Just two links for you today...

Firstly, if you like Republic Commando music at all, you really should listen to Bart Klepka's Vode An Remix. I love game remixes SO much, but this is the first RepCom one I've come across. Very quality stuff. :) Even if you don't tend to like trance (like me), it's really cool!

And secondly, check out this video: Star Trek vs. Star Wars. Very clever! :D

I have three things to discuss today: Hard Contact & hiking, my impressions of Triple Zero the second time through, and some of my thoughts on the "clone wars".

Warning: this entry possibly breaks some world records on length. I ramble, what can I say! ;) And maybe this makes up for my lack-of updating lately. I probably should have split this into three entries, but meh...

( hard contact )

( triple zero )

( 'clone wars' )


If you read all of that, you deserve a medal! :D

Thought I'd give a little update.

So Triple Zero has started to hit the stores, and unfortunately, I don't have it yet. It's been very hard to avoid spoilers, so I'm basically staying away from everything Star Wars-related online for the next few days... though I've already heard a few opinions about the book on Livejournal so word has started to seep out beyond Star Wars communities. I only hope I can get a copy soon. I went out looking for it today in stores, but couldn't find it yet. I've pre-ordered it from Amazon, but it hasn't shipped yet (and probably won't until its official release date, Feb. 28) so I could still cancel it if I find in the next day or so. I might look again tomorrow! :)

I want it! :D Though I suppose it's a good thing, because I have a lot of things I'm supposed to be doing the next few days, and frankly... they would not be getting done if I had the book. ;)

There has been some discussion on various starwars.com blogs recently about the clones and their humanity (or lack thereof). One of the original discussions was here, and Moose summed up exactly what I wanted to say so nicely over here. So I don't really have a whole lot to add, but a while ago I started compiling a list of things I believe about the clones. (This was as a counter to my entry on Battlefront II where I ranted about how the clones were portrayed. As a follow-up to that: I have decided that I will continue playing Battlefront II as if its plot is NOT canon, because I found it was annoying me a LOT and was making me not want to play. So now it's just a happy alternate-universe game to me, and maybe I'll play it again.) Since it's on-topic nowadays, I thought I'd post the list!

This is what I believe about the clones:
- They are fully human. "Clone" is a subset of humanity, not a separate category.
- They are self-aware. They are individuals with their own thoughts. There is no "hive mind".
- They have freewill. They can make their own choices.
- They can feel pain.
- They can feel emotions, such as fear, elation, and guilt. They aren't as experienced at identifying emotion as many other people are (and remember, they're only 10 years old in AotC... non-clone 10-year-olds aren't usually fully in-tune with themselves and the word around them either), but they have the ability to feel the same range of emotions as non-clones.
- They are not "brainwashed". Unless you'd consider military training brainwashing.
- They are capable of disobeying an order, it's just very difficult for them to do so because of their training. Obeying orders is like a reflex to them - in the same way that we all will remove our hand from a hot stove before we even realise what's happening, they will carry out most orders immediately and without question. That's their job, it's not a bad thing.

Ultimately, the clones are like identical twins. That is the real-life analog. While many twins look, sound, and act similarly, they are separate people with separate experiences. Genes do not tell all - the act of living is primarily what makes a person an individual, not what they inherit from their parents at birth.

Note that I make no distinctions between regular clone troopers, Republic Commandos, and ARC Troopers. Some clones were brought up to think in a more independent fashion, and such behaviour was encouraged, but I do think that at a base level, all clones are human and capable of higher-level reasoning. There are no universal differences programmed in at a genetic level, because genes just cannot determine behaviour that precisely. I'm sure there are some regular clone troopers who demonstrated more creative thought than some ARC troopers. Every individual is unique.

