• Duardo
•  | 
• Master Forum Ninja
• 
•  | more 
• groups
•   | 

Step One: Installing Marathon (Windows)

To install the Marathon Trilogy for Windows, follow these directions.

Note that all the files you will download are in compressed (.zip) form. In order to extract them, you need an unzipping utility, such as Winzip. If you do not have it, a free trial of Winzip may be found here. Other unzipping utilities will work as well.

For organizational purposes, first create a new folder. Call it Marathon. Save every file you download into this folder.

To start Marathon, go into any game folder and click on the green Marathon logo with the words AlephOne.exe beside it. It is recommended that you finish reading this guide before starting.

For ease of use, you should create shortcuts to the Marathon games on your desktop, so you don't have to search through folders for them every time you want to play. To do so, right click on your desktop and point to New, then select Shortcut. Make the destination the AlephOne.exe file (the one you use to start the game), and name the shortcut accordingly. Repeat for each game.

Marathon

To download the first Marathon, click here (20,705 Kb download). After the download has finished, extract the files, and name the created folder Marathon. To download the music for the first Marathon, go here and click on alternative mp3 tracks (47.4 MB download). Once you have downloaded and unzipped them, go into the created folder and copy & paste the tracks into the M1A1 Tracks folder in the first Marathon game folder. You have now installed the first Marathon.

Marathon 2: Durandal

To download the second Marathon, click here (28.9 MB download). After the download has finished, extract the files. You will notice that, instead of making a new folder like before, the following game files appear (in no particular order): Images, Map, Map.resources, Music, Shapes, and Sounds. In order to get Marathon 2 to work, you need Aleph One. To download it, click here (1680 Kb download), select an appropriate mirror to start the download, and then extract it. A new folder will be created. Copy and paste all the Marathon 2 game files into this folder, and rename it Marathon 2. You have now installed the second Marathon.

Marathon Infinity

Downloading Marathon Infinity is much the same as downloading Marathon 2. To download the game files, click here (37.3 MB download). This time, once extracted, they will be in a folder. Inside this folder are the files. You have already downloaded Aleph One, so simply extract it again, and copy and paste the Marathon Infinity files into the created folder. Rename the folder Marathon Infinity. You have now finished installing Marathon Infinity.

Updated Textures

Updated textures, which greatly improve the graphical quality of the games, have been developed for the entire Marathon Trilogy. These can be downloaded from the following links:

* High-Resolution Textures
* High-Resolution Landscapes
* High-Resolution Weapons

The mid-res textures are recommended [currently looking for them], as the hi-res ones tend to run a bit choppy and the mid-res textures don't sacrifice graphics noticably anyway. Included in the downloads is a read-me which will provide comprehensive instructions on installing the textures for every game. Note that the file sizes are large, and may take some patience on your part to download. It's well worth the wait, though.

Next >


[Edited on 07.08.2009 4:08 PM PDT]

• Duardo
•  | 
• Master Forum Ninja
• 
•  | more 
• groups
•   | 

Step One: Installing Marathon (Linux)

It's a terminal install.

The installation of Aleph One/SDL consists of two steps:

1. Installing the Aleph One/SDL program
2. Installing Marathon data files

1. Installing the program
From a binary package

* Unix: If you are running Linux/i386 with XFree86 4.0 and OpenGL you can download and install the binary RPM (you will also need to install at least one of the AlephOne-M1A1, AlephOne-Marathon2 or AlephOne-Infinity RPMs). Otherwise, you have to compile Aleph One/SDL from the source (see the next section). In both cases, you have to have SDL >= 1.2.0 installed.
Note: If you are getting a message like

error: Failed dependencies:
libGL.so.1(LIBGL) is needed by AlephOne-20040417-1

while installing the RPM, try installing again with the --nodeps option. If this is the only failed dependency and you have OpenGL installed, the program should work.

Compiling from source

1. You will need to have the SDL library installed. Aleph One requires at least SDL 1.2.0. Note that if you didn't install SDL from source, you will also have to install the SDL-devel package.
2. Download the Aleph One/SDL source tarball, or get the source via CVS.
3. Under Unix, install Aleph One as follows:

$ ./configure
$ make
[become root]
# make install

Under BeOS, do this instead:

$ make -f Makefile.BeOS install

This will compile the source and create a directory AlephOne in your home directory that contains the AlephOne application and some data files.

2. Installing the data files

To play Aleph One, you will also need Marathon scenario (graphics, sound and map) data files.

* Unix: Either download and install at least one of the AlephOne-M1A1, AlephOne-Marathon2 or AlephOne-Infinity RPM packages, or download one of the AlephOne-M1A1-1.0.tar.gz, AlephOne-Marathon2-1.0.tar.gz or AlephOne-Infinity-1.0.tar.gz tarballs and unexpand it to /usr/local/share/AlephOne/.
* BeOS: Download one of the AlephOne-M1A1-1.0.tar.gz, AlephOne-Marathon2-1.0.tar.gz or AlephOne-Infinity-1.0.tar.gz tarballs and unexpand it to the same directory as the AlephOne application.


