Putting the Marathon Vidmaster's Challenge films on YouTube

[The Man]

The Hard Stuff Rules…

Fists only apart from the Flame Cyborgs, for whom I used about 1½ fusion batteries. I’ve got a hypothesis about a strategy that will enable me to deal with them without using weapons or putting myself at too much risk, but I’ve yet to test it out, so I didn’t do it this go-round. I’ll almost certainly do this level again, since there are several other potential improvements I could make at my current skill level – there are several points that suffered from the fact that I hadn’t completed this level in probably a decade.

Not finished processing yet – YouTube says eight minutes left. (Since the timestamps are wrong here, I’ll note that it’s currently 2:11 EDT.)

[The Man]

Because I have so many previously unreleased films to upload, I’ve been making those my priority, and I’ve been uploading them in whatever order comes to mind. On the whole, I’ve started with the longest films from M2 and M∞’s fists only packs, and also included whatever other random films pique my interest. (I’ve also uploaded the first 17 fists-only M2 levels, regardless of length – I had been trying to complete M2 before I felt compelled to see “Hang Brain” done with fists only.) But it occurs to me that people may want to see specific films.

I’ve also been slowly branching out into other people’s films. I uploaded Jeffrey Lundquist’s film of “Eat It, Vid Boi!” showing how to get the rocket launcher and flamethrower, and I uploaded Daniel Gentry’s film of “Acme Station” with fists only and no hits. On the whole, I’ve mostly been doing the absolutely exceptional films, because aiming for all of them right now is a can of worms I don’t even want to get into, especially when I’ve got so many of Dr Sumner’s films from other scenarios, too.

I’m going to try to get emulation set up this weekend – I know I keep saying that, but hopefully tomorrow I should have far fewer distractions than I’ve had lately. Once I’ve done that, I can hopefully start uploading M1, Rubicon, Return to Marathon, and that one TI:TLL level that desynced.

Anyway, if you have any specific requests, let me know. Come sometime in August, I’ll still be able to upload films, but probably not at my current pace, so if you make them now, you’ll get a faster turnaround.

[The Man]

Redid two M∞ levels with fists only.

Son of Grendel

Not as difficult as I expected, given the many Troopers. Unfortunately, I had an earlier attempt of this level that was going even better (I think I’d taken almost no damage from the big swarm of Troopers) until I screwed it up by jumping into the area with the control switches too soon. I’ll probably redo it again at some point.

#24 You Think You’re Big Time? You’re Gonna Die Big Time!

This one is unavoidably dull for about ten minutes because, well, Juggernaut. Dr Sumner’s film depicts him actually fighting the Juggernaut for a large portion of the level, but I don’t know how to ascertain when it’s approaching its death, so I just cut the knot and let it kill itself entirely on its own. But this means that at least half of the level is really boring. I tried to keep it interesting by looking around and not just staying in one place for too long, but there’s only so much of that you can do.

BTW, all of Dr Sumner’s fists only films from both games are now uploaded except “Confound Delivery”, which doesn’t currently play in A1. I’ll now complete the “no recharging” films (note that several of these repeat across packs, so there isn’t a unique “no recharging” film for each level).

[The Man]

Poor Yorick fists only, with bonus Confound Delivery fists only

This wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined, given the number of Troopers. It was possible to get most of them to kill themselves, or to get the Hunters to kill them. I think I only actually had to fist punch one of them myself, though it’s possible that I got hits on a couple of others during a large Hunter battle. I died a few times making this, but fairly early into the attempts; once I got past about the first ten minutes, I was golden.

I’m particularly proud of not having been hit once for the first seven and a half minutes of this film.

I wasn’t planning to play “Confound Delivery”, since I didn’t remember the level as well, but I decided “what the hell” and went for it. I think I showed all secrets, though I’m not entirely sure. I don’t think this technically counts as a vid film, but since I don’t take any advantage of the ammo cache I’d accumulated and only have 1x shields and less than a full tank of oxygen, I don’t think there’s any functional difference. They’re basically one level divided into two halves, anyway.

ETA: oh right, forgot the link. Fixed.