And as a final topic, I'd like to share a bit about my experiences playing Republic Commando today. I've haven't played this game in months, really, but today I was a little upset about stuff and wanted just to escape into a game where I can blow crap up without having to think a lot. ;) Anyways, it was interesting because recently I've been playing a lot of Battlefield 2, which is another (non-Star Wars) first-person-shooter game. Thus my gaming abilities seem to have been re-wired for BF2 and I had a few difficulties playing RepCom. Here's what I noticed:
- I kept right-clicking to zoom in. In RepCom, right-clicking throws a grenade, so I wasted a lot of nades doing this.
- I kept using my mouse wheel to select weapons. This does swap weapons in RepCom, but it doesn't change attachments on your primary weapon, which is what I was really trying to do.
- The main gun is SO weak and takes so many shots to kill anything, even the weenie battledroids.
- Oddly enough, I'm better at throwing nades now. (This is odd because I suck at throwing nades in BF2, and therefore rarely do.)
- I'm much better at moving around, shooting when firing, and using natural cover. I don't just run straight at the bad guys anymore!
- I kept trying to sprint by pressing shift. It feels wrong to go out in the open without sprinting for cover, even though you can take many shots without dying (unlike in BF2).
- When I saw a bad guy, I kept trying to crouch (which works, but has no effect) or go prone (which doesn't work) and zoom in (which throws a nade). These are necessary in BF2 to get good accuracy, but make no difference in RepCom. I guess commandos can shoot just as accurately when they're jumping and running as they can when they're still and lying down. :)
- I've completely lost all my vibroblade reflexes. Enemies rarely get that close in BF2. But I haven't needed them so far in RepCom, because I don't let anyone get close! Though without sprinting, I suppose I'll need these skills back eventually.
- You can't jump as high as in BF2, so some of my ideas of what obstacles one can jump over are wrong.
- I keep forgetting that the clips in RepCom are 'magic' - ie. you can reload anytime and not waste ammo. Unlike in BF2, where you normally don't want to reload if you still have half a clip.

So yeah, I thought that was interesting. I didn't know I could be completely "reprogrammed" in such a short time period! I remember a few months ago, when I was playing Mysteries of the Sith, I was still programmed for RepCom and kept trying to vibroblade stuff. All different now. :) If you can't tell, controls are one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, hurdle I have to jump in playing FPS games. It's never completely natural for me, though I think I do a fairly good job with what I have. I suck, but I do improve over time. :)

Aside note: Can't wait for this! What Battlefront II should have been. :D Battlefield 2 is an amazing game, so a Star Wars mod for it has so much potential. :)

Well, I suppose that's it for now! I probably won't be hanging around here much until after I get and read TZ (the two events will be quite close together, believe me), so until then... MTFBWY. :) See ya.

I'd like to present to you my new website; two full months of work, my pride and joy, the site I poured countless hours into...


Check it out, and let me know what you think! I have not worked this hard on anything in recent memory - or had so much fun doing so. :)

I am a perfectionist, but I'm almost certain there are errors. If you spot any - broken links, spelling mistakes, and the like - please let me know! I know there are errors because today I saw that I had the book Hard Contact as taking place 6 months after Geonosis, instead of 3 months. And that page I made weeks ago and have modified many times since, yet I didn't notice that glaring error until today. So I'm sure there are more! ;)

The really sad thing - I have SO much more to add to the site! It doesn't feel done on any level. But that'll all come. Now that it's online I can be a bit more leisurely with updates, doing a bit here and there and posting about it when it adds up.

Oh, and I hope it will work perfectly in everyone's browser. If it doesn't, let me know. But if it's some browser I don't have access to, like Mac browsers, I can't promise I'll be able to fix anything.

(Cross-posted everywhere, sorry!)

I ordered a Republic Commando t-shirt yesterday. It's going to cost nearly the original price just in shipping, plus there will probably be customs/import fees... but meh. It's RepCom. And a SW t-shirt that's sold in sizes smaller than large and thus might actually fit me!!! (What's up with selling game and guy-oriented merchandise in only Large and X-Large anyways!? All my SW t-shirts are so huge on me. And I wear my awesome Splinter Cell t-shirt as pajamas because it's ludicrous how big it is... but I love it anyways. ;)) So yeah, I can't wait till I get it. :D Because of this extra expense, I've decided to forgo my November comics. I just got my October ones from Amazon today anyways (Clone Wars Adventures Volume IV (the kid in 'Orders' is so like me), Twilight, and Outlander), so it's alright. I'll buy more in December, if I have money left after Christmas shopping. (Recap: I only buy comics once a month because if I didn't limit myself I'd buy everything and have no money.)

