Marathon 1 Redux

[PerseusSpartacus]

It always seemed pointless that the switch in there turns on and off the light. Why would it be set up like that? What is it lighting up?

It is a light switch. It turns on the lights that are all over the alcove.

I think you missed Philtron's point. What he's saying is not that it makes no sense to have a light switch. The point is that there are very few light switches of this sort in the original Marathon (or in the Marathon series in general) - most switches do something relevant to gameplay, but this switch just controls a light. That might make sense in certain areas, but this seems like an odd place to have one of the only light switches in the game; so why put it there? If there were more light switches elsewhere in the game, this wouldn't seem so weird, but given that I can't even remember another place in the game where a switch is put in solely to turn a light on and off, the choice to include one here, of all places, is very unusual.

Perhaps the map designer put it there just to highlight the abilities of the engine, or as a sort of tutorial (look, here's another thing switches can do) to show how flexible switches can be in terms of functionality? Regardless, from a story perspective, if you were going to put one light switch in the game, putting it in that particular place feels weird.

There, hopefully I've averted a war between you and Philtron.

[ravenshining]

The point is that there are very few light switches of this sort in the original Marathon (or in the Marathon series in general) - most switches do something relevant to gameplay, but this switch just controls a light. That might make sense in certain areas, but this seems like an odd place to have one of the only light switches in the game; so why put it there? If there were more light switches elsewhere in the game, this wouldn't seem so weird, but given that I can't even remember another place in the game where a switch is put in solely to turn a light on and off, the choice to include one here, of all places, is very unusual.

Off the top of my head, there's also one on Never Burn Money, two controlling the same light on The Rose, and two separate ones on Waterloo Waterpark. I'm sure there are others.

Rather than take it out or repurpose it, I think I'll add more of them throughout the game. It actually could be functional for combat if the lights go all the way down to zero and I implement the hypervision-on-demand idea I've got on the back burner.

[philtron]

My point with the light is that you get to it after you've already "finished" that room. You've already killed the enemies and probably picked up the AR. So, it feels pointless to me because changing the light doesn't change anything about the player's experience. The other lights you mention, "Never Burn Money" "Rose" "Waterloo", change the combat experience to a slight degree as they change the lights in large combat areas. (The "Waterloo" light switch also doubles as a trick to make you overlook the "secret" switch on the back of it.) It's not a major difference, they don't change a lot, but they change the player's experience just enough that they feel like they have a point.

[CluckyInventor]

Redux G4:

I was seriously concerned about the difficulty of the level since I believe compilers have a weakness to fusion in Redux. I was not disappointed, however. Between added monsters and a steady stream of compilers teleporting in I was kept quite busy. Not to mention the challenge of the bosses. I should note that I got the boss hunter to get angry at a compiler which caused an odd standoff as shown in my first screenshot.

The sattelite dish blocked the shots of the baddies so they didn't hurt each other. Since I was low on O2 at this point (thanks, total carnage), I went to recharge, and when I came back, the two of them were still shooting the sattelite dish in some childish attempt to hurt each other. I was capable of activating the switches without having to worry about enemies. Of course, I cleaned the pair of them up afterwards since I didn't think that all of those shots the sattelite dish was taking were good for it.

Now, after the fact, I jumped down to get that stuff the Jugg was guarding and noticed a fighter teleport in!!! (see screenshot 2)

I don't think you are vacuum enabled, buddy. I decided to smack him with my staff since he didn't belong here, but when he died he exploded!

???

What's going on here? The staff on NBM doesn't explode fighters. I notice the staff explodes hunters as well, is it set to explosive damage for some reason when you hit things with it in vacuum?

I've noticed compilers show up as yellow on my motions sensor (at least, on this level. I didn't check NBM) Is this intentional?

I do generally like the staff as is: the odd knockback gives it a defining playstyle. I've read you can kind of fly with it (though I haven't tried myself), and would rather grenade jumping be the means of ascending heights. But it sounds as if you may have that covered by nerfing its ammo size (which I approve of).

