Downloads

Eternal is one of the largest scenarios ever created for Aleph One, initially created by Forrest Cameranesi (Pfhorrest) and subsequently revised and expanded by a massive team known as the Xeventh Project, which, as of this update (March 2024) now includes more than 40 people. Besides Tempus Irae, it may be the oldest scenario still being actively developed; it was first released in 2004 and has been refined and expanded almost continuously ever since. Features include, but are hardly limited to:

• 52 levels, some revisiting familiar locations from the Marathon trilogy and some being among the largest ever created for the engine
• An intricately layered plot featuring dense political and philosophical themes, a tragic romance, time travel, major events from the Marathon trilogy’s backstory, complex original characters, and returning faces from the trilogy’s cast
• A huge, acclaimed soundtrack with unique music for every level, lasting more than seven hours total, and created by over a dozen composers and arrangers (significantly expanded in 1.3 previews 4 through 6)
• Redesigns of most of the game’s familiar cast (new in 1.3), some old foes from Pathways into Darkness, and some new faces (some new in 1.3)
• Hundreds of gorgeous terminal images (many added for 1.3 preview 4 through 6)
• Five texture sets, encompassing 650 high-resolution textures, 12 detailed original landscape textures, and several separate human and alien environments
• An in-game menu system (new in 1.3 preview 6) that toggles several optional features, including:
  • Simplified overhead map views in around twenty levels (new in 1.3 preview 6)
  • A secret tracking system (new in 1.3 preview 4)
  • Auto-save the game on level transition (new in 1.3)
  • An RPG-style monster health display (new in 1.3 preview 6)
  • Shared pickups between players in network games (new in 1.3 preview 6)
  • Disabled friendly fire between players in network games (new in 1.3 preview 6)
• More than 360 sounds, remixed or remastered in CD quality, in stereo where possible (new in 1.3)
• Atmospheric weather like rain and snow (new in 1.3)
• A final boss battle of sorts (new in 1.3)
• Detailed documentation including illustrated field guides to Eternal’s weaponry, aliens, and humans, detailed credits, a meta-history of Eternal, and technical notes on how its maps and scripts work (new in 1.3)

The current development release, 1.3 preview 6 (released on 2024-03-07), is perfectly playable despite still being incomplete; it is now our recommended way to play the game. We’ll refrain from estimating the release date of 1.3 final, as we’ve overshot too many estimates to count (thank you, feature creep). The current “stable” build, 1.2.1 (released on 2021-11-07), is missing several features listed above but is still an enjoyable game in its own right.

The screenshots seen on the right are from a development release from between 1.3 previews 4 and 5 and are a reasonable reflection of Eternal’s current appearance. Although they were taken on Normal (so as to show more monster types), we do recommend playing Eternal on the highest difficulty you can manage.

Notes for version 1.3 preview 6:

Current development release. 1.3 incorporates several new features, many detailed above. New in 1.3 preview 6:

• Hard requirement of Aleph One 1.7 or later.
• An in-game menu system that toggles a ton of new optional scripts, including:
  • Hide irrelevant layers of the overhead map (a massive aid to navigation).
  • RPG-style monster health display.
  • Disable friendly fire in cooperative games.
  • Shared item pickups in cooperative games.
• New drone and Juggernaut sprites in chapter four.
• Fixes to dozens of physics inconsistencies.
• Major music changes:
  • Every level now has at least one unique music track.
  • “We Met Once in the Garden” now uses multiple tracks that shift depending on in-game events, à la FTL or Cadence of Hyrule – to our knowledge, this is the first scenario to make use of Aleph One 1.7’s dynamic music features, though in a relatively simple fashion.
  • Seventeen of Craig Hardgrove’s tracks have been newly remastered or remixed from newly available, much higher-quality sources, some multiple times.
  • The game soundtrack is now encoded as Opus, the objectively best lossy music codec by every performance metric.
  • True obsessives may use an optional lossless FLAC version for the in-game soundtrack.
• New (or newly accessible) areas in “Deja Vu All Over Again”, “Roots and Radicals”, “Core Done Blew”, “A Friend in Need”, “Frog Blast the Vent Core”, and “I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This”.

Additions to preview 5:

• Fixes to several major bugs, including crashes in six different levels, the HUD messing up in non-16:9 aspect ratios, and problems in network games with the secret counter and map overlay.
• Over an hour of new/updated music since preview 4.
• New secrets in a few levels.
• Jjaro sludge is no longer coloured like M1’s toxic Pfhor goo.

1,367 downloads, 2 reviews, 5 screenshots, 5.0 rating

For those of you with proper video cards that do not have difficulty with precipitation scripts, here is a merged map of the scenario with both precipitation and the latest bugfixes.

Unfortunately, some quirk of a few people's machines - which I suspect were running integrated graphics - couldn't cope with precipitation, even after bugfixes were made, and so Pfhorrest ordered it cut from final release. Although the effect on most levels is subtle due to an A1 limitation on having 1024 objects, I thought it well worth the effort of maintaining. So, before I cut the lua from the main scenario, I created a branch to preserve it, and left the supporting alterations to the Shapes file in the main branch.

Naturally, you'll need to download Eternal 1.2, found here,, to use this map.

Then, download this map file, drop it in your Eternal directory, and select it in Environment preferences.

To test whether your machine can handle this, skip to level 13: A Friend in Need, and see if your framerate drops when you walk outside. My 12 year old rig gets 20 FPS with everything on, but some players have reported as little as 0.5 FPS with precipitation.

Since this is an altered map and not a plugin, it will not be compatible with save games from the official release or the previous 1.2.0 version of this enhanced map.

Co-op players, please ensure that everyone has the same version of the map.

