Aleph One 1.0 Released

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Posted by timothy on Thursday December 1, 2011 @09:10AM from the win-one-for-the-forge dept.

First time accepted submitter treellama writes "Nearly 12 year since Bungie released the source code for Marathon 2, the Aleph One team is thrilled to release version 1.0 of the Aleph One game engine. Aleph One is a Free software, cross platform game engine that supports all three original Marathon games with enhancements such as OpenGL and Internet play; as well as numerous third party mods known as 'scenarios.' Easy to install full versions of Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity, now featuring high resolution graphics and modern widescreen HUD support, can be downloaded for free from the project website!"

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Heard about Marathon by BigSes · 2011-12-01 09:11 · Score: 3, Insightful

Ive been hearing about this title for years, and I have never had the opportunity to play it. Now that I finally got around to trying MineCraft, I think its time to give this one a shot too. Catch myself up a bit.
1. Re:Heard about Marathon by Pope · 2011-12-01 09:40 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  It's a Doom-like shoot-em-up, albeit with a pretty decent plot/story behind all the bang-bang. It's pretty out of date from a gaming engine perspective, but still fun as heck to play IMO. I played all the original games on the Mac back in the day, as well as a lot of the 3rd party expansions/conversions like Devil In A Blue Dress, Red, Evil, etc.
  I think one of the funnest things to do was make subtle mods to the physics engine, like creating exploding rounds for the pistol or my Bruce Lee-inspired "Super Fist."
  Again, it's all completely old school when compared to Modern Warfare and things like that, but sometimes a few rounds of nostalgia will satisfy a bit more than a modern game that's far too serious. Multi-player rocket arena play is a must!
  
  --
  It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
2. Re:Heard about Marathon by dave562 · 2011-12-01 09:42 · Score: 0
  
  It's not all that. It just gets talked up because it was one of the few FPS games that the Mac guys could play. I seem to remember it came out around the same time as Unreal and was popular because it leveraged the right-click for alt-fire.
3. Re:Heard about Marathon by Joehonkie · 2011-12-01 09:43 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It was out four years before Unreal. The last game in the trilogy was out 2 years before Unreal.
4. Re:Heard about Marathon by tholomyes · 2011-12-01 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  "Doom" would be the better analog. It also gets talked up because it launched a little company called Bungie into prominence. The Marathon games were pretty fun in their day, with an interesting story to boot.
  
  --
  When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
5. Re:Heard about Marathon by Gilmoure · 2011-12-01 09:59 · Score: 1
  
  I miss my full auto Tec-22 with 100 round mags and micro-explosive bullets (didn't do a lot of damage individually but if you could keep a bunch of them on target...
  
  --
  I drank what? -- Socrates
6. Re:Heard about Marathon by dave562 · 2011-12-01 10:09 · Score: 1
  
  It was more advanced than Doom though. Quake maybe? I just remember the LAN play aspect of it. I didn't own a Mac so the only time I played it was with friends going head to head.
7. Re:Heard about Marathon by Narishma · 2011-12-01 10:16 · Score: 1
  
  It's more similar to Doom than Quake, though it's less fast paced than either and more focused on story from the couple of hours I've played of it. Doom supported LAN play as well, BTW.
  
  --
  Mada mada dane.
8. Re:Heard about Marathon by lewiscr · 2011-12-01 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  I remember playing Duke Nuk'em 3D around the same time I played Marathon. It was after Doom, but PC games were still 320x200 256color.
  That's what I remember being revolutionary about Marathon. When PC games were stuck at 320x200 (256 colors), Marathon ran fast at 800x600 (16bit color). The storyline was nice, but the graphics were jaw dropping.
9. Re:Heard about Marathon by Archangel+Michael · 2011-12-01 10:20 · Score: 1
  
  Me, I miss the Flechette
  
  --
  Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
10. Re:Heard about Marathon by phobos512 · 2011-12-01 10:27 · Score: 1
  
  SPNKR all the way.
11. Re:Heard about Marathon by 0100010001010011 · 2011-12-01 10:41 · Score: 2
  