I don't have too much to say about this level, since I really like it even before Redux and I think redux has done a good job with it. The only changes I might make have already been mentioned by others.


A note on difficulty:

I do think that Redux should be more difficult than the original. I've noticed that the Redux levels that I have played seem to have more monsters than the original, which is a change I approve of. I hope Redux continues this trend, particularly since some of the later levels (CS4S,C for instance) feel kind of underwhelming for how far you are into the game. I don't want the scenario to be nightmarishly hard (such as having to do a more difficult version of the pit on Cool fusion with just a fusion pistol, though admittedly I haven't tried doing that), but an increase in difficulty is definitely justified. Keeping on adding more monsters, bosses, etc and look for more ways to keep the game fun and interesting. I don't have complaints about turning a non-vacuum level into a vacuum one, I'm just not sure Cool Fusion is the level for that. If I recall correctly, Neither High nor Low may have originally been intended to be a vacuum level (according to some story page or something), so that might be a good candidate, I just haven't got that far in my commentary yet.

A good standard to figure out the difficulty of the level is if I comment on it. If I don't comment on it, it needs to be more difficult; there was nothing noteworthy in the level. If I complain, it's probably fine as is or maybe needs to be a little more difficult. I can't think of a level that needs to be less difficult except perhaps Bob-B-Q. Of course, combat can be adjusted as well, such as possibly SLN,TLC which was more annoying than difficult.

TL;DR Make levels more difficult, but not nightmarishly so.

[ravenshining]

I should note that I got the boss hunter to get angry at a compiler which caused an odd standoff as shown in my first screenshot... I was capable of activating the switches without having to worry about enemies.

Oh dear. In an earlier iteration, I had difficulty with the Hunter getting stuck on the dish, as I had the platform recessed almost entirely. So, I raised it above the Hunter's Maximum Ledge Jump, but I didn't anticipate a Compiler finding its way in there. I suppose I'll have to either wall it off invisibly, or have it just be an impassable pedestal like the original.

I don't think you are vacuum enabled, buddy. I decided to smack him with my staff since he didn't belong here, but when he died he exploded! ??? What's going on here? The staff on NBM doesn't explode fighters. I notice the staff explodes hunters as well, is it set to explosive damage for some reason when you hit things with it in vacuum?

Since this is still an alpha demo at this point, I was playing with an idea for having non-vacuum-enabled monsters explode if exposed. The effect would work much better in a closet than out in the open where it can run away...

Also, yes, the shock staff, compiler bolt, and the trooper gun all explode hunters. The first two should be self-explanatory, as for the SMG, it serves to alert the player that this weapon is most effective on armoured targets. I guess hunter suit electronics, while capable of shrugging off your Magnum's hollowpoints, don't react well to DU bullets tearing through them...

I've noticed compilers show up as yellow on my motions sensor (at least, on this level. I didn't check NBM) Is this intentional?

It is. Also, Juggernauts, Defense Drones, other players, and the Cyborg. I thought, why are only players yellow? What's so special about them that a motion sensor would notice? Well, they're cyborgs, possibly like Darth Vader, more machine than man. So, I thought it would be more interesting if the motion sensor detects any non-living or mostly-non-living entity as yellow.

I do generally like the staff as is: the odd knockback gives it a defining playstyle. I've read you can kind of fly with it (though I haven't tried myself), and would rather grenade jumping be the means of ascending heights. But it sounds as if you may have that covered by nerfing its ammo size (which I approve of).

I hope I'll be able to enable grenade jumping, too. Treelama said it's possible, I just need to find a schematic of the physics file.