I really want the New Essential Chronology!

Well, if you'll excuse me, I have some new comics that need reading. :)

I can't stop laughing at one of the "product descriptions" of the Republic Commando game from Amazon.com...

Star Wars Republic Commando makes you a part of the Empire, as you fight for the Dark Side. Lead a highly-trained 3-man squad deep behind enemy lines.

Empire, eh? Funny how the word Republic is in the title. Dark Side... *giggle* And a 3-man squad... wonder who they knocked off. ;)

I wish I had more to say... but I don't.

OH WAIT! Clone action figure party! :D Clones looking at clones looking at clones somehow doesn't get any less amusing. ;)

So instead of being a good girl and working on my powerpoint for my work presentation on Tuesday, I spent pretty much the whole evening working on my upcoming Republic Commando website, specifically the Triple Zero page. For the released media pages, I generally just give basic information and summarise the plot, but for TZ I obviously can't yet since it's not out. (And won't be for another 134 days.) So instead I'm listed all the stuff we know about the book. But I'm not doing this halfway! I spent all evening surfing the net, reading forum threads, reading Karen's LJ, and trying to find any snippets of info or hints as to the book's content so I can put them on my site. :) I've found a lot, and I'm rather proud of my page. :D I also bookmarked a few things I want to revisit after I read the book!

My site is going to be so cool. Current plan is to get it online by the end of October. I'm gonna register the domain next weekend! :D

Oh, and I'm also reading Hard Contact again. To get quotes, of course. *innocent* Hey, it's only my third time!

BTW, I'm already planning my TZ reading marathon. I think I can finish it in two days. I just marathon-read The World Before yesterday and Friday, and it worked out well. (When I marathon-read, I still sleep and eat and take frequent internet breaks (mostly because reading in the afternoon makes me want to take a nap, no matter how interesting the book is), but I don't do anything else.) The only problem is TZ is released in the middle of the week, so that might be interesting if I have a job then. Oh well, sleep is for the weak. ;)

And I do realise I'm crazy. But it's fun. And since there's no one around who's as crazy about this as me, I have to make up my own fun fan-ish things to do. ;)

Well, I should probably do some powerpoint-ish stuff tonight. And I have an unread Clone Wars Volume 6 on my desk which I've now had for three days. It's time it changed to "read" status.

Dear Amazon: Please hurry up and send me to the rest of my October comics, especially Clone Wars Adventure Volume 4. (If for no other reason than I need to summarise the commando story for my site. :P) Come on, you know I'm your biggest fan - I always have at least one outstanding order, normally two! ;) Hehe.

Ok, I'm out. Take care, folks.

Found this on the Mando'a Thread at the starwars.com forums. There's a podcast about Mando'a based on an interview with Karen Traviss here, and it's very very cool and interesting. :)

But the main reason I'm grinning from ear to ear now is they used my RepCom medley! As soon as I heard the first song transition, I knew. How awesome is that!? (Answer: Very awesome indeed.) It's like my work has purpose now, hehe. W00t!

These last two days have been like fangirl heaven for me. I'm so excited!

They used my medley!!! *explodes*

I posted this yesterday in my regular livejournal (verdika), and it was received well by the select audience there. And since I don't feel much more foolish than I did, I thought I'd take the leap and post this publicly. :D

Anyways. This relates to this entry. So it relates to Star Wars, the game Republic Commando, RepCom music, and... erm, sound recording.

Ok, first of all, if you haven't heard Republic Commando music, download this MP3 and listen. If you don't, you won't understand. It's short and small (453 KB) so do it! That's part of one of the songs in the game - the songs were written specially for the game and the words are in the Mandalorian language Mando'a (which I've been learning too!).