Playing Aleph One

First, be sure to read the README file that comes with Aleph One/SDL.

* Unix: If you have installed the Marathon, Marathon 2, or Marathon Infinity scenario, type

$ alephone-m1a1

for M1A1, or

$ alephone-marathon2

for Marathon 2, or

$ alephone-infinity

for Marathon Infinity, to start the game. If you don't have hardware-accelerated OpenGL, you will get better performance by specifying the -g option. If this causes corrupted graphics (red screen), you should also specify the -m option.
* BeOS: Double-click the AlephOne application.

Install directions here are from http://alephone.cebix.net/.

Next >


[Edited on 01.22.2009 8:06 PM PST]

• Duardo
•  | 
• Master Forum Ninja
• 
•  | more 
• groups
•   | 

Step Three: Online Play

Apart from an awesome campaign, Marathon comes with a great online multiplayer mode. Setting up and playing is easy enough, and with the variety of gametypes and maps, it never gets old.

If you want to play online, the best game to use is Marathon Infinity, because it has all the maps and gametypes Marathon 2 has, plus some great additions.

Joining a Game:

Joining a game is easy; simply click join network game in the main menu, and then click find internet game. In the screen that comes up, the left box on the top half of the screen shows all the players which are currently online. The right box on the top half of the screen shows hosted games currently in the lobby stage. These may be joined by clicking on them, then waiting for the host to start the game. The bottom half of the screen is devoted to messages exchanged between players, which you may contribute to if you wish.

Hosting a Game:

Hosting a game is more complicated, but nonetheless entirely simple. First off, you have to have the correct ports open on your router; to find out which to open and how, go to this site. After you have configured your ports, click gather network game in the main menu of Marathon Infinity. Here, you will be presented with various game options, most of which are self-explanatory. Don’t change the map option unless you know what you’re doing – to change which map you play on, change the level option. Popular maps include Thunderdome and Duality, although the others are great too. There are seven (coincidence?) gametypes included with Marathon, selected (amazingly enough) by changing the game type option. Here’s a rundown of each of them and their rules (all can be changed to team games by switching the teams option):

* Every Man for Himself: Probably the most popular gametype, this is an all-out run-‘em-down fragfest. The winner is the person with the best kill to death ratio at the end of the match.

* Kill the Man with the Ball: The progenitor to Oddball, the object is to take possession of the ball for the longest period of time. Running and firing are disabled while carrying the ball.

* Capture the Flag: If you don’t know what this is, you have problems. The only difference here is that the ‘flag’ is actually a skull. Oh, and the object is to steal another team’s skull and return it to your base, for the dense.

* King of the Hill: Simple. Defend a point on the map and gain time when you control it.

* Tag: Sort of like Juggernaut, the first person to be killed is ‘it’. The other players earn points for killing ‘it’, and whoever kills ‘it’ becomes ‘it’.

* Rugby: In this game, you must take the red skull to the other team’s base to score.

* Cooperative Play: Probably the least played but most fun gametype, cooperative play lets you play Marathon Infinity campaign levels with players across the world. The difficulty option only applies for this gametype.

There are two ways to end the game: points, and time, switched by changing the game ends at option. Points ends at a set score, whether it be flag captures or kills, while time ends when the time runs out, and the player or team with the highest score wins. Both these ways are variable and can be changed according to tastes.

The rest of the options are pretty simple to understand; aliens puts AI-controlled aliens on the map (which are more annoying than anything), and you can control whether killed players drop their weapons. The one option you really need to turn on is the advertise game on internet option, which will let people who don’t know your IP address (i.e. everyone) to see and join your game.

Before you click OK, go to the top of the screen, where you will see an option called section. Change this from general to more stuff, where you will be presented with a number of options, ranging from whether or not to allow zoom to whether or not the motion sensor is allowed.

Now that you have your options sorted out, click OK to advertise the game for others to join. After as many players as you want join, click play to start the game. After a short (or long, depending on the connection) wait at a black screen, the carnage will begin.

Tips & Tricks:

Marathon multiplayer is extremely fast-paced – those without Neo-like reflexes need not apply. Coincidentally, anyone without the always run option (found in the controls menu) turned to on will get totally and completely owned.

Which team you’re on depends on your secondary color. In team games, the only way to tell friend from foe apart from seeing their color as they speed by is to use your motion sensor. Those on your team will show up as a different-colored dot than those that aren’t.

To type a message to other players, press /. After you’ve typed the message, press return-carriage to post it. Note that you can’t move or shoot while typing, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to do so when a player with double-WSTE-M’s is bearing down on you.

Marathon is one of those games that is just too much fun. After a round of rockets in Thunderdome, you’ll be rolling on the floor laughing. Or shaking uncontrollably, depending on how you did.

Next >

[Edited on 01.22.2009 8:11 PM PST]