Keeping on adding more monsters, bosses, etc and look for more ways to keep the game fun and interesting... If I recall correctly, Neither High nor Low may have originally been intended to be a vacuum level

Will do :-) At the very minimum, I'll add enough monsters to compensate for the Kindergarten skipping function, so that on Kindergarten you'll face as many as you once did on Normal, and on Normal - TC you'll have extras. There's also plenty of opportunity for additional monsters - M1 levels tended to limit themselves to a maximum of three species per level (with the exception of The Rose), I presume to save memory. Since there is no longer AS much of a memory cap (Flippant Sol's XBR monsters on the Rose are quite taxing on my 10-year-old system) I'll be looking in for spots to sprinkle in a few extra species, while making sure that variety is maintained - my one gripe about Eternal is that it seems like you're facing all the castes of Pfhor all the time, and I don't want to repeat that.

Development suspended for the next week because of Pascha

[Screamernail]

If people can change M1 to something better, will Marathon Evil be remade too? It is still part of the community's mapping history so why not?


I'm just too morally good for the weak. That's a fact.

[PerseusSpartacus]

I'm not sure that remaking an old fan scenario is really the same as remaking one of the original games. Bungie has already basically given Marathon (or at least the original trilogy) to this community to preserve and improve - plus, it is only natural for video game fans to want to add some of their own voice, their own vision, onto whatever the game developer has created. By contrast, trying to change an old fan scenario would, I think, be like imposing one vision onto another in a way that's not quite right.

On top of that, we're proposing to refurbish just the original Marathon, not Durandal or Infinity. This, I think, is mainly because Marathon is the most dated of the three - its age is much more noticeable, and it suffers from certain limitations in comparison to the other two. It feels obvious that the developers wanted to do more with Marathon 1, but just couldn't - so that's why we should. By contrast, I'm willing to bet that the creators of Evil were fairly happy with their final product - the most that it seems reasonable for us to do now is to fix some typos and clean up the terminals a little to be less awkward to read.

[Screamernail]

Who was it that made Evil anyway?

[Flowers]

Who was it that made Evil anyway?

Same person who made Siege of Nor'Korh for M2

[ravenshining]

A few new sound updates, in addition to the breather- a longer pistol sound, and a meatier, single-shot SMG. A few monsters had vaccum sounds fixed in the shapesfile.

Loooots of work done on the shapesfile- gave fighters M2 shading while keeping M1 eyes, like so:

finally fixed the borked juggernaut sequences, finally got the Marine working, played around with self-illuminating colours, removed a bunch of cruft, added in the enhanced Hulk, Wasp, and Looker. Probably other things.

Not ready for a new release yet. Physics needs updating and G4 needs polishing before I'll call it 0.0.8a.

https://github.com/ravenshining/M1R

[Pfhorrest]

If you and or Erich would be interested in implementing it, I think it would be cool to have a mix of your updated M1 fighters alongside the M2 fighters in Eternal. Maybe have Minors M1 style and Majors M2 style, or melee M1 and ranged M2, or something.

[ravenshining]

If you and or Erich would be interested in implementing it, I think it would be cool to have a mix of your updated M1 fighters alongside the M2 fighters in Eternal. Maybe have Minors M1 style and Majors M2 style, or melee M1 and ranged M2, or something.

That would be cool, although that's way too much tedious sequencing work for me to want to do. If Erich wants to download my shapes and copy them over, though, go for it!

...

Playing around with the pistol, I've decided to drop the new sound. While I think it sounds marginally better on it's own, it doesn't fit with the rest of the soundscape.

[ravenshining]

I went over the physics today, implementing my difficulty-shift idea: making "kindergarten" act, in terms of monster vitality, speed, attack frequency, attack repetitions, and shot speed; as "normal" did in the original. Then lots of testing, mostly on The Rose, and fine tuning. Here is how the engine adjusts difficulty, if you are curious, and assuming I am correctly translating the code from C to normal mathematics:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

Damage:
wuss: 1/2
easy: 3/4
m.d.: 1
t.c.: 1

Vitality:
wuss: 1/2
easy: 3/4
m.d.: 5/4
t.c.: 3/2

Speed (both monster and projectile):
wuss: 7/8
easy: 15/16
m.d.: 9/8
t.c.: 5/4

Attack Frequency:
wuss: x3
easy: x2
m.d.: 1/2
t.c.: 1/4

Repetitions:
wuss and easy: 1/2
normal and m.d.: x1
total carnage: still x1 but they don't stop when hit?