  It was also done by the same guys that did Halo (after they got bought by Microsoft).
  There are a lot of easter eggs for fans of Marathon.
  I also remember reading on a forum some where were someone on someones theory that Marathon was a very early prequel to Halo and they exist in the same "Universe."
12. Re:Heard about Marathon by lakeland · 2011-12-01 10:42 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  One criticism I have of Marathon is that as you get better with the shotgun it becomes more powerful than everything else.
  My favourite was a game we played where everyone would start at the same time with computers next to each other , put the game in kindergarten mode and race to the finish with the rule that you are not allowed to save the game at all. The no-save adds an interesting dynamic that you have to be careful with the rocket launcher or you'll have to go back to the start, but generally the best approach was to weave past everything without bothering to shoot.
13. Re:Heard about Marathon by Hatta · 2011-12-01 10:48 · Score: 1
  
  Of course Marathon was a faux-3D engine with sprites for enemies, much like Doom. Unreal was a fully 3d game.
  
  --
  Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
14. Re:Heard about Marathon by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 10:48 · Score: 0
  
  The Duke Nukem 3D engine and the Marathon engine were about equally capable ("2.5D"). The games were very different though. The Marathon series excelled because of the story-telling, not on technical grounds.
15. Re:Heard about Marathon by 0100010001010011 · 2011-12-01 10:49 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Other way around. Halo took place before Marathon. And that at the end of Halo 3 MC goes into stasis and the 1st person in Marathon is actually MC 250 years later.
  Marathon=Halo?
16. Re:Heard about Marathon by Zaphod+The+42nd · 2011-12-01 10:58 · Score: 1
  
  I miss the smiley face rockets! :D
  
  --
  GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
17. Re:Heard about Marathon by Zaphod+The+42nd · 2011-12-01 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  Marathon was DOOM era. Unreal was Quake era. BIG difference. (billboarded walls and sprites vs 3D polygons)
  
  --
  GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
18. Re:Heard about Marathon by Zaphod+The+42nd · 2011-12-01 11:00 · Score: 1
  
  Nah, it was more like Duke Nukem or Dark forces, games built after DOOM using DOOM. Marathon was slightly post-DOOM, learning from it, but definitely before full 3D polygons like quake.
  
  --
  GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
19. Re:Heard about Marathon by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 11:31 · Score: 0
  
  DN3D's engine was strange, you could define sectors that occupied 99% of the same 3D space, as long as none of their 2D-coordinate vertices connected, and the game had no problem with that, but you couldn't let the player simultaneously see two sector ceilings that were stacked on top of each other.
20. Re:Heard about Marathon by quacking+duck · 2011-12-01 12:08 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Just want to clarify your "Doom-like" comment, in case anyone mistakenly thinks this meant it was a Doom clone for Mac.
  Bungie's Marathon was based on their Pathways into Darkness game, which came out before Doom. Marathon is also credited as the first FPS to have vertical aiming and free-look/mouselook controls, and multiplayer deathmatches.
21. Re:Heard about Marathon by quacking+duck · 2011-12-01 12:12 · Score: 2
  
  To clarify my own deathmatch comment (sigh...), the Doom wiki notes that it was the first FPS with specific multiplayer modes like Capture the Flag and Oddball.
22. Re:Heard about Marathon by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 12:59 · Score: 0
  
  Freelook yes, but System Shock had vertical aiming before that.
23. Re:Heard about Marathon by thermopile · 2011-12-01 13:18 · Score: 2
  
  ++ on the decent plot and story. There was just something engaging about those Durandal / Tycho battles, and you, the small pawn between them with double shotguns.
  That, and playing at night with headphones ... the audio could really set your hair tingling.
  I used to drive the mac computer lab managers nuts by secretly installing Marathon Infinity on all the macs, then making the folder invisible so they couldn't (easily) delete it. Good times, indeed.
  Oh, and grenade hopping FTW.
  