BTW, all of John’s fists only and no recharging films should be up now. I’ve got a few small packs of his to do and then I think I’ll be done with all of his M2 and M∞ films except the “Confound Delivery” one, as mentioned above.

I again hope to see about getting an emulator running this weekend. I’ve just been super busy – which I guess is to be expected when you’re first finding and then starting a new job. Hopefully things will calm down before classes start back up.

[The Man]

Come and Take Your Medicine (fists only)

I wasn’t sure I’d get this one today, but I was sure it was within my grasp if I kept practising it. I was determined not to fire a single shot in this level, because, as far as I’m aware, this level’s only usable munitions in solo games are an alien weapon and a handful of magnum clips. It was basically a baptism by fire, but I emerged much better at fist-punching Troopers to death, as long as I have sufficient space to do so. It’s still utterly beyond me how to deal with them in cases like the sniper ledges in “This Side Toward Enemy”, though.

The last few minutes of this video are probably fairly boring, as there’s a lot of wandering around trying to make certain I’ve cleared out the whole level. This winds up being for the best, because I encounter a Trooper underwater somewhere near the end. I have absolutely no idea how he got there. It’s probably best not to think too much about how the enemies on this level get where they do; it’s practically random each game, given how gigantic the level is and the fact that there are respawning drones for the first ≈20 minutes. (There’s a finite limit to the number that respawn – according to Weland, it’s seventeen if you add up all the different varieties – but the respawn rate is low enough that it takes awhile to run through them all. I should note that I’m not exaggerating about the “practically random” bit. This film took about a dozen attempts to make, of which around five ran long enough for me to have seen most of the level. In no two of those attempts did I encounter all of the Troopers in the same place each time.)

I think I killed all the enemies. I should note that I don’t count the Compiler with the terminal (F’tha, if memory serves) as an enemy. You have to either fire at him/her/them or come into physical contact with them, and the S’pht are slaves. But other than that, I’m fairly sure I killed everything. It’s possible there’s a respawning drone I missed, but given how long I spent wandering around the map, I kind of doubt it. Regardless, I didn’t make 100% certain – I wound up leaving for a bit, and I decided to finish the film and leave it encoding while I stepped outside.

In any case, I’m quite pleased with how this one turned out. There’s still room for improvement, but I doubt I could’ve pulled this off even a couple weeks ago.

§

Should I start publishing any of my films in the main playlists? If so, just the ones I’m really happy with, or should I just put my best version of each level up regardless of what I think of it?

§

As far as other people’s films, I’ve decided to encode Michio Hashimoto’s M2 films for now, because a lot of them are very long (he often put several levels in one film, so the later ones aren’t really Vidmaster films, but they’re still pretty interesting), so they’re nice to leave encoding while I sleep or wander off to work or what have you. I think I’m also going to try to get as many of the vid tips encoded as possible, since most of them are quite short.

I’ve been incredibly busy lately between vacation, looking for and then starting a new job, and various other real-life tasks, but there’s a chance I may finally be able to take a serious look at getting an emulator running this weekend. Don’t set your clock by it, of course – I’ve made this prediction several times before and been proved wrong. I’ll also look into generating a resource fork for the Rubicon map, which sounds like it may be a lot less time-consuming than getting an emulator running.

§

ETA: I added a poll requesting feedback about what videos to encode next. You can select any or all options, though I’m not sure how meaningful it would be to select all four. (I guess it would mean you’d be happy seeing whatever I posted.) If you select the third or fourth option, please explain your selection. For that matter, if you select the first option, if you have a preference as to which player’s films (and which of their films) you’d like to see, that’s worth an explanatory post as well.

[HelviusRufus]

as there’s a lot of wandering around trying to make certain I’ve cleared out the whole level.

On your own films, you might try this kill counter from Hopper.
It is smart enough to count only those you kill, but the initial total is updated by both spawns and friendly fire,
so when it reads 0 ... that's all folks.

[The Man]

I’ll definitely use that for my MacBook installs of M2 and ∞ from now on; thanks. (For M2/∞, I only encode my own films on my MacBook, because it spits them out at 800x1280 resolution. Come to think of that, the only Chronicles films I’ve encoded on my MacBook have been my own, too, since no one else has sent me any, but I think I’ll probably leave that plugin uninstalled there if it affects film encoding.)