Anyways, so I found a sound file of that part of the song, without singing. ... You see where this is going now, eh? ;) Yep, I recorded myself singing - in two-part harmony - and mixed it all together to make... THIS! (MP3, 409 KB) There's actually four Amys singing in that - two on the 'top' part and two on the 'bottom' part (I'm not leet enough to be able to do three part harmony) - because only two made it sound too duet-y and not choral-y enough. :) Yeah, it's not perfect... you have no idea the hoops I had to jump through to get my microphone (which is a tiny one on a headset) to record without excessive hissing and stuff... but I think it's ok. :) Oh... well, except for the part where my voice lacks certain manly qualities... me not being a man and all. So the original is much cooler. But there's only so much I can do about that. My brother suggested I modify the pitch of my voice but I thought that was a step over the line. ;)

You can hear the song without singing here (MP3, 453 KB). Feel free to record yourself. :D

I am a huge huge geek. Who else on this planet would even consider recording themselves singing along to these songs? LOL! They're not even in English! And I'm far from an amazing singer, haha. And I'm so shy I don't even like posting on forums, yet I'll let the world hear me sing a song in Mando'a. I make no sense.

Try not to laugh too much, ok? ;)

Here's the lyrics for the part I recorded:

Bal kote, darasuum kote,
Jorso'ran kando a tome
Sa kyr'am nau tracyn kad, vode an

Which translated into Basic (aka English) means:

And glory, eternal glory
We shall bear its weight together
Forged like the saber in the fires of death, brothers all

It's rather scary how many Mando'a words I know now. I haven't really tried writing my own sentences, but I see vocab everywhere and go "ooo, I know that!" So when I was just typing up those lyrics above, I realised I could probably independently translate a lot of them myself now! Cool! Though when I translate the last line literally according to the words in my Mando'a spreadsheet, I get "Like [the] death forged fire saber, brothers all" ... which is rather amusing. :) There's something to be said for poeticism that doesn't translate literally.

I love Mando'a so far... it's so simple. There's not a bazillion verb and noun endings to learn. No crazy case system - had enough of that in my one semester of Greek, lol. :) Tenses are simple - one word acts as a 'flag' to set the tense. Very cool. Me likey.

Well, now that I've thoroughly embarrassed myself, I think that's it for now. :)

Yeah, I couldn't think up another 'C' word, sorry. ;)

So I recently got my hands on 6 back issues of Insider that I was missing. I was reading through issue #62 today (aside note: the "prequels updates" from back in the day are so interesting to read now!), which features a "Who's Who in the Jedi Order" article. So I start reading the section on Ki-Adi-Mundi and it starts "A cone-headed Jedi Knight from Cerea..." and I laugh rather loudly, thinking of Ryan and "cone-head". LOL! I hope I didn't wake up my parents.

I also corrupted my sister. I made a deal with her a while back to get her to read Republic Commando: Hard Contact, and she gave it back to me today, asking "so when's the new book out?" [Triple Zero]. And then when I told her about Omega Squad: Targets, she asked to borrow my magazine - of her own free will! Mwahaha. :D Her favourite character was Atin. :) I tried to get her to play the game, but she told me that she's watched me play it enough. Ah well... later. ;)

I installed and played TIE Fighter today (the Win95/98 version). I was afraid that I wouldn't like it anymore... but dude, it's still so awesome! Ok, so the graphics are still really bad. I couldn't not help but laugh at the training where one must shoot down slightly-textured polygons. ;) The training was SO BORING compared to X-Wing Alliance's AWESOME training (I love the rings like nothing else... pure adrenaline rush when I'm flying through them at top speed... whoever thought of that is on my elite 'coolest people of all time' list) too. And the twist-stick/rudder capabilities of joysticks not working was very annoying. I hate being at the wrong orientation when attacking something, lol. But the missions and the MUSIC and the voices and the plot.... yay!!! So awesome. I was a bit annoyed that I couldn't get hardware acceleration working though - I found a patch which theoretically enables it for 2000/XP, but in 2000 you have to do a bunch of extra steps - which I did, but it still didn't work. Oh well, it's not like hardware rendering would look *that* much better or anything. ;) It's all good. I plan on playing a lot more! :)

My pilot's name is "Fixer", hehe.

Well, I suppose that's it. :)

I hate writing. Apparently I'm alright at it - at work today I showed the text I'd written for the tutorial part of our program and they said it was very well-written and understandable - but I don't like it. I'm trying to write the "about the commandos" section of my upcoming website, and it's really hard. You wouldn't think it's be so hard to just describe the commandos, right? But I can't think logically in words like that. I have to think of everything the person would need to know ahead of time and address it, and I'm not good at that at all. But I refuse to be one of those sites that copies and pastes text from everywhere else... I don't like those sites that you go to the 'about' section and see a bunch of text followed by 'taken from the starwars.com databank'. I want to read your view on the subject, thanks, not something I've probably read already. I want someone's own words.