An interesting sidenote is that the Alien Weapon shot on total carnage travels faster than bullets do, at 1.25 WU/tick. And here I thought the engine couldn't handle more than 1 WU/tick for multiplayer...

The Rose went well. Then I went and tried G4 on total carnage with the new physics. The troopers and jugg are just insane, it's nigh unplayable. It's up on Github if you want to test it out with an unmerged map:
https://github.com/ravenshining/M1R/blo ... ysics.phyA

[ravenshining]

Pulled an all-nighter working on sounds and shapes. I was hoping to have 0.0.8 ready for today, but I got sidetracked into other things that needed doing.

Most of the night was spend running audio filters on some of the worst sonic offenders such as switches and metallic clangs, and distorting some M2 sounds to match the M1 feel. I am pleased with the results, as far as someone who previously had little to no knowledge of sound effects. Shapes have been updated to follow the new references, but not physics.

In shapes, I tacked the drone onto the cyborg collection, and imported shotgun and flamethrower bitmaps from Project Conflict into the VacBob collection. Only barebones sequence data for the drone, none for the battleroid yet. I'll have to make new bitmaps if I want to add rockets.

Reading through Clucky's posts and Tour of Duty, I came across the original level notes. I've gone through and added all the items that Bungie listed but did not implement into the TODO list. Lots of Tycho references in there, and some interesting writing prompts! EDIT - Alien interfacer = alien energy converter probably, unless you want a separate item for accessing Pfhor terminals.

One other note - Tim Vogel has graciously given permission to bundle his TTEP with M1R

[General-RADIX]

Reading through Clucky's posts and Tour of Duty, I came across the original level notes. I've gone through and added all the items that Bungie listed but did not implement into the TODO list. Lots of Tycho references in there, and some interesting writing prompts!

I take it that "alien interfacer" you were meant to get from Tycho might make an appearance somewhere?

[treellama]

If you svn update and build the latest ShapeFusion, there are now checkboxes for the M1 alien behavior emulation flags, including grenade climbing.

[ravenshining]

Thank you Treelama, for working on that and remembering me. I'm currently working on overhauling the physics, so the timing is perfect!

=============

After some testing with the physics I posted earlier, I've confimed it is indeed possible to beat G4, and Couch Fishing. You just need to employ different tactics, for example firing a shot at the troopers guarding the health recharge, and then running to draw them away so you can circle back, recharge, and slowly pick them off. I sure died a lot trying, though, and I'm feeling agreement with the two people who voted to tone it back slightly. So I'm cutting back the Vitality, Attack Frequency, and repetitions by one level, but I rather like the increased speeds - as of the current on Github, a berserk purple fighter on total carnage can run just as fast if not slightly faster than you can run backwards.

As I finalise the Shapes file I'm also finalising the default monster slots, and will be updating the included Weland glade files. Differences from previous version (writing down for my own benefit as much as anyone curious):

Spoiler:

-Big Drones slots now hold actual Drones
-Tiny Wasp moved from Big Drone slot to Tiny Fl'ickta slot
-Big Wasp cut
-Red BoB moved from Possessed Drone slot to Tiny BoB slot, per M1A1
-Rampant MADD moved from Major Defender slot to Possessed Drone slot, per M1A1
-Black Fighter moved from Minor Cyborg slot to Tiny Pfhor slot
-Controller moved from Tiny Pfhor slot to Assimilated VacBoB slot
-Black Enforcer cut
-Major/Minor Cyborg slots now hold Orange/Blue Troopers
-Made the four colours of Enforcer promotable across the Flame Cyborg and Enforcer slots. Still not sure whether I'll include yellow and red.
-Major Defender slot to be used for Hounds if Perseus recreates them
-Green VacBob will now be flamethrower battleroid
-Blue VacBob will now be shotgun battleroid
-Security VacBob will now be missile battleroid

[CluckyInventor]

Here's a fun thing you could do if original normal -> Kindergarten, original TC -> normal, etc. Why not rename the difficulty levels so that the match this? Red added "Death Wish", but we have some room for creativity here. And on the off chance someone new does play redux, then it will communicate to them clearly the difficulty of the scenario.