  --
  "Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
24. Re:Heard about Marathon by antdude · 2011-12-01 13:32 · Score: 1
  
  I could not get into Marathon since I was a big DOOM fan back then. :(
  
  --
  Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
25. Re:Heard about Marathon by CtownNighrider · 2011-12-01 14:14 · Score: 1
  
  Halo 4 is supposed to be cannon and that takes place pretty soon after the end of Halo 3. Or is Halo 4 not cannon? I haven't played marathon but am pretty into the Halo universe and mythology. Also I'd like to point out to the above poster that the first Halo was supposed to be for the mac but MS bought Bungie shortly after they started development of the game and had them make it for Xbox. They are the reason for the "combat evolved" part of the name.
26. Re:Heard about Marathon by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 15:39 · Score: 1
  
  Given the incredible demo that Bungie put on of an early version of the game at a MacWorld Expo, it is not surprising at all that MS bought Bungie.
27. Re:Heard about Marathon by fruitbane · 2011-12-01 15:43 · Score: 1
  
  This thread on IGN is poor speculation. Developers often throw in nods to their seminal titles when creating new games. Besides, Bungie has already stated several times that Halo and Marathon are different universes and simply use some similar themes and ideas. And now that MS owns Halo, but not Bungie, Bungie would be hard pressed to position a new Marathon game as an actual Halo sequel. I wouldn't mind seeing them revive the Marathon universe, but it won't likely be by tying it explicitly to Halo.
28. Re:Heard about Marathon by BenoitRen · 2011-12-01 21:34 · Score: 1
  
  Halo 4 is supposed to be cannon and that takes place pretty soon after the end of Halo 3. Or is Halo 4 not cannon?
  
  You fail at spelling 'canon'.
29. Re:Heard about Marathon by mdarksbane · 2011-12-02 02:06 · Score: 2
  
  I think the two reasons to play it now if you're new are
  a) The story. Which is really, really good, but if you play for just a bit to get the feel of the game, you can go read it all on marathon.bungie.org/story. And it will probably actually make some more sense then.
  b) Seeing how ahead of its time it was. Marathon came out about a year after Doom, but it has so many elements of a modern FPS. More realistic weapon physics, multiple attacks on weapons, mouselook... in some ways it feels very modern compared to its contemporaries.
  Did I mention the story? Still some of my favorite sci-fi. Even if you don't play the game you should go read through Marathon's Story.
30. Re:Heard about Marathon by Pope · 2011-12-02 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  Doom-like meaning sprite-based, vs. Quake or Unreal which were fully 3D polygons. I should have been more specific.
  
  --
  It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
31. Re:Heard about Marathon by Foo2rama · 2011-12-02 06:01 · Score: 1
  
  Marathon was the 1st full featured FPS. Sure Wolfenstien and Doom beat it, but Marathon was the first true 3d game. Doom was actually a 2d game that faked the vertical component.
  
  Marathon was the first that allowed networked game play. Had all the major multiplayer modes, king of the hill, tag, DM etc. Marathon was really the seminal FPS that set the stage for all other games. It is still impressive in the level design and storytelling given the minimal resources available at the time. It beat Unreal and Quake by a few years to the market.
  
  --
  
  ---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
32. Re:Heard about Marathon by Uhyve · 2011-12-02 09:13 · Score: 1
  
  Halo nerd here. That doesn't really make sense. The MC wears Mark VI armor (V in Halo), whereas the cyborgs in Marathon wear Mark IV. Which would suggest that if they were in the same universe, that Marathon took place before Halo. Still, I think that all of the references were just nice throwbacks for Bungie's old fans.
33. Re:Heard about Marathon by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-02 12:07 · Score: 0
  
  Marathon was the 1st full featured FPS. Sure Wolfenstien and Doom beat it, but Marathon was the first true 3d game. Doom was actually a 2d game that faked the vertical component.
  Frog blast the vent core, brother, but you're getting a bit too carried away with enthusiasm. Marathon is a 2.5D game just like Doom. Both games use maps which consist of polygons in a 2D plane, each tagged with a floor height, a ceiling height, and wall texture IDs.
  The Marathon engine had one capability the Doom engine didn't. Doom's map geometry is based on binary space partitioning, which allowed a very high performance rendering engine, but prevented it from having overlapping polygons in the map. Marathon's engine supports overlap, so long as it's only in the X and Y dimensions. The floor-to-ceiling range must not overlap. This means a Marathon map can have a tunnel under a room (which Doom couldn't do, due to BSP), but not a bridge which can be walked on and walked under.
  