I see someone has checked the “other” box. Care to elaborate? Thanks for the feedback overall; I’ll try to start Rubicon this weekend.

[The Man]

Thanks to Pfhorums member patrick, I should now be able to start encoding John and Sidoh’s Rubicon films, because I now have the original map’s resource fork intact, so terminals will finally display correctly.

I’ve enabled bloom for basically all of the Marathon 2 and Infinity films, but I’m inclined to not enable it for Rubicon, because it’s ridiculously overpowering. Here’s a test encode of John’s longest Rubicon film (“Not *This* Again…”). If you need an example of how ridiculous the bloom gets, skip to the end when he teleports back onto the Rozinante.

Bloom looks great in the M2 and M∞ videos because Goran created his latest version of the HD textures with the goal of making the bloom look good. But Rubicon, even Rubicon X, was created before bloom was a thing in the Aleph One engine, AFAIK. So as a result, there are no brakes on it. In the immortal words of Deep Purple, everything is louder than everything else. Or as Spinal Tap put it, these go to eleven.

If someone cares to make a bloom script that’ll make Rubicon bloom look good, I’ll re-enable it. Otherwise, I think it’s probably fine just to leave it off throughout the entire scenario, unless someone has other opinions. (If someone has a reasonable argument that it looks good in some texture sets but awful in others, for instance, I’m willing to hear it. I should note that I’m fairly sure I actually possess the skill to make such a script myself, but it seems like it would be an investment of time that would be better spent elsewhere – e.g., getting an emulator running; polishing up various visual issues of my own scenario; contributions to Eternal and M1R; etc.)

In any case, I’m going to start out encoding the longest several videos from John and Sidoh’s vid series of the game. (John did every solo level of the original Rubicon; Sidoh did every level of the original except “Sodding the Logs”, but he also did the net levels, though I’m not sure what those films actually show yet.) After that I’ll probably encode most of the rest in order, if only because it makes building a playlist much less of a pain in the arse.

I’ll likely also finish off Miha’s M2 films fairly soon so I don’t forget which ones I’ve yet to upload. (I think only three or four are left.) I’ll get around to other M2/∞ players after Rubicon, plus some of John’s vid films of other scenarios. (If you missed them upthread, there were a lot.)

I’m hoping I’ll finally have time to work on getting an emulator running tomorrow and then be able to start encoding M1 videos, but I can’t promise anything. It’s literally my first day off from work when I’ve had nothing planned in at least a month, though.

Thanks again to Patrick for the proper binary encode of the original Rubicon map. It truly is a thing of wonder.

[ravenshining]

I was the other, for M1 films

[The Man]

I intend to begin encoding M1 films as soon as I get an emulator set up properly, but I won’t be using my Windows box to do it, because my MacBook is probably at least 4x and seemingly about 10x faster. I’m not sure my Dell is up to the task of encoding video at real-time while emulating a 680x0/PPC machine.

Along those lines, if you have a good recommendation for a clear, current emulator guide for Intel Macs, I’ll look into that later today. You sent me a link to a site awhile back, but it had a large number of guides and I couldn’t figure out the directions on whichever one I randomly selected. Though I might just not have spent enough time on it, but in any case, I’d rather just start with a specific guide rather than guessing at which will work.

[HelviusRufus]

Here’s a test encode of John’s longest Rubicon film (“Not *This* Again…”). If you need an example of how ridiculous the bloom gets, skip to the end when he teleports back onto the Rozinante.

The highlight of the film is 10:45 to 11:02 where he uses a Pfhor bolt hit to boost over a ledge. From the lead in, it's obviously planned.

[The Man]

John is very good at arranging outcomes like that, for sure.

BTW, please let me know if any of Sidoh’s Rubicon films go out of sync; I may not remember to check before posting them. His read-me indicates that he recorded several of them with the vanilla Infinity app before downloading the patched Rubicon app, and some of them don’t appear to work right (“Deep in the Aardvarks” desynced very quickly). I’m going to have to figure out how to duplicate Rubicon’s appearance without copying its game behaviour, and also when he started using the actual Rubicon app. Unfortunately, the last modified date might not actually give a clue, because “Hell Pfhor You” and “Not *This* Again…” both precede “Deep in the Aardvarks”, and neither desynced.

