCI feel. I hope you will agree with me. After all, when I originally dubbed the term "Super SCI," I expanded the background resolution to double that of Space Quest 6's, 800x418 pixels, and that could be argued as a rape of classic SCI :D

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I have updated the screenshots page to reflect my current progress with adjusting Roger's skin and hair color, with the help of these four new shades. Be sure to check it out!

Now what about that summer demo you mentioned...???

What about it...??? Okay, okay! I'm afraid that thing is going to take longer than the end of this summer; but let me tell you some of what I HAVE done, and why the delay:

Firstly, while I toyed with programming in AGS a few summers ago, to make the parser/gui interface; I had not, to this point, worked on any game coding at all. I have, in these recent weeks, been slaving away programming the beginning game and introduction sequence (and lovin' every minute of it!). I'll tell you I'm very pleased with the results; but programming will make the demo take longer.

Secondly, being as it is, that I want the demo to include the entire 1st day on Xenon, there is a very LONG and detailed, and REVOLUTIONARY cutscene featuring Roger and Jerry (NOT to be confused with the idea of Jerry Wilco from the new fan game, Space Quest -1: Decisions of the Elders; but instead the Jerry that Roger witnesses dead aboard the Arcada (with the keycard) at the beginning of SQ1 (remember, this is a prequel to SQ1)) - so, where was I, yes - Roger and Jerry, hovering in a skimmer, traveling across futuristic Xenon City. Because 3D pipeline will aid in the calculations/creation of the many background screenshots that will go into this lengthy and impressive sequence, the demo will take longer to construct than if I were only to worry about strict interactivity (perhaps this is not what you want to read, but this is the only taste you'll get of SQ:OEOE before it's released in full, and so I want to make it special as I can for you. ;)

Thirdly, because fan game developers are horrible at giving accurate deadlines.

In addition to the above news, I have been enjoying the hell out of myself working on the demo. I have perfected/edited completely specific dialogue, descriptions, and cinematographic details that will need to be referenced in order for successful completion of the demo (things like timing and camera angles and shitzoid.)

I will continue to chug away at this, and I will continue to keep you posted.

DID YOU KNOW...?

...That during a two-day, feverous designing frenzy on July 1st to July 2nd, this month, Johnathon managed to complete animation sprites, from scratch, necessary to finish a whopping 2 1/2 minutes worth of cut sequence for the demo...?



... Ha hah hah...



Sincerely,

Johnathon (now flying this thing solo)

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