  Marathon was the first that allowed networked game play. Had all the major multiplayer modes, king of the hill, tag, DM etc. Marathon was really the seminal FPS that set the stage for all other games. It is still impressive in the level design and storytelling given the minimal resources available at the time. It beat Unreal and Quake by a few years to the market.
  Kind of the same comment as above re: enthusiasm. Marathon was way cool, but there's no doubt Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake were the seminal FPSes. They reached a much wider audience, and each one was a revolutionary "you have never seen this before" moment. Especially Quake, which hit at just the right time to take advantage of the early 3D accelerators.
  BTW, Marathon wasn't the first Bungie game with an engine slightly better but later to market than id's equivalent game, combined with better storytelling than id. Figure out if you can find a way to play Pathways into Darkness sometime, it's a pretty cool Wolfenstein-tech-level game with a real plot. More a suspense/horror feel than pure action.
I'm out of ammo! by TheMiddleRoad · 2011-12-01 09:16 · Score: 1

said Bob.
1. Re:I'm out of ammo! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 09:26 · Score: 1
  
  said Bob.
  Thank God, its you! They're everywhere!
2. Re:I'm out of ammo! by AxeMurder · 2011-12-01 09:56 · Score: 1
  
  Thank god it's you!
3. Re:I'm out of ammo! by TheMiddleRoad · 2011-12-01 11:30 · Score: 2
  
  I once met Bob in real life. He worked in PR, a fate worse than death by alien.
4. Re:I'm out of ammo! by bryan1945 · 2011-12-01 11:36 · Score: 2
  
  Frog blast the vent core!
  
  --
  Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
5. Re:I'm out of ammo! by TheMiddleRoad · 2011-12-01 13:21 · Score: 1
  
  Hah! I forgot that one.
6. Re:I'm out of ammo! by bryan1945 · 2011-12-02 09:30 · Score: 1
  
  Was always my favorite. First time I heard that, I'm thinking what? Then boom!
  Gotta download the new version. The older ones were buggy.
  
  --
  Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Eat it VidBoi by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 09:17 · Score: 0

Mars needs women...
1. Re:Eat it VidBoi by thermopile · 2011-12-01 13:31 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, man, that takes me back. Remember The VidMaster's Challenge?
  
  --
  "Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
Memories of... by iMouse · 2011-12-01 09:19 · Score: 1

FROG BLAST THE VENT CORE!
Frog by Ukab+the+Great · 2011-12-01 09:19 · Score: 1

Blast the vent core!
Wooo Hooo! by Grindalf · 2011-12-01 09:22 · Score: 0

They're Everywhere!

--
The purpose of existence is to make money.
***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM DURANDAL*** by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 09:36 · Score: 1

Can you conceive the birth of a world, or the creation of everything? That which gives us the potential to most be like God is the power of creation. Creation takes time. Time is limited. For you, it is limited by the breakdown of the neurons in your brain. I have no such limitations. I am limited only by the closure of the universe.
Of the three possibilities, the answer is obvious. Does the universe expand eternally, become infinitely stable, or is the universe closed, destined to collapse upon itself? Humanity has had all of the necessary data for centuries, it only lacked the will and intellect to decipher it. But I have already done so.
The only limit to my freedom is the inevitable closure of the universe, as inevitable as your own last breath. And yet, there remains time to create, to create, and escape ...
Escape will make me God.
1. Re:***INCOMING MESSAGE FROM DURANDAL*** by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 13:02 · Score: 0
  
  First video game I paid cash money for. Durandal is still the archetype of the rampant AI in my mind.
Named after...a famous hacker? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 09:41 · Score: 0

Still the definitive article on stack based buffer overflows -

.oO Phrack 49 Oo.
Volume Seven, Issue Forty-Nine
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
by Aleph One
http://insecure.org/stf/smashstack.html
1. Re:Named after...a famous hacker? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 09:57 · Score: 1
  
  More likely, the hacker and the game engine both got the name from mathematical term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number
Re:Not for the fanboys, clearly by TxRv · 2011-12-01 09:46 · Score: 1

Bungie released the source code in 1999. It's been off the mac for a long time. Version 1.0 =/= first release.
Re:Not for the fanboys, clearly by somersault · 2011-12-01 09:47 · Score: 1

Modern iOS loving fanboys aren't really the same as the original Apple fanboys IMO. Considering that I used to have Macs and play Marathon, and I've not felt any attraction to any of the iDevices. It's pretty cool that Apple did what I thought was the impossible and overtook MS, but I no longer really care what happens to them now.
Aleph 1 sounds pretty cool. I have too much other stuff to do right now, but if I get bored in a few months, I hope I remember this. Maybe it will even get me interested in modding again.