ETA: dammit; the terminals rendered at half size. Whatever; probably not worth redoing all the ones I’ve already done a second/third time, but I’ll fix it going forward.

edit 2: …or maybe not? Some of them seem regular size. I’m confused now. I’ll look at it in the morning.

It doesn’t look like I’m going to successfully set up an emulator today either. I did make films of a few of the RX-exclusive levels, so I’ve posted those. None of these are particularly challenging levels; in fact, while “Veni vidi cursavi” has large swarms of enemies you can encounter if you take the wrong route through the level, I didn’t encounter a single one during the entire course of the film. Of course, I also left large segments of the level unexplored because, as far as I know, there’s nothing of value to the player there.

[The Man]

I've got a fairly large amount of Rubicon films encoded already, and Dr Sumner just sent me a few for Rubicon X (Tarboi, Get Over It, Attack of the Wheenies), beyond the ones I've already done myself. (It Begins with an Ending, Veni vidi cursavi, all the Rozinante levels except XI, for which I intend to write a Lua script to make it properly winnable, Lazarus ex machina. Some of these have yet to be uploaded. Mostly the Rozinante ones.)

I also just did Aye Mak Sicur with fists. Not exceptional - there are two separate segments where I almost die - but I defeat all the enemies except the Juggernauts, completely explore all areas, and pick up all ammo as far as I'm aware. Encoding that now; check this space in a few minutes for the link.

edit: Aye Mak Sicur (fists only)

[The Man]

Lia will be happy to read that I’ve finally gotten SheepShaver to boot. (If I’d gone into the emulation forum I’d probably have done this weeks ago; I don’t know why I didn’t look at the stickied thread.) Because I’m a complete n00b at emulation, the answer to this question may be rather obvious, but: how do I get it to see stuff other than the system folder? Presumably I’ll want either an Internet browser or else a way to get it to import downloads. Obviously, my #1 priorities are copies of the original M1, M2, M∞ applications & data… which, come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure where to find online these days, but I still have my Trilogy Box Set CD, so it might not matter. Except that my MacBook doesn’t have a CD-ROM drive, so it’s probably more convenient to download them anyway; figuring out how to transfer all the data from my PC, complete with resource fork, would probably be more work.

I’ll obviously make it one of my #1 priorities to do a bunch of M1 stuff (I think I’ll use Dr Sumner’s “Colony Ship” film that skips the pillars as my test case), but I’ll also want to get the TI:TLL and Rubicon levels that didn’t work posted. (There were only a few.) I think this is probably also the only way I’ll be able to post the Return to Marathon films, because the MML doesn’t match whatever was in the application’s Fux! data. (I might figure out how to port that data over at some point, but there are a lot of MML commands I still haven’t been able to make work, for that matter.)

Also, if anyone has any recommendations on a way to get QuickTime to encode sound when capturing video, that’d be good, too. A Google search brings up a number of results, but if anyone here has one they recommend, I’ll probably trust your advice.

So, yeah. Quick version:

1. How do I import data into SheepShaver?
2. Where are the M1/2/∞ apps for OS9 online?
3. Recommendations on ways to make QuickTime capture audio?

(#3 isn’t urgent; #1 and #2 are the vital ones.)

Regarding Rubicon, I’ve already encoded almost all of Dr Sumner’s films except the two that went out of sync, and I’ve encoded most of Sidoh’s as well (a couple of his also went out of sync, but nowhere near as many as I’d predicted – the problem seems to be specific to “Deep in the Aardvarks” rather than a M∞/Rubicon film compatibility issue as I initially assumed). I may actually complete the remainder tonight; they’re mostly pretty short.

