The Stupid Questions Thread.

[PerseusSpartacus]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the Marathon engine just checks to see whether you are "running forward" and then decides whether to apply extra damage because of that. It doesn't really care which way you are looking, just so long as you are running "forward".

[HelviusRufus]

When you make a post like that, you gotta link the thread being referenced.

Sorry, here it is.

Your biggest "Pet Peeves" in Marathon multiplayer

Evaluations aside, I found it an interesting topic.
Reading old topics is a way a wise man may become more wise.

[Hopper]

when & how often do you play multiplayer? How often & when do other people play online?

While it became semi-hidden in a site redesign, the metaserver home page includes a nice chart showing the busiest times of the week. You can also visit the game history section to see exactly when and how many games have been played on the meta. The month summary says you've missed at least 189 games in the past week.

[General Tacticus]

Yeah, it takes advantage of the fact that punching damage is based on forward velocity, regardless of your target's position/motion. You maintain your forward speed, but are able to punch at a right angle.

Fun fact: In multiplayer, running away from a guy who is punching you is a very bad idea. The game doesn't take relative velocity into account, so they can keep doing running punches while following you. Just takes three hits to kill.

[HelviusRufus]

It's not that far off.
Consider that you punch at a smaller angle as you run past rather than a 90 degree punch. While not as strong as a direct on punch, it would still be stronger than a 90 degree punch, and the difference between what the actual force and the game calculated force is can be attributed to the skill of the puncher. A bonus, if you will.
This is not an easy maneuver.

[irons]

You run right past them, and tap the glance key + fire as you go by.

Sounds sort of like a physics bug. In real life, when you lunge forward at someone to punch them, you gain momentum which can make you punch harder. It simply makes sense. But when run forward and spontaneously turn to the side, that momentum is lost, making it just a normal punch. Momentum is gained by increasing speed & keeping the same direction. It is lost by dropping speed & changing direction. Seems like Bungie overlooked this, then again this is an old game.

You can also change your direction of travel in mid-air; strafing while running forward makes you go faster; explosions do the same amount of damage at any position in the blast radius. It's an unrealistic game in many ways.

[3371-Alpha]

You can also change your direction of travel in mid-air; strafing while running forward makes you go faster; explosions do the same amount of damage at any position in the blast radius. It's an unrealistic game in many ways.

Indeed unrealistic, but a great game none the less.

While it became semi-hidden in a site redesign, the metaserver home page includes a nice chart showing the busiest times of the week. You can also visit the game history section to see exactly when and how many games have been played on the meta. The month summary says you've missed at least 189 games in the past week.

On a side note, viewing my stats more closely, I never knew I was this good! Do you see how many kills I got! There's only one quote that can describe this!
"Damn! I'm looking good!" -Duke Nukem

[philtron]

It's an unrealistic game in many ways.

In all fairness, what games aren't?

[irons]

I'm not complaining.

[General Tacticus]

Oddly enough, having perused the engine code, it appears as though the programmer went out of his way to make player's inertia act in the way it does.

[3371-Alpha]

I do have another question. Have you guys considered adding support for Damage Incorporated, Prime Target & Zero Population Count inside Aleph One?

[Hopper]

See Asylum's work on Damage and PT.

[General Tacticus]

Actually, some guy was working on a fork of A1 for that. Not sure if he is still working at it, though.

*edit*
Heh, I guess Hopper beat me to the answer

[3371-Alpha]

I take it the project was never fully completed.

[3371-Alpha]

Another question, I know I've asked this before, but why haven't you guys considered adding support for 60fps in Aleph One? I remember reading that the Freeverse version of Marathon 2 for the 360 could run at 60fps, then again I also remember reading that it contained a lot of middleware for things such as newer networking protocols.

[General Tacticus]

As I understand it, the freeverse crew made an entirely new (full 3d) engine for the xbox port that just read the marathon data files. Sadly, it's scourcecode was never released.

As for aleph one, I think one would need to rewrite a large portion of the engine to increase the frame-rate without breaking everything.

[philtron]

I take it the project was never fully completed.

In all fairness, what projects are?

[3371-Alpha]

In all fairness, what projects are?

True although I'd call this one a little less then the others. All he has are a few patch & source files.

As I understand it, the freeverse crew made an entirely new (full 3d) engine for the xbox port that just read the marathon data files. Sadly, it's scourcecode was never released.

From what I've seen from the gameplay online, it seems to be the same good ol' Aleph One engine with a few tweaks. It has it's OpenGL API replaced with a DirectX one (since Microsoft bannes your product from XBox if they catch even a whiff of OpenGL in it), it's framerate has been boosted to go up to 60fps, and it contains networking middleware to allow up to 16 players in online battles & 8 in coop. Not exactly sure what else they may have changed.

[General Tacticus]

They completely rewrote the entire engine from the ground up, it is in fact a full 3d engine "emulating" a 2.5d engine. They just did a very good approximation of the original behavior.

The current frame-rate is integral to the marathon engine, there is no way to simply change it without rewriting a good deal of the codebase.

[3371-Alpha]

Yeah, you're right actually. After doing a bit of research it is a true 3D engine they're using that was build from the ground up. Shame the never released the source. Still, you you think it could be implementable in Aleph One? It may stop the "motion sickness" my friends keep complaining about every time I try to get them to play.

[General Tacticus]

I doubt that would be very feasible, we don't have the manpower for such an undertaking

Regarding motion sickness:

If your friends are having motion sickness, they should set the renderer to the Opengl Shader Mode, which corrects for some of the distortion when looking up and down. If the FOV is too low, create a text file in the scripts folder and copy this into it:

Code: Select all

<marathon>
<view>
<fov normal="90" extra="160" tunnel="70" />
</view>
</marathon>

Rename the file as: FOV.mml

[3371-Alpha]

That's a pretty cool trick with the FOV. On a side question, are there any other mml tweaks you could show me?

[General Tacticus]

none that I know of, someone else showed me that one

[3371-Alpha]

Ok, another question. Is it possible to use Aleph One in a commercial product? Can you sell work based on it?

[philtron]

Why are you even asking? You can't use Marathon assets in a commercial product anyway, so I don't know why it would even matter. But since you ask, right on Aleph One's front page it says that it is released under the GNU General Public License.