Here are a few ideas for difficulty names that may sound more epic than Total Carnage. "Devastating Death", "Gargantuan Gore", or my favorite of the bunch "[Supreme/Surpassing/Stupendous] Slaughter" (use only one adjective).

Or you could just call the hardest difficulty "It's REALLY hard (trust)".

[ravenshining]

At long last, v0.0.8-alpha is up on Simplici7y! GitHub is up-to-date of course although I haven't prepped a release tag. Sorry it took so long, a lot of the changes I've been making had to be done in parallel with other things to avoid breaking stuff.

Grenade climbing now works! Thanks, Treelama! Nerfed staff recoil slightly now that it's no longer necessary. Haven't implemented magazine-replenish-on-weapon-pickup yet, will probably go the Lua route for that because:

Difficulty level shift tentatively complete. Adjusted physics & maps so "normal" monsters & shots act like TC, and I added in enemies enough so "kindergarten" has as many enemies as "normal" did - hopefully the extra monsters will balance out the lack of Majors on TC. Renamed difficulties to Normal, Major Damage, Total Carnage, Complete Annihilation, and Insane.

Other physics changes as discussed earlier. Glade files updated to match new default monster slots.

Gave monsters self-illuminating colours. In particular, check out the S'pht in the dark, it's rad, as is the Hunter firing. Juggs and MADDs have some accent, and the Pfhor crystals glow as they do in M2/inf.

Juggernaut movement animations fixed, new firing frames added to the profile and 3/4 away firing animation, which only had one frame in the original. Looked really bad when it was firing at someone else, not anymore!

As mentioned earlier, I've imported Chris Lund's enhanced looker, wasp, and drinnol sprites; and upgraded the fighter to M2 detail while keeping M1 eyes

Made heavy weapon human bitmaps & added M2 drones: Sequences present,
TODO frames

Marine collection complete. Shapesfile should be ready for XBRing should Flippant Sol feel so inclined

Rearranged sounds a bit to make civillians more talkative but still cowardly, and security bolder. M1ified extra Pfhor sounds, added breathing sounds, & re-did a number of sounds in 16-bit as menioned earlier. Player no longer screams on death

Moved exploding fighter into decompression closet and added wind

Cool Fusion is present, although atm you have to get there by completing G4, A1 will crash if you start start directly. Put in two homing grenade troopers, deaf and facing away from you on either side of the chamber. Two to ensure vidmasters can hit both sets of switches, although, now I think of it, you could kill one, grab the fusion pistol, and use that to open the other side.

Other things I can't remember certainly

[ravenshining]

Updates on GitHub (link should take you to a page where you can download a sane copy unlike previous github links) - 0.0.8 slightly ahead of Simplici7y version:

Intravening levels added in, for teleport consistency. Now you can test physics and stuff on Never Burn Money, The Rose, etc. without having to download M1A1. These levels are unmodified and may not be playable due to wrong scenery items, etc., and will be skipped by default.

G4 no longer starts you with 2x health, a fusion pistol, and extra pistol now that Cool Fusion is in the mix.

Applied recording overlay to Radix term picts as discussed in the story thread.

Did some work on Cool Fusion. Thought I'd have some fun with those 5-D "Charge Corridors." Level is now in proper sequence and no longer crashes.

Added a glow image for the lava "burning wall" texture, made water transparent.

[General Tacticus]

Sorry for the continued absence, I've been having some medical issues recently that are affecting my productivity.

Anyway, I have noticed that the charged fusion bolt doesn't have it's own hd frames (the original m1 shapes didn't have separate bitmaps for it) so I made some.

Here they are, along with a couple of mostly unrelated splashy effects in case you find yourself in need of them.
I will try to finish up the staff items and trooper rifle ammo, time allowing.

