Marathon (on Windows) for DUMMIES |
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I’m a complete novice in the world of Marathon. I spent far more time just trying to figure out what I should download and what these games were all about than I have playing the game, so I put this FAQ together to help others. Thankfully, it's gotten about 37 times easier to get started since then...
NEWS FLASH! As of August 1st, 2007, a re-mastered version of Marathon: Durandal is available for play on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade. Not for Windows, but it's certainly an easy way to dive in.
Last Updated: Sunday, August 05, 2007 How To PlayMarathon, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity
You might find this article useful:
About MarathonMarathon is a series of first-person shooter games released for Macintosh in the 1990’s by Bungie, the company now best known for Halo. The series includes:
The games are noteworthy for several reasons, among these that beyond simply being a run-and-shoot game they contain a coherent story, told in the form of dispatches from computer terminals you encounter while playing. And it’s a pretty good story.
As of January 2005, all three games may now be distributed for free. They are, however, still Bungie's intellectual property. See the Trilogy Release FAQ for more detail. MarathonMarathon was released for Macintosh only in 1994. As of January 2005, the scenario files for the game are now distributed freely, but remain the intellectual property of Bungie. While the files are not compatible with any runtime available for Windows, an unofficial conversion of the scenario to the Aleph One runtime called "M1A1" has been created.
I suggest you read the Marathon Manual before playing so you understand what’s going on - there's not much of an introduction in the game itself!
Note: The very first level of M1A1 (but not the original Marathon) includes a bit of a non-sequitur dungeon crawl that's harkens back to an earlier Bungie game - Pathways Into Darkness. Marathon 2: DurandalMarathon 2 was released for both Macintosh and Windows platforms in 1995. As of January 2005, the scenario files for the game are now distributed freely, but remain the intellectual property of Bungie. The scenario is playable with the Aleph One runtime.
If you’d like to understand what’s going on, play Marathon first - these games do have a plot, after all - then consider reading the Marathon 2 Manual. Marathon InfinityMarathon Infinity was released for Macintosh only in 1996. As of January 2005, the scenario files for the game are now distributed freely, but remain the intellectual property of Bungie. The scenario is playable with the Aleph One runtime.
If you’d like to understand what’s going on... play the other two scenarios first. The Trilogy Manual doesn't actually explain much. How it WorksWhile the Marathon series was released primarily for Macintosh, you have several options for playing these games on Windows. It's important to understand a little bit of the theory first, though.
Playing a game of Marathon requires two pieces: a runtime, or the executable files that implement the game; and a scenario or the set of maps, sounds, and images that make up the game world you play in. (In modern gaming terms, this would be called a "mod".) Fundamentally, all three Marathon games are just different scenarios built on similar (but not identical) runtimes.
So to get the game up and running, you're trying to get a scenario and a compatible runtime together. About Aleph OneAleph One (a.k.a. "A1") is an open-source version of the Marathon 2 runtime for many platforms, including Windows.
Important links:
Remember: On its own, it's not useful since it doesn't include a scenario.
If you're one of those new kids that's used to installing a game, downloading some mods, then launching the game and selecting the mods from a menu, you may be in for a surprise - we have to go back to the age of the dinosaurs here. With older games such as Doom or Marathon (and hence, Aleph One) you actually replace the game’s original scenario files with the files of the scenario you want to play. In those days or yore there were third party tools to swap in the scenario files. Now that hard drives are huge and scenario files are 100x the size of the executables, it’s actually more practical to have one copy of the runtime for each of the scenarios you want to play! If you use it to play M1, M2 and MI, you'll probably have three installs of Aleph One side by side.
Now that the Marathon Trilogy has been made freely available, and now that Aleph One supports a cross-platform "Unimap" format it is not necessary to understand things such as file conversions, but additional technical details can be found in the INSTALL.Windows.txt file included in the Aleph One download. More OptionsExtrasThe dedicated folks at Earthquake Software (Tim Vogel and Jay Faircloth) have produced a series of Total Enhancements for Marathon:
Instructions are included - you basically unzip and drop the files into various folders in each of your scenario folders and the game is enhanced. It's really worth trying out the scenarios both before and after you apply the Total Texture Enhancements. Marathon 2 for WindowsThe Windows version of Marathon 2 can be played directly on Windows, if you can find a copy. DemosFreely distributable demos were released of the following versions:
EmulationA contemporary Windows box (~1GHz) is plenty fast enough to emulate a mid-1990’s Macintosh capable of playing any of the three Marathon games. If you’d like to experience Marathon as originally envisioned on the Macintosh without completely leaving the Windows world, here are the simplest steps:
Having done this, I have to say that it is really not worth the time and energy investment – you’ll find that the experience using Aleph One is far more convenient and enjoyable, unless you're already into the emulation scene. OtherThere is a Special Edition of M1A1 for Windows that tweaks some elements of the game play and media - to try it out, go to the Orbital Arm :: Downloads :: Aleph One SDL page and download M1A1 for SDL v1.6. IconsAleph One comes with a shiny adaptation of the Marathon icon, but if you want distinct icons for your copies of the three games, download these:
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