The Pfhorums

So hey everyone, all puns aside making intro posts isn't really my thing. BUT - due to random happenstance my interest in THE GAMES that shaped my childhood and design philosophy hit max tonight and here I am.

Whatever back in the day is, I played this trilogy to death and then some...made some very bad maps that I can't remember much about using an editor called Pfhorte (pre-Anvil/Forge public release), made physics mods of all sorts, and tore apart the game engine in every way my young mind could understand. Somewhere at my parents house are notepads of polygon-based map designs that used WAY too many overlapping sections with alternating height definitions...just because I could (and Doom II couldn't).

IIRC, I also was the person who discovered that the Marathon 1 MacOS release CD-ROM had a hidden folder/partition on it that contained a full version of Marathon 1 in the Pathways to Darkness engine; might be a dozen people on earth that know what that means, but for those at the time it was very cool to see.

Anyway - it brings some joy to my old man heart seeing some active love thrown toward these games, and I just wanted to say hello.

Going to try to dedicate some time to what appears to be the Marathon 1 rework, and give back to the game what it gave to me. Go easy on me though as I'm sure it'll take some time for some of the technical stuff to come back to me. If you're doing any active work that requires memberberries/playtesting to compare to the original experience, let me know and I'll do my best to help you.

Welcome back.

ItsMyPfhorte wrote:IIRC, I also was the person who discovered that the Marathon 1 MacOS release CD-ROM had a hidden folder/partition on it that contained a full version of Marathon 1 in the Pathways to Darkness engine; might be a dozen people on earth that know what that means, but for those at the time it was very cool to see.

Are you talking about the Marathon betas with the Skitter-like orange monsters (in my headcanon those are the Chockisens mentioned in the manual prologue) and the mesa Tau Ceti landscape and the "Grendel Lives!" texture?

Going to try to dedicate some time to what appears to be the Marathon 1 rework, and give back to the game what it gave to me. Go easy on me though as I'm sure it'll take some time for some of the technical stuff to come back to me. If you're doing any active work that requires memberberries/playtesting to compare to the original experience, let me know and I'll do my best to help you.

If you're talking about Marathon 1 Redux, that's great, Lia could sure use the help!

Hey - sounds about right, I looked it up to make sure it hadn't been lost to the sands of time and it hasn't:

https://macintoshgarden.org/games/marathon-beta

I found that on a hidden folder on the original Marathon 1 MacOS back in the day, and while I remember it being longer than stated in someone's comment there I can't say for sure; my headcanon has it being at least a handful of levels and weapons and stuff, if you've got the original CD or .ISO it's worth a look maybe.

Also yeah - Marathon 1 Redux, I made a post there letting them know I'd be willing to do what - thanks for the reply.

EDIT - looks like there were multiple versions, here is some message board detailing it, and it's right; can't remember what 10 year old me was doing in the Marathon Holiday Music folder on my Quadra 640, but I found the folder in question:

http://marathon.bungie.org/story/newjuly-aug12.html

Whoever says it's not so much a new secret as a not widely known one might be right; could be some cool stuff on there for longtimes on this forum.

Dude, I so feel you on seeing how nice it is that there's still a community for this game. M1, M2, and M∞ are my favorite games ever!

Same here! They are such beautiful games. My first experience was M2... that menu music...

Aw man, you were the one who discovered the "Marathon Zero" beta? That's pretty cool!

I'm glad that there still exists a community for Marathon after all these years, too (and that I'm not the sole person doing fanart/fic).