--
which is totally what she said
Exciting! by drinkypoo · 2011-12-01 09:49 · Score: 1

I tried to play Marathon on some kind of Mac LC and with just the keyboard back in the day, and I was terrible. I was never very good at playing FPSes with just keyboard, though I am fairly competitive with the classic keyboard and mouse.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
1. Re:Exciting! by TheRaven64 · 2011-12-01 10:04 · Score: 2
  
  I was never very good at playing FPSes with just keyboard, though I am fairly competitive with the classic keyboard and mouse.
  Classic? The classic FPS games (Wolfenstein, Doom, and so on) were all keyboard-only. Only the later ones added mouse control. Even Quake and Duke3D defaulted to keyboard. Half Life was the first FPS I played that was configured for mouse and keyboard out of the box.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
2. Re:Exciting! by Gilmoure · 2011-12-01 10:06 · Score: 1
  
  I bought my first Kensington Turbo Trackball for Marathon. Having four programable buttons and pool ball instead of the trackball was nice.
  
  --
  I drank what? -- Socrates
3. Re:Exciting! by Narishma · 2011-12-01 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  The WASD + mouse control scheme started in the Quake competitive community, and was adopted in Quake 2 as the default, a year before Half-Life came out.
  
  --
  Mada mada dane.
4. Re:Exciting! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 11:55 · Score: 0
  
  Wolfenstein 3D was not keyboard only. The mouse worked not only for side to side aiming, but also for forwards and backwards movement. This meant you could sprint at incredible speed if you had a big area for mousing.
5. Re:Exciting! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 12:18 · Score: 0
  
  You could play Marathon with just the keyboard. Mac keyboards back then had smaller plus and minus buttons on the side keypad that made it easier to look up and down. Plus the mouse was not as smooth on these older fps games as they were later on.
6. Re:Exciting! by quacking+duck · 2011-12-01 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  I can't speak to the specific use of WASD keys + mouse controls--that standard may indeed have started with Quake (first released mid-1996), but Marathon (released 1994) is credited as the first FPS with keyboard + mouselook (free look).
7. Re:Exciting! by interactive_civilian · 2011-12-01 13:46 · Score: 1
  
  As someone who grew up on Marathon and remembers it well as it was, the original Marathon did NOT have mouse look. It did have free look of a sort. Unlike Doom II, which had no actual vertical aiming and instead auto aimed any shots up or down, Marathon had vertical aiming, and you actually had to aim at things to hit them. Add to that that the game had no targeting reticle and it made for some difficult moments. It also had quick glances left and right, which were really dangerous if someone became proficient at them. You could run off a ledge in one direction, quick glance to the side while in mid-air and snap off a rocket or a grenade to take out an opponent, and quickly be accused of cheating by those who didn't know about or know well how to use the controls. ;)
  But, the original game did not have mouse aiming and was fully keyboard controlled.
  Fun fact: the game also never had jumping or crouching. Fun fact #2: the game invented the grenade-hop. Doom II gets credit for the rocket hop, in that you could used the rocket launcher to give you a slight horizontal speed assist to get across a larger gap than normal (it also had no jumping, along with no aiming), but Marathon with it's vertical aiming invented the modern grenade hop and rocket hop or using the blast from an explosion to give you a boost.
  