Maybe if I treat it like an essay it'll be easier. I hate writing essays... but they are organized and I can appreciate that. Let's see, I managed to write about clone differentiation and how the Republic Commandos are generally more independent-thinking than the clone troopers. I need to describe the genetics still. I need to explain the whole clones thing generally, for people who don't know Star Wars at all. I need to talk about the training the commandos got to do special types of missions. I need to mention some of the weapons and gear that the commandos use.

(In case you haven't picked up on it yet, I'm writing this mostly for my own benefit. And because I know it'll be interesting to read later! I rarely write about the process of creating something, but it's always interesting to read when one is done.)

I'm making progress on the site though. I still have about 13 pages to do, but I seem to be doing one per day so it shouldn't be too long before I can get this online! *can't wait*

Next time: Either Boba Fett: Crossfire comments or a series of entries about my favourite old-school Star Wars games. I found TIE Fighter music again today and the nostalgia was almost too much. *wistful sigh*

I really need new icons here. I love all three of mine but they're kind of old. :/

Chapters is in my good books again. (Not that they were ever really in my bad books (if I had "bad books"...) - aside from when I found out they have like no SW comics - but regardless.) I went on a quest for the other two covers of SW Insider today (I got Gree with my subscription, so I needed covers #1 and #2) and Chapters had both! And they didn't have #3, so I was lucky. I felt kind of silly buying two copies of the same issue of insider - and nothing else - but I decided to suck it up. I can't always be so worried about what people think. Yes, I am an obsessed clone fangirl, what do you want from me. ;)

I'm still working on my Republic Commando fansite, but it's coming along nicely. Yesterday I wrote the "about this website" page, and I realised that I am very strange sometimes when writing stuff for the site. As an example, here is exactly how the "about this website" page starts:

Once upon a time, there was a dream.

Ok... that was slightly disturbing. *decreases dramaticism by a whole notch* Let's try this again.

Once upon a time, Amy discovered the Republic Commandos.
[ ... and it goes from there ]

If this were MST3K (Mystery Science Theatre 3000), there would be a voiceover saying "this should have been edited in the final version". ;) But I am amused at my strangeness. Maybe this'll make the site more interesting and people will actually bother to read through all my ramblings (in particular, the "history of me and my commando love" section is very rambly). Or maybe it'll scare people off, I don't know. But it happens. :)

I'd like to register my full agreement with this entry and my dismay at what the Guide to the GAR thread at TF.N has fallen to. And I wish certain unnamed people would slag off their arguing with certain other unnamed people whom the former people will never be as smart as (because they're missing the point) and are frankly being grossly disrespectful to the latter people. It's a good thing there are no thermal detonators in real life, because the former people are asking for it. </vagueness>

Today I finally got to making a Mando'a spreadsheet for my own personal use. It has the Mando'a word, the Basic word, any background info or explanation, the pronunciation, and a URL of the source of the explanation or pronunciation. It is very cool, and I still have a ton of words to add to it. But it's nice having all the released info in a nice organized place. :)

That's about it.

Wow. I just did the geekiest thing ever. I'm not shy when it comes to geeky things (I readily admit that I spent hours reading through all the RepCom subtitles, after all), but this I don't even want to admit. Just that it involves RepCom music... and, well, I can't say anymore. I'm very embarrassed. The things I do when I'm at home alone, eh?

Sorry for the vagueness, really. But I did have a warning that I could spam this journal without having to explain everything. And I'm very freaked out now because I didn't think I was so weird. (Though it is pretty amusing.) So I wanted to say something.

I have way too much fun with my audio editing and recording software. o_o Wow.

Wow, I lose.

I didn't think to check on all the commandos' numbers, because I was like, 'I know them'. But then I just checked now... I had Niner as RC-1209 and he's really RC-1309. Eeep, bad bad Amy. Bad RC fan. No cookie.

