The small movie who normally plays while using the telescope won't play in my game (well, I can live with it, but David then seems to have a strange behavior ;-) ) It's the file "Boat2" in the install directory.

Anyone having the same problem ? I de-installed the game (because I use the original localized files from my CD's) to check if it was the problem, but still no clue. I suppose that eventually some others video won't play too (the little .smk files)

Confirmed, I also noticed this. However I don't recall any other videos being played during the game and at least David tells us what he saw, so it may be considered a very minor problem.

Never noticed that! I've always thought it was intended behaviour! browsing the code I've found a reference of the file boat2.smk into \data\levels\gno\TELEROOM\teleroom.sct
I cannot test myself cause I don't have the correct savegame, but you can try moving the file boat2.smk from intro directory to the former one (TELEROOM).

Let us know.

Same here, the chair moves down, he walks towards it, then straight off again. I think it's related to the more general problem of the CPU being too fast. When I was training with Grandad at the start, I didn't complete any of the moves, just begun them and it moved on. I suspect that the movie is started and completed before it's even had time to show.

There were some short videos at the end of the game (no spoiler intended, but you can look the others .smk files for memories (like "spindown") ;-D) Tested, no effect. This video share the same extension as the backgound animated menu image (silver2.smk), so I don't see it as a codec problem. The files are also respecting the original file structure, as they were on the CD's. So, no clue for this one...

Tested myself too. Played through to the scene! ;-D
I Tried to modify the teleroom.sct to include "boat2" string after the telever and teleseat animations at x105D (big-endian), right after the triple AA hex chars (some sort of push).
Unfortunately the Exe performs a checksum verification, and blocks the script. Have to check the exe to find the value and modify it there too.

I'm not sure any movies are playing my end, not even the opening cinematic (Which IIRC is supposed to run before the main menu - I just get a black screen and have to hit escape to make the menu appear).

I had the same problem, the movie didn't play and the game continued like there wasn't even supposed to be a demo. I didn't bother me since I've played the game before but someone new to Silver might get confused.

back on the right topic.
I had occasion to make other tries:
Surprisingly the game never crashes... ;-)

if you put BOAT2 string starting from 0x1A5D, the game jump to the dialogue where you explain to the duke what have just saw through the telescope, but in a different position (same teleroom location), down right on the bottom stairs.

So the game treat the .sct like a bare script, in my opinion, and any changes you can make changes the events but not the structure. As long as you do not change the final hop (act3) the game continues without crashes or malfunctions.
Don't want to be the bad guy at the party, but I think the file has been never implemented into the script, so any changes we made will produce always the same effect:
Anyhow the fact the boat2 sequence is different from the other sequences (intro and outro apart that are "full screen" AVI, all the smk in the game IIRC, are part of the scene merged with the background) I have no idea how it could be rendered.
keep trying though.

just my two cents.

OK i have been looking into this some more (most of yesterday and today) and some good news. IT IS NOT SCRIPT RELATED

I noticed that when i used the original game CD with no patches (the original game) and off the original disc (meaning without a nocd patch) the video worked (the game was messed up due to there not being any patch's though but the video did play at the correct point), so i then applied the Geforce V2 patch and played again, and the video played again,
I then applied the nocd and copied the files off the CD to the games folder and then the move didn't work anymore, so for some reason the game will play the movie off the CD but NOT off the HDD, which i find a little odd.

(also just so you know the GOG version uses the same EXE as the geforce V2 EXE with the nocd patch and a custom DDRAW DLL which has been renamed to PATCH.DLL and they also renamed the folder from SILVER to DATA and patched the EXE to look for DATA instead of SILVER)

Anyway i am looking into this further and trying to figure out why it will play off the CD but NOT the HDD.

Nice catch kranmer!
decompiled the exe, but still no clue. Trying to check diffferences from the original exe and the patched one could lead us to the solution.
Keep up the good work.

OK good luck Theruler, i have just tried making a ISO of the folder (so silver.exe and the data folder are in the root of the ISO) and mounted it in a virtual drive, and when running it from the virtual drive when i get to the video i get the Access violation error when the boat2 video is supposed to play so i am not sure exactly what is going on, it could be related to the patch.dll or it could be the changes made to the EXE (like the nocd).

Also the differences between the GOG exe and the geforce patched EXE is that GOG have patched the word DDRAW.DLL to PATCH.DLL (this is so the game uses their modified ddraw dll) and then they used the NOCD patch which stops the game looking for the CD then they hex edited the word SILVER out for DATA (the original game uses a folder called SILVER which has all the files in it, but GOG uses the DATA folder) but other then that there are no differences at all (they are byte for byte the same apart from the changes i have mentioned) so it could be that it is related to the NOCD patch used (this is a guess based on the fact that the movie works when i play of CD but not of HDD using the geforce patched exe)

So, any news on this topic (missing video)?