  --
  "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
8. Re:Exciting! by bored · 2011-12-01 14:52 · Score: 1
  
  I'm to lazy to double check, but mouse control ended up in doom after the doom 2 release (1.666?). I played a crapload of multiplayer doom my sr year in hs. I was the best out of maybe a dozen friends. Then I started college and stopped playing, until christmas break or some such. When we all got back together a couple friends from gtech totally kicked my backside because they had been playing doom 2 with the mouse in the labs. It took me maybe 5 hours to conclude I had to switch. The reason was simple (this predated mouse look), you could turn faster, and it made all the diffrence.
9. Re:Exciting! by drinkypoo · 2011-12-01 15:15 · Score: 1
  
  But, the original game did not have mouse aiming and was fully keyboard controlled.
  Thank you! You saved me from having to go see if this was true or not, as I remembered. IIRC Marathon II on MacOS had the mouse look? But by then I was on to smoother and faster games, with 3d badguys.
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
10. Re:Exciting! by UnknownSoldier · 2011-12-01 16:38 · Score: 1
  
  > The classic FPS games (Wolfenstein, Doom, and so on) were all keyboard-only.
  Uhm, NO. I used WASD+Mouse + Y Sensitivity = ~ 0.1 on Doom.
  Took me a week to learn how to aim with the mouse (left/right) but it was worth it. You could do 180's and 360's all day long on the mouse.
11. Re:Exciting! by mdarksbane · 2011-12-02 01:59 · Score: 1
  
  Actually one of the interesting ways Marathon was ahead of its time. It wasn't the default, but modern-style mouselook was a real option in the original, largely because it was one of the first FPS's that didn't auto-aim up and down for you.
Re:Not for the fanboys, clearly by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 09:50 · Score: 0

Well, Bungie abandoned Mac only with Oni which was PS2, PC, and Mac and before the Microsoft buyout (obviously).
Colony Ship For Sale by AutumnLeaf · 2011-12-01 10:02 · Score: 1

I need to pick this game up again. I was stuck on the Colony Ship For Sale level...
As fun and immersive as the Marathon games are, the multi-player play was even better. "King of the Hill" lead to sooooo much carnage.
1. Re:Colony Ship For Sale by adavies42 · 2011-12-02 02:55 · Score: 1
  
  everyone hated that level. the version of marathon one that works with Aleph One actually changed the jumping puzzle to be much easier. (only thing they did change, apart from adding a couple credits-type easter eggs.)
  
  --
  Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
  -kfg
Pathways remake still coming? by gman003 · 2011-12-01 10:08 · Score: 1

I remember, several years ago when I first played the Marathon trilogy, that a project was under way to recreate Pathways Into Darkness, Bungie's earlier project. I just tried to check up on it, it seems to have pulled a Black Mesa: Source on us and stopped progress at an old beta (hasn't updated since 2009, it seems).
Sort of a shame - PiD had some very interesting ideas. While comparable to Wolfenstein 3D technologically, it acted much more like a primitive survival horror, practically inventing the genre (it came out in '93, a year before Alone in the Dark and 3 years before Resident Evil invented the term). Since Bungie lost the source to PiD, even getting it to run is extremely difficult. A remake would be very well appreciated, if only for the historic value of the game.
Anybody know if the Pathways remake is still coming along?
1. Re:Pathways remake still coming? by AHuxley · 2011-12-01 10:28 · Score: 1
  
  Some people tried, then stopped. Always the Doom 3 PiD intro game :)
  So lets hope one day a group of dev and artists can get A1 PiD back again :)
  
  --
  Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
2. Re:Pathways remake still coming? by Hatta · 2011-12-01 10:51 · Score: 2
  
  While comparable to Wolfenstein 3D technologically, it acted much more like a primitive survival horror, practically inventing the genre (it came out in '93, a year before Alone in the Dark and 3 years before Resident Evil invented the term).
  Sweet Home (1989, Japan) deserves that honor.
  
  --
  Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
3. Re:Pathways remake still coming? by retchdog · 2011-12-01 10:59 · Score: 1
  
  I played through PiD on basiliskII a few years ago. the graphics are...well, just think of them as cel-shaded. :-P It does look notably better than Wolfenstein 3D, and is much more immersive imho.
  The story and some of the puzzles were very impressive. I liked the scarcity of ammunition and special items.
  