But at least I got the others right! :)

Finished the Geonosis campaign in RepCom again today (I think this was my... fourth time? fifth time?). Still playing on Medium. I could probably move up to Hard on Geonosis, but after my 69 and 12 stats on Kashyyyk last game on Medium... yeah, I suck. I won't be able to beat that campaign on Hard yet! :)

My stats this time:
- Personal Deaths: 8
- Squad Deaths: 4

(Personal deaths: Every time I die. Squad deaths: Every time I have to reload the game.)

I was doing so well until the Core Ship part at the end. Grrr. But I still beat my last scores, which were 12 and 2 (which total 14... yeah, so I sucked it up by myself this game and died 4 times). One of my deaths (and a squad death because I was by myself) was when I owned myself with a nade. ;) Two more were when I was trying to take out two SBDs by myself with no practically weaponry. And the fourth squad death was when we were storming the bridge at the very end... I went to revive Sev and two destroyers rolled up right beside me. Killed me, killed Sev, and eventually killed the other two. Not good. o_o

So onto the Assault Ship! :D

So yesterday I wrote a thing about Theta Squad in RepCom, and it turns out that there was originally gonna be two sequences, one with Theta Squad (Darman's squad) and another involving a crashed gunship and a character called Delta 36. Today I thought I'd share some of the other cool deleted/never added lines I came across when I was searching the subtitles.

It's entirely possible some of these actually are in the game and I just haven't come across 'em or I don't remember 'em. :) If you think I'm wrong about something, please feel free to point out that I obviously haven't played the game enough, and I'll do my best to change that. ;)

Delta 40: Accessing Anti-Air controls. Ooh, this is nice. I can do much better than just "offline." Separatist turrets now targeting... Separatist craft.
Delta 62: Fixer, you're sick. I respect that.

Delta 62: What the-- aw, that gunship took my kill! I do all the work, and some rocket jockey comes in and takes the glory.

[after seeing the jamming device on Geonosis (?)]
Delta 62: I think we're gonna need a bigger squad.
Delta 07: Or bigger guns.

Clone Advisor 1: Delta Squad, your brothers in Theta Squad failed their objective.
Delta 62: What happened? Couldn't hack it?
Clone Advisor 1: Heavy casualties sustained watching YOUR back, Delta. So, I'm giving you their objective: Sabotage the droid factory.

[lol]
Delta 38: I don't like that door; let's take it out.

[the first line of this is in, but I don't recall the others... pure Fixer though :D]
Delta 40: Looks like they're slavers.
Delta 38: How can you tell?
Delta 40: Most Trandos have a hyper-athletic physiology. But slavers get lazy. Comes from having lots of slaves to do things for you.
Delta 38: Fixer! You've done your research.

[ok, now I'm curious... swamp blurrgs in the game?]
Delta 38: Swamp Blurrg. Maybe it can find a way out.
Delta 07: Swamp Blurrgs don't count towards your kills, Boss.
Delta 62: You mean I have to keep a separate blurrg count?

[this is on the website, but it seems to be from a ship crash on Kashyyyk that wasn't in the game]
Delta 62: Rule 45, Sev: Any crash you can walk away from is a good one.

[on Kashyyyk]
Clone Advisor 1: Listen up, Commandos. You can-NOT allow the Separatists to gain a foothold here! The future of the Republic is at stake!
Delta 38: All right, we get the point. So, what do we have to work with? How many Republic units are on planet?
Clone Advisor 1: Besides you? None.
Delta 62: Well that's just bloody wonderful.

[very end, and one my faves]
Delta 38: We'll come back for you, Sev. I promise.

And just because I can, here's all the "Rules" I could find, in numerical order:

Rule 1: Kill 'em before they kill you.
Rule 17: Always make sure they're dead.
Rule 23: Never pull sentry duty on an empty stomach.
Rule 39: Never say no to bacta.
Rule 45: Any crash you can walk away from is a good one.
Rule 89: One's an anomaly, two's a trend.

