Flare Sci-Fi Forums: Computer Game Intro Movie Disable Problem...

This is topic Computer Game Intro Movie Disable Problem... in forum Officers' Lounge at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.

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Posted by Nim the Merciful (Member # 205) on :

For a number of today's PC Games, the intro movies (game studio clip, ATI-clip, Nvidia-clip) are represented as .bik-files in a folder simply called "Movies" in the game root folder.
This has made it possible, for a while now, to open these files (ex. "nvidia.bik") in a word processor, delete all content but letting the file remain, and being able to boot up the game and jump directly into the menu, as the files are skipped immediately! Presto!

This works with "Far Cry", "No One Lives Forever 2" and a couple of others I've tried, and is a welcome exploit since most games these days have about five-six sponsors per game, forcing the general gamer to have to sit and press Escape for a tedious while just to get to the menu.
Some movie-clips aren't even clickable, further increasing the value of the .bik-hack option.

My current problem is called "Hitman Contracts". The game has the "Movies"-folder alright, and the intro movies are neatly stacked in the order they appear at game start, and there is no problem emptying them and then leaving them be.

Except if I empty just one of them, the game won't start! It's the exact same file-solution as in "Far Cry" or "NOLF2", only it aborts the bootup and jumps back to Windows if one of the biks are rigged. Can anyone guess why?

Is there some sort of control-file hidden in the root folder, that has to be fixed in the same way?

I own this game so I feel I'm not doing anything illegal by killing the intros, I know who made the game by now... [Roll Eyes]

Thoughts?

Posted by deadcujo (Member # 13) on :

I don't have Hitman Contracts, so I can't be of specific help, but have you tried simply deleting, renaming or moving the video files? I usually just delete these intro-type movies when they're plainly stored in a folder and I can't recall ever encountering a game that actually required their presence. Or perhaps your game has a INI file or something with some sort of Intro line to enable or disable them.

Posted by Nim the Merciful (Member # 205) on :

That was it. Delete the files outright, it was too simple to hope for. It wouldn't work with "Far Cry" or "NOLF2", so I assumed this equally new game would be sofistikated.

Thanks, man.