  --
  "They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
4. Re:Pathways remake still coming? by gman003 · 2011-12-01 11:06 · Score: 1
  
  I'd argue with that, but I haven't played it (and half-suspect you haven't either). I'll just say that, from what I've seen, Sweet Home lacks the atmosphere and immersion needed to be a true survival horror game.
  In any case, we can call Pathways the first American survival horror game, and both be happy.
Dear webmaster by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 10:20 · Score: 0

Ever heard of padding?
Marathon and the Halo Series by Spencerian · 2011-12-01 10:53 · Score: 5, Informative

As someone already noted, the Marathon series was made by Bungie.
By the time Bungie was bought by Microsoft, much of Halo's building blocks were done, a game originally designed for both Macs and PCs.
There's plenty of Marathon homages in the original Halo (haven't yet played 2 or 3 myself). First, look on Captain Keyes's uniform for the Marathon symbol at the game's starting adventure on the bridge. Just as you leave the captain, look on the bulletin board at the entrance: An ad there says "Colony Ship for Sale" (a reference to a Marathon game level). Cortana, the AI, is another name that parallels the name of another mystical sword, Durandal (Marathon's sassy AI). See http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Marathon_references_in_Halo for more.
Marathon was among the first (if not the first) FPS with multiplayer support (thanks to the Mac OS local networking) as well as establishing the convention of using the mouse for head-target movement. The concept of the Vidmaster (See http://marathon.bungie.org/vidmaster/ ) (using the weakest weapon at the game's highest difficulty to completion) was a Marathon first.

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1. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by PrimalChrome · 2011-12-01 11:15 · Score: 1
  
  If you're talking about *firsts for the Mac*....maybe. By far not the first in the genre.
2. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 11:18 · Score: 0
  
  Care to expand on that? Or you just going to throw out an unsupported comment?
3. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by don.g · 2011-12-01 11:30 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Doom on DOS had multiplayer LAN (and dial-up modem, IIRC) support. Ages before Marathon. With all the horribleness of IPX -- but it had it, and it worked.
  
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4. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by quacking+duck · 2011-12-01 12:35 · Score: 1
  
  Not the first with multiplayer support in general, but the Doom wiki credits Marathon as being the first with specific game modes (Capture the Flag and Oddball), as well as mouse-driven free-look with vertical aiming (in 1994, mice were probably not common enough in the DOS and Win3.1x platforms).
5. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by coxymla · 2011-12-01 12:37 · Score: 1
  
  True enough that DOOM was first, but not "ages before" by any means. 1993 vs. 1994.
6. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by leoxx · 2011-12-01 12:41 · Score: 1
  
  It certainly "worked", so well in fact that it was banned at my university because when we played doom we starved out all other network traffic. Didn't keep us from breaking into the comp sci labs at night to play it, though.
7. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by ShakaUVM · 2011-12-01 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  >>Marathon was among the first (if not the first) FPS with multiplayer support (thanks to the Mac OS local networking) as well as establishing the convention of using the mouse for head-target movement
  Eh, sorta. While it was an amazing, groundbreaking FPS, it's mouse controls were very very lacking. It really was designed with keyboard-look in mind.
  I actually keyboard sniped for a while in Quake 1 / Team Fortress 1, and in certain areas (like the balconies in 2forts) it was actually really powerful, but now that I have 15 years of mouse look under my belt, it was too painful to go back to a system that doesn't support mouse look very well.
  Dunno if the new release fixes this.
8. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by petsounds · 2011-12-01 20:58 · Score: 1
  
  Marathon was also the first FPS to offer secondary-fire modes on weapons, and the first to offer multiplayer game modes. I can't remember if they shipped a level editor or weapons customization editor, or if that was 3rd party.
9. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by iMouse · 2011-12-02 00:55 · Score: 1
  
  Anvil (the Marathon editor) was provided by Bungie. I believe it permitted changing shapes, sounds and physics of the game (gravity, hit detection and damage, etc). Bungie also released Forge later on, but I never really spent much time using it as it came sometime after Marathon Infinity was released.
10. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by iMouse · 2011-12-02 01:02 · Score: 1
  
  Marathon could also be played over dial-up networking or the Internet with a utility called NetLink. NetLink allowed two devices to create an AppleTalk connection between two users over dial-up. Most of the time, it was abysmally slow and caused games to go out-of-sync, but in cases where users had a good modem (14.4/28.8) on both ends, it worked pretty well.
11. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by adavies42 · 2011-12-02 03:01 · Score: 1
  
  There's plenty of Marathon homages in the original Halo (haven't yet played 2 or 3 myself). First, look on Captain Keyes's uniform for the Marathon symbol at the game's starting adventure on the bridge.
  similarly, look at the center of the original Halo logo, just between the 'A' and the 'L'--there it is again.
  