[ravenshining]

Awesome! Thank you Tacticus, and no worries I understand about health getting in the way of things. I'm getting foreclosed on myself, and that may limit what I can do in the coming months.

I used the big fusion poof as a major fusion impact sprite, and the flamey one for the vaccum alien projectile impact. Incorporated into the latest Git. Don't have a use for the small circle fusion thing sadly.

[ravenshining]

Huh, people think monsters need to be bullet sponges? Interesting.

Given the buggy nature of 3D modelling in A1, I thought I'd try and make 8-view sprites from Tacticus's 3D models as a fallback option. So, I made a simple "greenscreen" level to take screenshots with, and for once am thankful that aiming is so granular in A1 as it's easy to take 8 perfect shots around an object perfectly positioned in the centre of an 8-point star.

That and some other minor tweaks are up on GitHub.

[The Man]

I'm getting foreclosed on myself, and that may limit what I can do in the coming months.

Sorry to hear that. That kind of thing always sucks and I wish you luck.

I've wanted to play this and offer feedback more or less since hearing about it, but I'm kind of intimidated by the S7 description saying it's not fully playable yet. Is playing it in its current state going to be a complicated task? I'd probably still be up for it; I'm just wondering what I'd need to know going in (and where I can grab the most current and/or functional versions of things, etc.).

Also, in case you haven't been keeping up with the Eternal thread, is there anything I should know about pull requests?)

(I would've posted this last night if not for that twenty-minute limit on posting.)

[ravenshining]

Sorry to hear that. That kind of thing always sucks and I wish you luck.

Thanks. Fortunately I'm not the one liable, it's my landlady, but I am still probably losing my home and may have to start anew elsewhere.

I've wanted to play this and offer feedback more or less since hearing about it, but I'm kind of intimidated by the S7 description saying it's not fully playable yet. Is playing it in its current state going to be a complicated task? I'd probably still be up for it; I'm just wondering what I'd need to know going in (and where I can grab the most current and/or functional versions of things, etc.).

Also, in case you haven't been keeping up with the Eternal thread, is there anything I should know about pull requests?)

It should be fine, no more setup required than any other scenario. You might need to be running the latest (1.3a) version of Aleph One, because some people reported experiencing the music loop bug, however I haven't heard any complaints since I swapped out the G4 music for the original.

I included that disclaimer because of people being disappointed the whole scenario isn't there yet, on the Simplicity download you only get Bigger Guns Nearby and G4 Sunbathing so far (Also Cool Fusion but that crashes on the Simplici7y DL).

If you download the latest from GitHub, Cool Fusion won't crash, the levels will be in the proper order, and you have a few more levels for testing physics with. Just clicking "Begin New Game" will teleport you straight to BGN, and BGN will take you to Cool Fusion, but you can cheat-click into Never Burn Money or The Rose, which are great testing levels. Other levels may be present but not yet working, I need to go in and change all the scenery items.

GitHub gets updated waaaay more often, because I only have to upload the diff from the commandline at home, whereas to update Simpici7y I have to have a stable enough connection to upload the whole 100+MB in a browser, which means sticking it on a flash drive and taking it to a public library.

Pull requests sound confusing at first, but you get used to them. More info under the

Spoiler:

First you need to create your own fork of the project - clicl the Fork thing in the upper right - then then upload whatever file you want to change into your fork. Then what I do is go into GitHub and click "New pull request." Set the head fork to your fork (e.g., theman/M1R or theman/eternal), and the base fork to the one you'd like to propose an update to (ravenshining/M1R or pfhorrest/eternal). The options might dissappear at you and if so you may have to click "Compare Across Forks" to get them back again. Then you hit "Create Pull Request," fill out your comments, and hit "Create Pull Request" again.

Later, if you do more stuff but so has the author, I do same thing in reverse, setting head to theirs and base to mine. I'm sure there's a cleaner way to do it from the commandline, but I haven't figured it out yet. I think you're also supposed to do things in branches and not just always master but again, I haven't figured that out yet.