Marathon 2 Soundtrack

Have a question, suggestion, or comment about Aleph One's features and functionality (Lua, MML, the engine itself, etc)? Post such topics here.
Post Reply
Dynamo
Born on Board
Posts: 7
Joined: May 22nd '16, 15:58

Hello! :) I apologize if this is the wrong section but wasn't sure where else to ask. I'm new to these forums and a bit new to the Marathon franchise in general, I just finished playing the first game of the trilogy and look forward to playing the second chapter now, however I have a question. I know Marathon 2 never had an unofficial soundtrack, but through a bit of google searching I stumbled upon a fan made soundtrack meant to be used with the "Aleph One Special Edition of Marathon 2". Now, I'm not sure whether this refers to the standard marathon 2 running under aleph one or what, but the file contained a bunch of .mp3 files which do not appear to be compatible with Aleph One (as far as I know anyway). I found another link, http://simplici7y.com/items/marathon-2- ... undtrack-3, which is apparently bundled with an edited map file that allows the soundtrack to play seamlessly throughout the levels, just like in Marathon 1. There's just one problem, in that the download link for that has been dead for a long time now apparently and I can find nowhere else to get it.

So, if anybody still has that file could they by chance upload it? Or if that's not possible, then any instructions or guides on how I could get this soundtrack to work correctly under Marathon 2? http://www.themarathonmusic.com/downloads.html this is the page where I found the Marathon 2 fan made soundtrack in mp3 form, if that's of any use.

Thanks in advance! Have a nice day :)
User avatar
HelviusRufus
Cyborg
Posts: 257
Joined: Apr 15th '15, 03:37

Use the search function in the upper left part of the screen and search on special edition.
It'll return 60+ matches (several hits will be in the same topic), some are about other things, but some are about Marathon 2 and have links along with other information which may be of use in your quest.
Attachments
zz search clip.png
I just play 'em; I don't know how they work.
Dynamo
Born on Board
Posts: 7
Joined: May 22nd '16, 15:58

Thanks for the answer. Only thing I was able to find is a .zip containing the .ogg version of the soundtrack which likely should work out of the box with Marathon 2. The problem is, I'm still finding no way to enable the music in-game, that link I posted references a modified map file that supports music but it's not in that .zip as far as I could see, I also found no information relating to the special edition marathon (only people who, like me, wonder what it was) and no information on the authors of this fan-made soundtrack, no readme.txt included or anything. Maybe if I could reach out to them somehow they'd be able to help me in figuring this out? But I don't know who they are... Any clues?
User avatar
HelviusRufus
Cyborg
Posts: 257
Joined: Apr 15th '15, 03:37

Based on admittedly superficial research, perhaps the music alone actually exists and
the "Aleph One Special Edition of Durandal 2" is in the same class as Prester John and Nibiru.

Mere conjecture, but this could be the result of premature announcement then finding out that it didn't work.
The author then abandons and goes off to do something else.
I don't know anything about map making, etc., but I know it's not easy and there have been some posts in the past couple o years about difficulties in getting music to work properly.
I just play 'em; I don't know how they work.
User avatar
PerseusSpartacus
Mjolnir Mark IV
Posts: 334
Joined: Apr 30th '12, 05:03
Location: Somewhere in the 19th Century...

Well, assuming you want the music to work on a level-by-level basis (i.e. the same way it worked in Marathon 1), then the first thing I think you'll want to do is use Atque to split open the Marathon 2 Map file. What you're basically going to do is split open the contents, add a new text file that specifies what music track should play on what level, and then merge it all back together again.

Once you've done that, look inside the folder for the split map file. At the bottom you should see a sub-folder titled 'Resources'. Inside there you'll want to create a new folder called 'TEXT'. Inside there, you're going to create a .txt file called '00128.txt' - this is the file that will let you determine what music tracks will play on what levels.

Here's where a little bit of coding comes into play - this is basically the same as any other kind of MML coding, so it should be very simple. The first line you'll want to put in, at the very top of the file, is this:

Code: Select all

<marathon_levels>
This, I assume, tells the game what kind of parameters it should expect to deal with in the next part of the code.

Now, for each level, you'll add a new line of code that should look something like this:

Code: Select all

<level index="0">
<music file="Tracks/Momar.mp3"/>
</level>
It works like this: you tell it what level you're referring to with the "level index" part - remember that the first level (in this case, Waterloo Waterpark) is numbered as level 0, and every level after counts up from there.

Now, you specify what music file you want to play on that level. The example I give here is "Tracks/Momar.mp3". What this means is that the game will look in the same place it puts the rest of it's data (on Mac OS X, right-click Marathon 2, hit "Show Package Contents", look under Contents=>Resources=>DataFiles - this is where all of Marathon 2's basic contents are) for a folder called "Tracks", and inside that, it will look for a file called "Momar.mp3". It should be simple enough to swap this out for whatever you want.

Then, you put in "</level>" to tell it you've stopped setting parameters for that level and would like to move on to something else. Now you do the next level in the same fashion.

Finally, at the very bottom of the file, you put "</marathon_levels>" to end the code.

Here's a full example of such a file, and the one that I use in my own musical version of Marathon 2's Map:
00128.txt.zip
Example text file for you to play around with.
(965 Bytes) Downloaded 254 times
If you want, I can also email my "Tracks" folder to you, with all of the music I use in the above file inside - I couldn't attach it here because the compressed version takes up 78mb of space, and you can only attach files that are 2mb or less to a Pfhorums post. <_<

Sorry if this wasn't the best-worded post ever - trying to mix code and prose in a clear and succinct way without spending an hour writing it is a surprisingly difficult task! :P
User avatar
Crater Creator
Vidmaster
Posts: 943
Joined: Feb 29th '08, 03:54
Contact:

On the contrary, that was an excellent post.
User avatar
PerseusSpartacus
Mjolnir Mark IV
Posts: 334
Joined: Apr 30th '12, 05:03
Location: Somewhere in the 19th Century...

Thanks, glad you thought so. :)
Post Reply