For that matter, Dr Sumner has vidded a heroic number of Rubicon X levels over literally the past week or so, including several I’d simply assumed were flat-out impossible. On the other hand, a few I assumed wouldn’t be as challenging wound up being way more difficult than I assumed (for instance, “It’s Not *My* Brain” doesn’t include anything to destroy wires until you’ve already destroyed them, so you have to punch them, which is possible, but very difficult, and you have to do it with troopers continuously teleporting in. I can do the first half of the level, but the second half is beyond me).

I also had no idea how much a few levels changed between the original Rubicon and Rubicon X until I undertook this project. Examples include “Core Wars” and “We Dream You”. “Core Wars” is a lot easier in RX; Chris took out something like five Maser Bobs. I could probably do it myself in a few tries once I’ve learnt the layout of Lysander’s core, and maybe I will this weekend.

The following levels still haven’t been vidded:

The Dotted Line
Eat the Sword
Carpe *Mumble Mumble Latin*
Iwannavacuum II
Like Home This Ain’t II (this one’s my fault; I’ve been intended to write a Lua script that gives the player a chip on this level and a few others that require them, but there’s a bug that I haven’t figured out how to fix)
With Utility Bills Like These…
It’s Not *My* Brain
Break the Sword

A few other levels that have major changes that haven’t been vidded yet:

Frog Blasting
Blasted Frogs (not quite as many, but still a few)
Bump and Grind (if you’re going to attempt this one, you should probably wait until I’ve gotten the aforementioned Lua script to work so you can actually finish the mission)
The Gators of NY
Not *This* Again…
Iwannavacuum

Send me your films for a little slice of Internet immortality!

[ravenshining]

1.) It has been many years since I used SheepShaver, but I think I remember there being a way to set up a shared folder? Otherwise you'd need a way to open the HD images you're using. In Basillisk II it just automatically mounts root as another hard disk.

2.) http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org

[The Man]

Ah, thanks. Judging from the manual, that must be what this “Unix Root” thing is about.

It’s a bit late tonight, so I might not get everything set up before sleeping, but I’m hoping to start encoding stuff tomorrow or Saturday at the latest. (Friday will be busy. Well, Thursday will, too, but not in quite the same way.)

[The Man]

So... more stupid emulator questions.

1. I've gotten SheepShaver to boot. It runs Marathon, and it even looks like it's supposed to. But it doesn't play sound. It's complaining that I've given Marathon too much memory, even when I reduce the memory size. What gives?
   
   
2. It also freezes after about a minute of film play most of the time. I think I need a larger hard drive. So... how do I create one? (Edit: That didn’t solve the problem; any idea what would? Note that it’s not a hard crash; command-W quits film playback and returns to the main menu.)

For the time being I think I'm going to encode Dr Sumner's films for Evil and Pfh'Joueur. I might do some of these on my Mac since neither scenario has any HD graphics, but this does mean that the films will max out at 720p rather than 1080p. If this is a problem, I can redo them, but I'll get them done a lot faster if I use the Mac (it's literally at least three times faster; it feels like it's about ten, but it's probably not really that much of a difference).


ETA: I figured out how to make a new disk, but that doesn’t seem to have helped the freezing film issue. Oddly, it doesn’t seem to be a case of either SheepShaver or Marathon undergoing a hard crash; if I press command-Q, Marathon quits the film normally. I have no idea why it happens or how to fix it, but until I do, I’m obviously not going to be able to post any M1 content.

In any case, I also need sound to work, and that’s a SheepShaver problem as much as it is a Marathon problem. I assume I need to change something within the SheepShaver preferences to make sound play correctly. I don’t know if that’s the same issue as the “Marathon couldn’t allocate enough sound channels to play sound because there isn’t enough free system memory available (try giving Marathon less memory), ID = -1856” issue, though.


edit 2: a quick Google search returned this. Maybe I should just try Basilisk II; I don’t know if it’ll be more complicated to set up. Or else that RAM Charger program people mentioned. IDK. I’ll look into it on Saturday. M∞ itself actually plays fine for awhile, as long as I leave it in 256 colours, but it actually does freeze after about four or five minutes of gameplay. (Again, not a hard crash; command-W quits the game without any problem.) Also, ctrl-tab as an action key doesn’t work, which is really annoying since I use ctrl as my run key. Then again, I’m probably only going to play M∞ in an emulator as a curiosity, but it would be nice to fix the issue for M1.