I also figured out how to extract the sound files! After searching for ages and even finding how to hex-edit the files so the wavs were at the start and could play (though it would only play one clip when I did this, and I'd have to hex-edit again to get the next one... which as crazy as I am, I wasn't prepared to do on files with hundreds of clips!), I finally found a program to extract the files. It was strange though - some of the dialogue files weren't the right speed. I had to timewarp all of Boss' dialogue by a factor of 2.77 and most other files by a factor of 1.35 (numbers determined experimentally) in order to have it play correctly. I saved a few files, and put together one conversation (MP3, 74 KB). I don't have huge plans for the sounds, but I like knowing that they're there if I ever need them. :) Perhaps I can devise an amusing Windows sound scheme with some of them...

This is completely unrelated (well, not completely), but I love the way Fixer goes "Rescued: one wookiee" and "Rescued: two wookiees" in the Kashyyyk mission. Why does Fixer rock so much? <3 Probably because he's the most like me. :)

By request, here's all the dialogue I could find in the subtitles for Republic Commando relating to Darman (RC-1136) and Theta Squad. Within the actual game, there's one mention of Darman's squad (all of whom were killed on Geonosis except Darman) as follows:

Clone Advisor 1: As you already know 36's squad has been incapacitated. Their mission was to disable a droid factory in this sector. Your squad has been retasked for this purpose.

(Clone Advisor 1 is Delta Squad's advisor, the guy who talks to you all throughout the game. (And who has a cool accent! My brother and I giggle about the way he says "Delta"... like "Dee-elta", hehehe. Accents are cool.))

But there's more. It's hard to work out exactly what would have happened had the rest made it into the game, as the dialogue isn't in order and probably covers several contingencies. But here's what I could find. I tried to order them in a logical sequence and postulate how it might have worked in the game. My commentary follows in italics.

Clone Advisor 1: We are planning a two-pronged attack.
Clone Advisor 1: Theta Squad will disable the droid factory. Your team will target the Geonosian leader Sun Fac.
Clone Advisor 1: Theta Squad is well into enemy territory. They're working on blowing a door in between you and your objective.

This probably would have been near the start. In the game, the only briefing you get about your mission is "The squad objective remains: Find Sun Fac and eliminate him." and it seems like more explanation could have been given. (I thought that the first time I played the game too... without reading the text on the loading screen, I'd have no clue who Sun Fac was or why we're trying to kill him.) So it seems there was going to be more explanation here. The "blowing a door" part goes along nicely with the prologue of Hard Contact!

Delta 36: Delta Squad, this is 01/136. I've lost 2 men and my pilot in the crash.
Clone Advisor 1: Roger Three-Six, 38's team is on the way.

Clone Advisor 1: 1136, what's your status?
Clone Advisor 1: Hold tight 36 help is on the way.

Funny that it's Delta 36 here and not Theta 36. But I think they're supposed to be one and the same. It looks like Darman's ship crashed and Delta Squad must go and rendezvous with him. But from another deleted line about how the commandos ride individually on gunships to avoid losing a whole squad (this is implied in the game), it was probably just Darman on the gunship and the rest of his squad is ok. For now.

Clone Advisor 1: 38 proceed to Three-Six's gunship.
Clone Advisor 1: Debris is preventing us from reaching 36's position.
Clone Advisor 1: Proceed through the new opening to 36's position.

Delta 36: Stand clear of the fallen pillar, Three-Eight. I'm going to blast an opening.
Delta 36: Welcome to Geonosis. Three-Eight.
Delta 36: Battle droids are holding a position beyond that fallen pillar.

Delta 36: Take cover!!
Delta 36: Spider Droid approaching our location.

Once Delta gets to Darman's location and clears a path, 36 stays with the squad for a bit. There is a "secure the area in front of the crashed gunship" part on Geonosis in the game... perhaps that's where Dar was going to show up?

Clone Advisor 1: Delta Squad, your brothers in Theta Squad failed their objective.
Delta 62: What happened? Couldn't hack it?
Clone Advisor 1: Heavy casualties sustained watching YOUR back, Delta. So, I'm giving you their objective: Sabotage the droid factory.

This would probably be an alternate (or an additional) line for the one in the game, were the rest of the Theta plot implemented.

Ok, there's my summary of Dar's would-be role in the game. :) There are some other parts (and funny lines!) that didn't make it into the final version of the game and I'll try to summarise them later.

