liacrow

4 Submissions

Marathon 1 Redux 0.0.13-alpha

liacrow on 07/30/2019

Screenshot titled "Epilogue level"

Weekly updates on Github: https://github.com/ravenshining/M1R

A project to give Marathon 1 a facelift, incorporating the new features of Aleph One to flesh out and add realism to the Marathon's architecture. Eventually, to include a branching storyline- possibly even missions on the colony moon.

Featuring Marathon 1 with lua scripting, liquids, ambient sound, new weapons, more scenery, improved sprites, expanded architecture, new terms & terminal art, and the latest HD plugins. Also including Craig Hardgrove's soundtrack, you can visit his page over at themarathonmusic.com !

At this point M1R should contain a complete, playable, almost bug-free recreation of M1, however, I still consider this an alpha as there are many more features and levels to come, and other features present that will be cut.

To contribute to this project, download it and read the "Help Wanted.txt" and/or TODO.txt," or head over to the Pfhorums where the lists and discussion are posted: http://pfhorums.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=53510

WINDOWS USERS PLEASE NOTE Marathon 1 Redux's extensive HD and 3D assets may cause 32-bit builds of Aleph One to crash immediately upon starting a game. To resolve this issue, you will have to experiment with turning off plugins or reducing texture replacement resolution to taste.

Notes for version 0.0.13-alpha:
  • Starting a new game now brings you directly to Arrival, rather than skipping though unfinished prologues
  • Currently unplayable levels are hidden from the level-select dialogue
  • Lua scripting is finding its way to several levels to control special events and functions
  • 3D models fixed so they no longer cause clipping & bloom problems, and distort less on pulsating textures
  • New texture variants, bringing the total number to 386! (including landscapes and animation frames)
  • Most levels updated to greater and lesser degrees to take advantage of the new textures
  • AI variant terminal textures applied to every terminal - e.g., a Leela terminal says LEELA on it in-world
  • Differentiated solid and liquid lava, and to a lesser degree, goo
  • New epilogue level (thanks to Pfhorrest for letting me re-use some Eternal geometry)
  • A new defensive twist to Pfhoraphobia to balance out its new Lua scripting
  • Updates to Arrival, The Rose, Welcome to the Revolution, Try Again, Beware of Low-Flying Defence Drones
  • The first Pfhor terminal
  • Pfhor fighter sprites optimised for bloom
  • Revised Vidmaster's Oath
  • Newly spawned players start with plot-appropriate weapons, at the expense of ammo
  • Low resolution fallback if you disable the 3072p landscape plugin
  • Lots of bugfixes in general, thank you to everyone who reported problems!
  • Much saner organisation overall
  • Probably more because it's been 9 months since 0.0.12!

Known bugs A mutant pfhor teleports into space and BoBs clog corridors in the epilogue level, both fixed in weelky release Flamethrower is wonky *Player's light is too dark, fixed in weekly release

3,925 downloads, 4 reviews, 9 screenshots, 4.2 rating

Screenshot titled "the burning air"

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

2,097 downloads, 0 reviews, 5 screenshots

Screenshot titled "The gas giant from "The Pfhor" chapterscreen above an enhanced Marathon"

This 360° wrap-around starscape replacement shows the stars as they would appear in the Tau Ceti system on July 3, 2794 at 0839 UTC, as well as a few local objects likely to be visible.

The stars, colony, and positions of planets have been rendered by Celestia, the open-source universe explorer. Using data on the planets known to be orbiting Tau Ceti, I made a few tweaks within real parameters to make things more comfy for our Martian colonists.

Remember the pink-brown planet from the Pfhor chapter screen? It's now an ice giant around which the colony orbits. Or is it a water giant? Celestia says it's 40F up there. Whatever, it's like Uranus, execpt smaller, warmer, and not sideways.

The huge blue planet is the colony moon, 1300 km below. I tried to put the Marathon in as high an orbit as possible while still being close enough to be an easily reached space station.

You can easily find Sol in the screen shot from G4 Sunbathing. It's just above and to the left of the right gantryway, or just below and to the right of Arcturus, slightly brighter than the surrounding stars.

On Marathon levels, your point of view will be from the Marathon's surface. The Scoutship will be part of the backdrop, while the scenery item is replaced by the unused slave transport sprite. On Pfhor levels, you view from an alien ship surface, and the Marathon sprite has been enhanced.

