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Aleph One 1.0 Released

Posted by timothy on 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!"

17 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Heard about Marathon by BigSes · · 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 · · 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 It's pretty out of date from a gaming engine perspective, but still fun as heck to play IMO.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 Joehonkie · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was out four years before Unreal. The last game in the trilogy was out 2 years before Unreal.

    3. Re:Heard about Marathon by 0100010001010011 · · 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."

    4. Re:Heard about Marathon by lakeland · · 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.

    5. Re:Heard about Marathon by 0100010001010011 · · 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?

    6. Re:Heard about Marathon by quacking+duck · · 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.

    7. Re:Heard about Marathon by quacking+duck · · 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.

    8. Re:Heard about Marathon by thermopile · · 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

    9. Re:Heard about Marathon by mdarksbane · · 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.

  2. Re:Exciting! by TheRaven64 · · 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
  3. Re:Pathways remake still coming? by Hatta · · 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!
  4. Marathon and the Halo Series by Spencerian · · 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.

    --
    Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
    1. Re:Marathon and the Halo Series by don.g · · 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.

      --
      Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
  5. Re:I'm out of ammo! by TheMiddleRoad · · Score: 2

    I once met Bob in real life. He worked in PR, a fate worse than death by alien.

  6. Re:I'm out of ammo! by bryan1945 · · Score: 2

    Frog blast the vent core!

    --
    Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
  7. 12 years?! by Dahamma · · Score: 2

    You'd think that would be enough time to write a *new* open source game engine...