Oh, and I'm not sure how much of this dialogue was actually recorded, as I haven't figured out the sound format yet. But I'll keep trying to do that as well. :)

EDIT: The man himself Ryan Kaufman responded to this at my hyperspace blog, so go there to see what was really planned and the story behind what happened! :) Oh... and that brings my VIP comment count over there to three. :D

All the subtitles for the dialogue in the Republic Commando game are stored in plaintext in the game directory! Am I a huge geek for looking through it all? ;) Wait, don't answer that.

Ooo, extra scenes involving Theta Squad and Darman! Awesome.

EDIT, 12:08am: Done reading through them all! Wonderful way to spend an evening, eh. :D But now I have a text file of all the best quotes, w00t!

Just a dream to report today.

A couple nights ago I had a dream where I was Fixer (ok, so it wasn't really me, I was just 'working' him, I guess, like in a game) and my brother was Sev and ... someone else I know but whom I forget was Boss. And Scorch was there too, but I don't know if he was being 'worked' by someone. But the main plot was based around the idea that Scorch wasn't actually a clone of Jango Fett. And this explained why his voice is the same as Carth Onasi's (they have the same voice actor!). So maybe he was a clone of Carth? I don't know.

I wish I could remember more about it. But it was a very cool dream! :D

My September comics (Clone War volumes 2 & 5) plus Boba Fett #1 came on Friday, and I've read everything already. Very good. I love the two political-themed stories in volume 5. I'm getting my sister to read them for the insight into Bail Organa, so maybe she could work in something from them into her fanfic. (Which I really need to re-read and give feedback to her about about soon! Oh, and she wants a couple beta readers who will give *detailed* feedback and criticism. If you know the events surrounding RotS well (movie is vital, EU is a plus) and want to be a beta for her, just email me and I'll hook you up with a copy. Thanks! It's a really good story, and not too long.) And the other stories... very cool. More Alpha, yay!

So I have all the Clone Wars TPBs but one, so I need to start buying other comics too. (Hehe, "need". :P) I'll probably go for more Quinlan Vos stuff, as he RULES. I never thought I'd like him so much... but yeah. <3 <3

But for now... 169 days, 1 hour, 3 minutes, and 20 seconds till Republic Commando: Triple Zero!!!

So I finally trusted myself enough to comment back on (the one and only!) Jesse Harlin's comment (on my RepCom medley entry @ my Hyperspace blog). Yeah... I was rather excited about that and didn't want to seem like a squealing fangirl. Even though I really can be. ;) I did squeal in verdika though... a fair bit. ;)

BEST thing about Hyperspace blogs - you never know who's reading. You just write about stuff, assuming that only average joes like you are reading, and then suddenly you get comments from people who were involved in the creation of such awesome things! First Brian Ching here and now Jesse Harlin. Rock on. :D

Anyways, I just wanted to follow up on my Aurebesh in Republic Commando entry a bit, as I translated some more of the menu screen. It says the following (_ means I couldn't make out a character):

Looking forward to ha

Ging out -- and hearing more about trip back home

Sian doctor dude, _ Sunday

'll be in PA for July 4th ___
- wanna do that again? 13 years

Not quite as coherent as before, but still pretty cool.

I played the 'Bridges and Ordnance' part of RepCom again yesterday (my thoughts on the previous time were here). This time it was strange - I was still on Normal difficulty but I had MAJOR problems in completely different sections of the game! Weird. For example, I've never had too many problems rushing across the bridge at Kachirho, but this time I just could not do it for the life of me (literally). I died no less than 15 times, and 6 of those times my whole squad was knocked out. The stupid missile/rocket turret and SBD dispensers... ugh. SO hard. This time. And last time I had major problems on the 'Live Ordnance' level - this time no problem. Maybe because I played it safe a bit more, and things got tight when the GeoElites showed up, but I was able to keep my squad and myself mostly alive. So I beat that section on my first try. Very strange how things can unfold so differently. I guess that's what make the game so fun to replay! :)

Fixer is still my fave commando. But Sev is really growing on me - he's saved my butt several times when everyone else was knocked out! As my brother would say, "he's a freakin' commando"... lol. :)

(But Fi still rocks my socks too!)