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Been done before?
Has anyone tried doing a Marathon TC before? I want to start on one when I'm finished with Nebula. It would be small (<20 systems), and would use graphics inspired from the chapter screens. Of course, most of the missions would be text over gameplay, but there's still a lot of major battles that were fought while you are planetside. It could also take advantage of making a ship-type station that you can land on, but would move around with NCBs. It wouldn't be of much interest to the general community being mostly about the story and less about the gameplay, but the same types of people who shell out 50 Mil for a Kestrel in Nova even though it's not the best ship in the game will probably love it if they're into Marathon.
Anyway, what does everybody think about an idea like this?
This post has been edited by Cosmic_Nusiance : 14 September 2007 - 02:04 PM
I've considered making a Halo TC someday, mainly to use Unrelenting from the Halo 2 soundtrack as the menu music, but I've never played Marathon. I recall thinking, "Why exactly would a game about a marathon be fun?" back when I first heard about it, but I didn't know what it was about.
You can download it here. You'll need Aleph One to run it on a newer computer (simply drag into Marathon folder; only Marathon 2 and Infinity are going to work). It's made by the same guys who do Halo, and it's probably the first FPS that actually had a reasonable story. Bungie released the source code, so it's completely free.
Here's a taste of the writing from the manual. It's a suprisingly well written game from a time when most FPSs had no story whatsoever.
Quote
Pfhor Battle Group Three, Central Arm, hung motionless above the dusty ball of rock that was Lh'owon, the second planet of a dim star ninety-seven light-years from the gravitational center of the Milky Way. The gigantic battleship, three smaller destroyers and twenty auxiliary craft had not left the system for nearly six years. They were not to be relieved for another two.
Lh'owon had once been a marsh world; now it was a nearly waterless desert. It had been populated, a thousand years ago, by a race of highly intelligent creatures who had already landed on their own moons and would soon have headed to other stars. Below, their cities stood empty and ruined.
In its glory years, Battle Group Three had been known throughout the Empire; decorated in every battle anyone remembered from the Wars of Imperium, for turning back the loyalists at Tahrm's Gap and holding the approaches to the Pfhor homeworld itself during the slave revolt of the Nakh.
Undefeated in battle, it was finally politics that splintered Battle Group Three; by sending a few ships to suppress subservient races here, a few more to garrison the fringes of Pfhor influence there, the nobility had slowly broken the power of the old Navy.
What was left of Battle Group Three had been assigned to this dead world in the Galactic Core. To defend the system against a single enemy no one expected would ever arrive, and who had last been seen thousands of light-years away.
The tedium of blockade duty had destroyed morale and discipline.
In the dark between the orbits of the sixth and seventh planets, slightly above the ecliptic, a ship vanished, folding soundlessly in on itself in impossible ways. As the long craft twisted and faded in one place, it began simultaneously to appear in another.
The stolen ship had been in the system for days, keeping its distance from Lh'owon and the Pfhor fleet surrounding it; dodging among asteroids and moons, testing and measuring. Looking for something. Waiting.
Alarms sounded throughout Battle Group Three, screaming that a vessel had folded into existence less than thirty kilometers away from the battleship. Computer operators throughout the fleet stared in disbelief at their tactical screens- no ship could jump this close to a gravity source. For three seconds, no warning was passed, no word spoken, no action taken.
The invader erupted in a hundred thin lines of green fire, striking out toward the Pfhor ships, phasing through their shielding, destroying weapons or engines or communications gear. In seconds Battle Group Three had been disabled, and their ships began exploding. In two minutes only one ship remained among the debris in orbit above Lh'owon.
Down on the planet, as the orbital bombardment began, the Pfhor garrison was only just beginning to understand how hard their life would become over the next few days.
I stared through the window of transparent metal alloy and out into space. For a moment I'd thought we were still at the colony, still on the alien ship in orbit around Tau Ceti. But there were too many stars here, and the sun was too red and the planet too big.
The ship felt different, too. Cleaner, but older. The scars of the battle which had nearly consumed it had been erased. Most of them, anyway: I thought that I remembered firing the grenade which had buckled the armor plating in the hallway outside the room where I awoke. The dent was still there, if you looked close enough. Painted over and smoothed out, but still there.
When it turned out that Durandal had brought me here, instead of leaving me to be the hero on Tau Ceti like I deserved, I wasn't surprised. Durandal was the rogue personality construct who had been the brains behind the defense of the colony ship Marathon. I'd been the brawn. Durandal had always been unpredictable, even when he was just opening doors and managing food processors three hundred years ago on Mars. Together we had fought off the Pfhor invasion of Tau Ceti. I don't think a single one of the three-eyed creatures survived, but we'd taken their ship.
