I'm just a little curious how Aleph One is running Marathon beneath the hood. Is it some sort of self-enclosed Mac emulator? Or did someone get the source code to Marathon and make a source port? Or is this a whole new engine that is painstakingly recreating Marathon on windows, or what?
The real reason I'm curious though is because I'm wondering what it would take to get some other mac games to run in windows. Specifically, Castles 2: Siege and Conquest. I loved playing that game when I was in junior high. And I see that I can buy it on GOG, but... it's the DOS version. I suppose the gameplay is the same, but it doesn't have the beautiful graphics that I remember and love. So I wonder what it would take to be able to play the mac version of that game again. A while back I looked briefly into it, but running an emulator for a whole computer is a bit of a complicated process that I wasn't prepared to get into for just one game. So I'm kinda wondering what approach Aleph One took to get Marathon running, and what would be involved in giving some more titles the same treatment.
Is Aleph One emulating? Or a source port? or what?
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ravenshining
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There is no emulation, A1 is a source port. We have (most of) the original code under a GPL.
Just prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, Bungie released the source code to Marathon 2, and from this Aleph One was born. Later, they also released the source code for Marathon Infinity, enabling us to have M∞ film playback and shining some more light on the code.
Marathon 1 however still has one foot in the "painstaking reconstruction" category; while A1 can read and run on M1 data files, it doesn't recreate M1 precisely and is unable to play M1 films.
When it comes to the actual game content, however, technically it's still owned by Bungie but we're sort of allowed to use it. The full details on that front seem to be known only to a few who have not revealed their secrets.
Just prior to its acquisition by Microsoft, Bungie released the source code to Marathon 2, and from this Aleph One was born. Later, they also released the source code for Marathon Infinity, enabling us to have M∞ film playback and shining some more light on the code.
Marathon 1 however still has one foot in the "painstaking reconstruction" category; while A1 can read and run on M1 data files, it doesn't recreate M1 precisely and is unable to play M1 films.
When it comes to the actual game content, however, technically it's still owned by Bungie but we're sort of allowed to use it. The full details on that front seem to be known only to a few who have not revealed their secrets.
IIRC it's not so much that, as it is that full details were never formally fleshed out. As I recall, Claude was given informal permission from Bungie to put up the Trilogy Release, and later requested some kind of official formal license from them to formalize what exactly everyone was or wasn't allowed to do with that content, and never got any such a thing back.ravenshining wrote:When it comes to the actual game content, however, technically it's still owned by Bungie but we're sort of allowed to use it. The full details on that front seem to be known only to a few who have not revealed their secrets.
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ravenshining
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I was thinking of other things - like how title screens got changed, and the Freeverse crap now has to be part of the download, and there's like one vauge reference to how Bungie was involved but no record of how those decisions were made.
The Marathon Infinity content is CC BY-NC-SA licensed. The other games do not have an official license, but using them consistent with CC BY-NC-SA should keep you out of trouble.
I have an email record of how the 1.0 release decisions were made, but I do not have permission (or any particular desire) to make it public. We do not have to include the Freeverse crap, but we do have permission to include it. The title screens have not been changed; the overlay is drawn by Aleph One, to make it clear it's a community port, not a Bungie release.
I have an email record of how the 1.0 release decisions were made, but I do not have permission (or any particular desire) to make it public. We do not have to include the Freeverse crap, but we do have permission to include it. The title screens have not been changed; the overlay is drawn by Aleph One, to make it clear it's a community port, not a Bungie release.
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ravenshining
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It is? I thought that
I suspected something where you weren't allowed to talk about it was going on. I appreciate you being forthcoming today, and I apologise if it is out of annoyance with me that you are being so.
And I wasn't referring to the A1 overlay, but I'm happy to leave that for another time.The source code archive also included a CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 license, but its scope is unclear. It may only cover the design documents and other non-code files present alongside the source, and not the game data (which was not part of the archive).
I suspected something where you weren't allowed to talk about it was going on. I appreciate you being forthcoming today, and I apologise if it is out of annoyance with me that you are being so.