Caanoo / WIZ Marathon For The Wiz


forgeflow

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One of my favorite first person shooters was the Mac game Marathon from now Microsoft publisher Bungie. I won a level designing contest Bungie held with my 3 level map "Megiddo", and I later participated in a popular Total Conversion for the game "Tempus Irae" and follow up levels "The Lost Levels" ( http://nardo.bungie.org/alephone.php ).

Bungie released the source code to Marathon Infinity some time ago, and the game has been re-worked into a cross platform SDL open source project called Aleph One. ( http://source.bungie.org/ ). One of the neat things about Marathon is that Bungie also released the game data files for free too. ( http://trilogyrelease.bungie.org/ ).

Graphically Marathon is about on a par with DOOM, so techically the Wiz should be able to run it with no difficulties. There was also an earlier attempt at porting Aleph One to the GP2X, and it largely worked except that it had no key for "swimming" so it was not possible to play the game completely with it, and the port author abandoned the project after releasing the one and only version he did.

Pretty Pretty Pretty please, can someone port Marathon to the Wiz? All of the ingredients are there - its a game the Wiz can technically run with ease, source code and data sources are available. You'll be my hero for life if you can pull it off.
 
Damn. No replies? :( There's source code, and freely distributable data files and everything.
 
Well... I'm not a programmer, so I can't port it, but I fully support your request! :D

I never played this but heard great things, I would love to try it on the Wiz.
 
I could do this, the big issue I see with the game on the wiz is the 640x480 minimum resolution. I think the gp2x version probably used SDL to scale down the screen
 
Pickle said:
I could do this, the big issue I see with the game on the wiz is the 640x480 minimum resolution. I think the gp2x version probably used SDL to scale down the screen
The game's original software renderer (which is still present in the Aleph One engine AFAIK) had several "sizes" that it would reduce the screen down to for older/slower machines. (similar to the size controls in Duke Nukem or the original Quake). The part of the game that probably would have to be resized to fit the screen is the "HUD", and likely the "chapter screens" and "terminals" would need some scaling too. Hrm. Might be easier to scale the whole shebang now that I think of it.

I played the gp2x version (at least up until the first underwater section where I realized I couldn't "swim up", which unfortunately takes place in Level 1 (both in Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity)) and the hud and terminals worked OK there, so whatever was done in that version worked OK.

You need the terminals because they're the game's way of telling you what to do... Unlike DOOM, Marathon actually had a plot of sorts that needed telling, and this game came out before FMV sequences or extended voice-narration became popular. The game is a pre-cursor of sorts to Halo, so think of it as Halo with all the extended talky exposition being presented to you as something to read rather than watch/listen to. :) The HUD is sort of important too mainly for the "motion detector/radar" that lets you know something is sneaking up on you from behind or around a corner.
 
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beavith said:
PLEASE PICKLE! I would love to see this happen. I am a long time fan!

Since I have a way to scale the screen down (smw) this becomes more realistic. So if and when i can i will take a look (if no one else has by then)
 
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Pickle said:
beavith said:
PLEASE PICKLE! I would love to see this happen. I am a long time fan!

Since I have a way to scale the screen down (smw) this becomes more realistic. So if and when i can i will take a look (if no one else has by then)

Thanks for your efforts dude, honestly. It's nice too see how somebody makes this in a desinterested manner :)
 
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Don Flamenco said:
Pickle said:
beavith said:
PLEASE PICKLE! I would love to see this happen. I am a long time fan!

Since I have a way to scale the screen down (smw) this becomes more realistic. So if and when i can i will take a look (if no one else has by then)

Thanks for your efforts dude, honestly. It's nice too see how somebody makes this in a desinterested manner :)

Nah, its not that im not interested, just something else im working on has a higher priority to get working ;-)
 
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Pickle said:
Nah, its not that im not interested, just something else im working on has a higher priority to get working ;-)

I didn't want to say that you are not interested, maybe my English isn't good enough :( , I wanted to say that you make things without seeking any special profit in it, sorry if my last post sounded offensive, my English is very "rusty"

P.D: sorry for the offtopic
 
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