Since I'd like Eternal 1.2.1 to come out by the end of the year, I’ve been slowly going down the list of features I'd like to implement and getting some of them done. I just got done with a big one.
Here are the remastered sounds for Marathon Eternal. This is overall very similar to my
remastered Marathon Infinity sounds, but there are a couple of major differences. Most notably, all the sounds are in the 8-bit sound slot rather than the 16-bit sound slot. All of the sounds are actually 16-bit, but with one caveat, the game
mostly doesn’t care. Since it doesn’t see a sound in the 16-bit slot, it just reads from the 8-bit slot if you have 16-bit sounds selected. If for some reason you have 8-bit sounds selected, I
think it converts down to 8-bit on the fly, but I’m not actually sure. However, at least you will get sound rather than silence.
The big caveat is that
you will need to quit and restart Aleph One after selecting this sounds file, or all the sounds will play at the wrong speed. I don’t know why this occurs, but I’m assuming it’s a memory cache issue.
The other major issue of note is that, because these are all about 6 dB quieter than you’re used to, they’ll have roughly half the perceived volume. This means you’ll need to adjust your music volume to suit your taste – but as a plus, it at least brings the proportional levels between the music and game sound effects back to roughly their original state!
Most of these are the same sounds as the
Infinity remastered sounds, except, of course, those that are exclusive to
Eternal (or absent from
Infinity, but shared with
Marathon 1 and a few other games). I’ve remade a few sounds a bit since my release of the
Infinity remastered sounds (which, actually, I need to re-release for a few reasons – hopefully this will also come by the end of the year), and may make a few further revisions. Some people have commented that a few of the sounds (mostly the Fighter, Compiler, and Drone sounds) sound higher-pitched, just due to the presence of high-frequency information that wasn’t present in the originals. I may run a mild low-pass filter on them if this really bothers people, but I’ve quickly grown used to the new versions.
Anyway, let me know if there are any issues. I’ve tested these briefly in Aleph One 1.3b2 on Windows 10, but I haven’t played every sound in the game yet, nor have I tested other Aleph One versions or operating systems, so it’s possible there’s some issue I haven’t uncovered.
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” —V,
V for Vendetta (Alan Moore)
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” —Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”
“If others had not been foolish, we should be so.” —William Blake,
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.” —Frank Wilhoit
Last.fm ·
Marathon Chronicles ·
Marathon Eternal 1.2 ·
Where Monsters Are in Dreams ·
YouTube Vidmaster’s Challenge