Now Durandal said that we were in the Galactic Core, thousands of light-years from Tau Ceti or Earth, and that seventeen years had passed since we left Tau Ceti. He had ignored my questions, mostly, telling me that I wouldn't have wanted to stay on Tau Ceti anyway.
Seventeen years in an alien stasis chamber, in a space a little too tall and too thin for human comfort, unconscious and dreamless within a few degrees of absolute zero. Seventeen years, while Durandal had raced about the galactic core in a stolen Pfhor attack ship. He's probably right when he said those years were boring, but nobody asked me what I wanted.
Now he says there's fighting to be done, and that I've got fifteen minutes to prepare for transport down to the planet. I guess I'll figure things out as I go along. Just like last time.
This post has been edited by Cosmic_Nusiance : 14 September 2007 - 12:57 PM
Wow, that's good writing. I aspire to that kind of skill.
You'll need Aleph One to run it on a newer computer
That won't be a problem; I can run dos on this baby
Yeah. I've always liked the Marathon preambles, and I always try to write like that. They use so many descriptive words. "The dusty ball of rock that was Lh'owon". I've always liked that part.
Here's a screenshot, minus most of the status bar. This guy's been messing with data files; also one of my favorite pastimes.
This post has been edited by Cosmic_Nusiance : 14 September 2007 - 01:10 PM
nah, that's a screenshot of Marathon: Durandal for the Xbox 360 with HD graphics turned off.
....I think.
@3dd13, on Sep 14 2007, 06:03 PM, said in Marathon TC Idea:
They released it for the XBOX?
You know, Ashen Galaxy started as me putting together some ships and weapons from the Halo novels. The humans are heavily inspired by Marathon and Halo. Just a bit of trivia there.
@cosmic_nusiance, on Sep 14 2007, 10:21 PM, said in Marathon TC Idea:
Yes; see this topic over on Just Games.
A Marathon TC...it's certainly been considered before (even ATMOS started out doing Marathon maps before Nova), but I don't think it's actually been done.
Would it work? You'd have some major hurdles; it sounds like a harder transition than turning Halo into a strategy game, for instance. As rich as the Marathon story is, there's not much backstory about spaceship battles. In terms of "is this Pfhor ship stronger or weaker than this Nar ship?" you'd have to guess 99% of the time, and that's the kind of question you have to ask if you're making a plugin rather than just a story. In Marathon 1, there's only a handful of interstellar jumps mentioned: the Marathon moving from Mars to Tau Ceti, and the Pfhor ship warping in from some Pfhor world to attack the Marathon. That's not much action to base a game off of.
I don't want to discourage you, but it's hard to see how you can get a universe and missions out of what's there.
@captain-bob, on Sep 15 2007, 12:23 AM, said in Marathon TC Idea:
Like I said, it'd be a mostly nostalgic, text based storyline. However, there are some accounts of space battles, e.g. Durandal fighting off several of the Pfhor ships in a lone Corvette and crashing on Lh'owon. There are some graphics of ships in-game, and the rest would be left to the imagination. It'd be an interesting side project, too.
I have officially decided that I'm going to do this. After Nebula. Expect a long wait.
You know what, if you are serious, then I may be willing to lend a hand with that kind of a project. Depending on how Spacelane is coming along. I mean, the equally well written predecessor to halo? I'm in.
@shlimazel, on Sep 18 2007, 11:55 AM, said in Marathon TC Idea:
Equally well written? Try much much better. Anyway, you'll probably be done with spacelane, as it'll be after Nebula chapter 2 at the very earliest.
I don't think you can compare Halo's writing to Marathon's, mostly because all of Marathon's story was transmitted through text and with Halo it's through cutscenes. It's like the difference between reading a novel and watching a movie. They're both great, just very different.
@plug idea: I'd say go for it. I'd play it.
See? There is another genius among us who recognizes the value of Halo.
True. I need to try and find some spare time to give Marathon a shot so I'll be better prepared when Cosmic Nuisance is ready to roll.
@shlimazel, on Sep 20 2007, 11:06 AM, said in Marathon TC Idea:
Don't get too into it. It's very VERY addicting. I did give you the download link, right?
Hah! Don't worry, I'll try not to go everquest on it. Yeah, you gave me the link; I've just been too busy to get around to playing any games recently.
Make sure you read Marathon's Story. It would be a shame if you missed any terminals.
@gray-shirt-ninja, on Sep 20 2007, 03:49 PM, said in Marathon TC Idea:
I have an app that lets me read the terminals straight from the map file.
Wow, I clicked on that link and it informed me that I was visitor number 7,777,777
:blink:
Coincidence? NEVER!