Software used: 1 - Gravitation to find a stable orbit for the moon, 2 - Celestia to produce renders, 3 -Hugin to stitch them together into a panorama, 4 - GIMP for postprocessing and Marathon's surface texturing.

To install, please drop the zip file into your appropriate plugins folder. Also, make sure that in Preferences > Graphics > Rendering Options, that "Replacement Texture Quality" for Landscapes is set to "Unlimited."

Notes for version 3.0:

-New landscape for Pfhor levels -Corrected star orientation on Pfhor levels -Removed floating Marathon logo -Restored & enhanced Marathon sprite -Shortened plugin UI name -Fixed Windows compatibility (I hope)

2,442 downloads, 2 reviews, 3 screenshots, 4.5 rating

Screenshot titled "Gas giant from "The Pfhor" chaptersceen above an enhanced Marathon"

This 360° wrap-around starscape replacement shows the stars as they would appear in the Tau Ceti system on July 3, 2794 at 0839 UTC, as well as a few local objects likely to be visible.

The stars, colony, and positions of planets have been rendered by Celestia, the open-source universe explorer. Using data on the planets known to be orbiting Tau Ceti, I made a few tweaks within real parameters to make things more comfy for our Martian colonists.

Remember the pink-brown planet from the Pfhor chapter screen? It's now an ice giant around which the colony orbits. Or is it a water giant? Celestia says it's 40F up there. Whatever, it's like Uranus, execpt smaller, warmer, and not sideways.

The huge blue planet is the colony moon, 1300 km below. I tried to put the Marathon in as high an orbit as possible while still being close enough to be an easily reached space station.

You can see Sol in the screen shot from G4 Sunbathing. It's just above and to the left of the right gantryway, or just below and to the right of Arcturus, slightly brighter than the surrounding stars.

On Marathon levels, your point of view will be from the Marathon's surface. The Scoutship will be part of the backdrop, while the scenery item is replaced by the unused slave transport sprite. On Pfhor levels, you view from an alien ship surface, and the Marathon sprite has been enhanced.

Software used: 1 - Gravitation to find a stable orbit for the moon, 2 - Celestia to produce renders, 3 -Hugin to stitch them together into a panorama, 4 - GIMP for postprocessing and Marathon's surface texturing.

To install, please drop the zip file into your appropriate plugins folder. Also, make sure that in Preferences > Graphics > Rendering Options, that "Replacement Texture Quality" for Landscapes is set to "Unlimited."

Notes for version 3.0:

-New landscape for Pfhor levels -Corrected star orientation on Pfhor levels -Removed floating Marathon logo -Restored & enhanced Marathon sprite -Shortened plugin UI name -Fixed Windows compatibility (I hope)

2,251 downloads, 1 review, 3 screenshots, 4.0 rating

5 Reviews

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

Insane perfectionism Aleph One: Pathways Into Darkness

liacrow on Feb 17th, 2019, Version 1.0

The amount of coding that went into perfectly recreating the exact behaviour of PiD is absolutely mind-boggling.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

Amazing! Spatial Outpouring - Chapter 1

liacrow on May 19th, 2018, Version 1.3

Bizzare, yet cohesive, abstruse, yet engaging. An impressive feat of scenario design. Loved the otherworldly not-quite-artificial intelligences and the dynamics between them. Really looking forward to more!

Also, Yuge's Agent Orange theme actually goes well with this scenario.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

Useful Differential Shading Checker Plugin

liacrow on May 9th, 2018, Version 1.0

Make sure you are running in OpenGL(Classic) mode for this to work. In shader mode, you'll still be able to discern everything even if your lighting is bad.

  • Currently 5/5 Stars.

For a smoother experience xBR Monsters for M1

liacrow on Jan 12th, 2018, Version 1.3

Those sample pics don't do this mod justice. This simple improvement really makes a difference in-game, no longer do the sprites stick out like a sore thumb against the new high-res textures. I'd love to see this done to Infinity!

  • Currently 1/5 Stars.

Better synth, but worse overall Marathon Music Remasterd

liacrow on Jan 9th, 2018, Version 2.0

I can see where there is potential in this - individually, each instrument sounds better. But, like all attempts at throwing newer midi at the old tracks, they aren't working well together as a whole. Unbalanced, grainy, horribly distorted, and the normalisation would be better left off- it's painful to hear instruments suddenly get louder at a quiet point in a song. I definitely prefer the originals, or better yet Craig Hardgrove's versions. That said, I'd like to hear some of these tracks if you could nix the normalisation and maybe quiet the drums.