Credits: Original rain and ember sprites by $lave and Windbreaker, respectively; Original precip code by Wrkncacnter, who borrowed heavily from Treelama; Eternal adaptation by Aaron Freed; Snow sprites and code fixes by Lia Gerty; Ashes are a palette swap of embers, fallout a palette swap of rain.

Notes for version 1.2.1-b4:

Made a number of things a lot easier

2,127 downloads, 0 reviews, 5 screenshots

This map pack is a redux version of the Legends of Marathon netmaps. This is currently the only set of netmaps made for Eternal. This will need to be played in the latest version of Eternal. Most of these maps were made for 2-8 players, and most work well in survival mode. Huge thanks to Spooky, Ravenshining, Pfhorrest, and Aaron. Without them, none of this would be possible. This set of maps is dedicated to the entire Marathon community, so do not feel bad if you do not have a map named after you.

Notes for version 1.0:

original release

1,390 downloads, 0 reviews, 13 screenshots

The President's Eternal Shapes

This is an edited Eternal X v110b3 Shapes file. It replaces some of the Marine bitmaps with new ones that match the weapon being held.

Notes for version 3.0:

• Messed with some color tables in EVIL to get the Marine's Pfhor Staff graphics, and also a less pixellated version of the weapon's item graphic.

• Replaced the Havoc Rifle's grenade clip item with a cleaner version.

• Both the Napalm Canister's and the Pistol Clip's bitmaps have smoother ones in their place, though I don't think they were used.

• Added 3 new bitmaps to the Nightmare sequences. It can now appear diagonally from behind.

• Changed the colors of the Pfhor Staff water scenery item to match the monster's theme. I'm not sure if this was used in the game, though.

• Experimental. Changed the color of one of the alien scenery lamps (The one that looks like a staff crystal) to match the Pfhor Staff's. NOTE: Two files are included in this folder. The one marked with a * contains the latter changes. Try them both and see what you think.

2,331 downloads, 3 reviews, 7 screenshots, 5.0 rating

As the title says, Hd Weapons for eternal.

READ THE INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS, otherwise this won't work properly.

Notes for version 1.0:

first release, please report bugs in pfhorums thread!

2,180 downloads, 2 reviews, 3 screenshots, 5.0 rating

This is a modification of Hopper's XBLA HUD for Marathon 2 and Infinity, this time designed for Eternal X.

Notes for version 1.0.1:

Fusion pistols are rotated correctly and look better.

2,622 downloads, 1 review, 5 screenshots, 5.0 rating

Marathon Gambit

What is it?

Marathon Gambit is a recreation of Bungie's Destiny 2 gametype of the same name

How do I play?

The objective of Gambit is to kill things, collect the keys they drop, and turn in the keys to summon a final Boss. The first team to summon its boss and kill it wins the round. (a pdf is included that explains this more in depth)

What is included?

The download includes the following

• Netscript
• 3 Netmaps.
• MML and phyA files for merging with your own maps.
• A pdf manual that explains how to play and what is required for making your own maps.

Included Maps

Zoranel: This map was created for testing purposes and is not the prettiest, but i feel it was fun to play on so I'm including it. It is the largest map in this pack currently.

Wrath Eternal: This is a modification of the Bungie netmap "Wrath No More?" to support Gambit. It is the smallest map in the pack and can get very hectic!

Salinn: This is a modification of one of my own netmaps to support Gambit. In terms of size this map is somewhere between Wrath Eternal and Zoranel

Future Updates

The main feature I am looking into adding is an intro cinematic. Other than that all currently planned features are present, so updates will be limited to bug fixes or adding new netmaps

Feedback or Bugs

Feedback and Bugs can be reported on the pfhorums thread here

Credits

• Original Mode: Bungie
• Marathon Scripting: anonfriction, level47otter, liacrow
• Custom Physics: liacrow
• Levels: AnonFriction (with some maps being modifications of official Bungie netmaps)
• Testing: anonfriction, level47otter, liacrow, spooky

• Marathon Gambit Artwork: wyvernzu

• W’rkncacnter and jteg for answering all my dumb questions when I was getting started.

• Benoit whose Survival2.0 script helped me learn the setup of many things (and which I basically lifted Health Regen from)
• Ku-rin for sharing their cameras.lua file on the pfhorums and providing additional help!
• Everyone else who helped test or jumped into random netgames!

Notes for version 1.1:

Changes

Disabled High Value Target notifications as they were sometimes causing the match to become softlocked.

Looking into

• Rewriting HVT notification

• Sometimes combatants fail to spawn causing a team to become softlocked

1,374 downloads, 3 reviews, 7 screenshots, 5.0 rating

This script makes it possible to leave annotations on the overhead map. This can be useful for exploration or for reminders about ammo caches, switches to flip, etc.

There is theoretical support for co-op games, but this has not been tested extensively. Scenarios that make heavy use of Lua such as Eternal and Where Monsters Are In Dreams might not work nicely with the Annotations script.

Along with the included Readme file, you can watch a tutorial video here.

Notes for version 1.0:

First version. Persistent annotations, presets, and custom strings.

156 downloads, 0 reviews, 1 screenshot

This plugin increases the number of AI monsters active at any one time. The increased number was the default setting in Aleph One until 1.1, when the Marathon 2/Infinity defaults were restored.

You should use this plugin with scenarios built specifically for Aleph One, such as Eternal X, Kill Them All, or Phoenix. When/if those scenarios are updated, you will no longer need this plugin. Do not enable the plugin for scenarios orginally designed for Marathon Infinity, such as Tempus Irae.

2,929 downloads, 0 reviews, 0 screenshots