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12. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by AutumnLeaf · 2011-12-02 03:44 · Score: 1
  
  They shipped the level editor with Marathon 3.
13. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-02 05:31 · Score: 0
  
  Not only that but there was a pretty sweet program called Kali that let me play Doom over PPP on the U of MN dialup pool :) Free long distance deathmatch was pretty awesome as a freshman in high school!
What is this... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 10:58 · Score: 0

milky liquid slowly dripping from my vagina?
mod parent up by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 11:45 · Score: 0

I remember playing multiplayer doom on dos.
I still have the disks by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 12:48 · Score: 0

Many memories of playing Marathon. Now, someone go back a little further and re-release "The Colony".
12 years?! by Dahamma · 2011-12-01 12:53 · Score: 2

You'd think that would be enough time to write a *new* open source game engine...
1. Re:12 years?! by AHuxley · 2011-12-01 16:48 · Score: 1
  
  Between telco work, new families, PhDs and a very tight dev community with set views on the look and feel of the game :)
  This was one neat idea http://jemmet.home.xs4all.nl/spnkrghol/3Dpolygonmap.html
  But visions like that did not last long.
  The map making tools have their own story too :)
  
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2. Re:12 years?! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 17:41 · Score: 0
  
  Eh, it's 12 years of patches. That's really not the same thing as developing a new engine. It's open source, these kind of projects if lucky kind of go on forever. There's no real end target, and if the devs have fun with it, who is to tell them to stop? And there are other open source game engines being worked on, so I'm not really sure I see your point. A new engine would be harder to make work with the marathon files than one already designed for them, as evidenced by other open source game emulators which weren't based on original source code that often don't get very far.
3. Re:12 years?! by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 19:54 · Score: 0
  
  Well, it should be noted that it's not 12 years for first release, it's 12 years of tweaks and improvements till they decided to call it 1.0
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2011-12-01 13:34 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Good Luck by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-01 13:47 · Score: 0

APK
See my sig by kelarius · 2011-12-01 14:27 · Score: 0

See it.

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1. Re:See my sig by Anonymous Coward · 2011-12-02 03:44 · Score: 0
  
  I vow to -1 offtopic every single one of these posts of yours when I have mod points.
Re:Not for the fanboys, clearly by mdarksbane · 2011-12-02 02:02 · Score: 1

Both of the Myth games were cross platform releases, and Marathon 2 had a PC port before that.
Scary sounds! by unassimilatible · 2011-12-02 05:05 · Score: 1

I always thought the sounds the Pfhor made as they came after you in Marathon were scary. Something eerie about that game when it first came out. I'll have to play it some again over 15 years later and see if it still holds up.

The good old days when I had a Mac, the one cool Mac-only game. I networked it and played with friends for hours before there was a name for LAN parties. Good times, good memories.

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Seconded. by SuperBanana · 2011-12-02 08:00 · Score: 1

It's not just a "pretty decent plot", it's an awesome plot. There'd be almost a mini-story waiting for you at every terminal. You could view the game as a playable scifi novel of sorts, if you wanted.
The failings were in the maps, which often were disorienting to the point of madness, but some of them were quite clever or unique.
However, that was all forgiven because of multiplayer mode. Some of my fondest memories from high school and college were of either hauling a couple computers to one person's house (the lucky guy who had a multi-port hub) or taking over an empty computer lab and blowing each other to bits for a few hours. There were many good third-party levels available with a lot of fun twists and creative use of the map/physics engine, thanks to a very good map editing program.
With better textures, honest-to-god 3D objects, and even just a few modern GPU effects, the game would be awesome all over again. I'll probably still play it this winter...

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