Thanks for this excellent collection of ideas!

Great research to find a practically invisible sprite that fixes the airboard ditch. I've seen the first attempt with the invulnerability star, I agree that the practically-invisible sparkling (that usually appears after collecting floating treasure) is far better.

I agree that we should strive for a package that GOG can then ship as-is, and take extra care to get it reasonable on first try. Interesting that you chose 1.2 and I chose 1.3 instinctively.

Episodes A, B, C are more reasonable in 1.3 (see smalle table on version.html that compares only 1.2/1.3), but one can have 1.3 levels with 1.2 executables, so this is less important. 1.3 has bouncing Jungrock flowers, they're broken in 1.2... but again, 1.2 could get away without a fan mod of Orbitus 2, and I agree that levels should be as close to Epic's releases as possible.

Indeed, highly complex topic. I'd rather not rush this choice of executable. I'll come back to you with a detailed comparison!

-- Simon