…This might also be worth referring to.

[TBCR]

So... more stupid emulator questions.

I've gotten SheepShaver to boot. It runs Marathon, and it even looks like it's supposed to. But it doesn't play sound. It's complaining that I've given Marathon too much memory, even when I reduce the memory size. What gives?

It also freezes after about a minute of film play most of the time. I think I need a larger hard drive. So... how do I create one? (Edit: That didn’t solve the problem; any idea what would? Note that it’s not a hard crash; command-W quits film playback and returns to the main menu.)

I would be willing to setup either my iMac or Powerbook G3 this weekend to help with rendering. There is a tool online that you can export film files to quicktime movies. Then all that would be needed is to properly convert things over to something that YT likes.

EDIT: It seems that utility is only for M2 and Infinity, but I can at least plug my powerbook into S-Video or VGA capture for capturing direct to OBS

[The Man]

Whatever you could send would be massively appreciated. I’m going to do my own messing about with emulators this weekend, so hopefully I’ll finally resolve those issues. I’ve bookmarked a number of different things to try; hopefully one of them works. At the moment I can’t get the following films to work correctly in A1:

Tempus Irae: The Lost Levels – “Prison Sex” from Dr Sumner’s pack
Rubicon – both Dr Sumner and Sidoh’s films of “Deep in the Aardvarks”; Dr Sumner’s film of “Wading in Vitriol”; Dr Sumner’s film of “We Dream You” (this last one probably isn’t important)
Evil – “Hackers” from Dr Sumner’s pack
Return to Marathon – both of Dr Sumner’s films (I’m almost certain this is a case of the MML not matching the M∞ application changes in Fux!)
Marathon ∞ – Dr Sumner’s fists only film of “Confound Delivery” and no recharging film of “Poor Yorick”; some of the vid tips (I don’t recall offhand which)

If you need download links for any/all of these I can provide them. I know Sidoh’s Rubicon films are on Fileball (and yes, the link still works); I think Dr Sumner’s were posted earlier in this thread, and the original Rubicon map file is linked in the description of the playlist I’ve made, though come to think of it, you’re probably better off getting it from archives.bungie.org if you’re going to be running it in Classic. Dr Sumner’s Infinity fists only & no recharging films are also linked in the playlist descriptions. Dr Sumner probably sent several of the others directly to me, though, so IDK which ones you’ll need.

[The Man]

I haven’t updated this thread in forever, but I’m still uploading new videos, albeit at a slower pace than before (blame schoolwork).

Thing is, I’ve discovered after uploading some 700 videos that I’d used suboptimal add-ons for many of them. Turns out that M∞ has newer versions of the water and lava sets that have bump maps, which I hadn’t installed. Moreover, the Freeverse textures for M2 are available in 1024x1024 variants; I’d rendered all my videos with the 512x512 versions that currently ship with M2.

I’m not going to go back and re-render all my old videos at least until I’ve got all the remaining ones up. But would it even be worth redoing any of them? Personally, I could probably take or leave the extra M2 resolution (it looks cooler, but it’s probably not noticeable on YouTube), but I actually do find the M∞ bump maps make a pretty large difference.

As for my own vid films: Rise Robot Rise (fists only) is pretty much my only film for the trilogy in awhile. I’ve been mostly preoccupied with Eternal and Chronicles, but I have been attempting “What About Bob?” It’s just a really, really difficult level if you’re trying to show all secrets and complete the level fists only – which I am. (It’s probably not that difficult normally.) There are about three chokepoints that can derail a fists-only, all-secrets vid attempt, and I’ve yet to clear them all.

And as for M1, I’m still attempting to troubleshoot emulator problems. Nothing has completely fixed the problems, though on the plus side, each thing I try that doesn’t fix the problem narrows down the number of things that could be causing it. I hope.

[HelviusRufus]

But would it even be worth redoing any of them?

Probably not. The object is a good quality usable record of various Marathon gameplay tactics.
Indeed, one can improve playing skill by watching and imitating.
The question would be does the improvement significantly increase the value of the presentation.
And I think the answer is no, it'd just gussy it up a little.