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Marathon: Resurrection

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Wail
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Subject: Marathon: Resurrection

Post Posted: 04 Feb 2008, 07:45

Resurrecting this thread since the move to the new forums left us without one.

On 7/7/07 M:R went public with the 2.0 release, containing the full Marathon singleplayer experience (27 maps), as well as a number of classic netmaps ported over from Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon: Infinity.


Although the 2.0 release is a complete recreation of all of the elements of Marathon, there are many things that have been requested for the game, and many things that could have been improved with the tools available in Unreal Engine. We were also approached by Shadow who offered to allow us to utilize his SDK to improve many elements of M:R. So we have slowly begun work on refining and adding on to what we've already accomplished.

Some of the aspects of Marathon: Resurrection we are looking to improve as we move forward are:

Planned as of the time of this post:
-Introduction of Coop in SinglePlayer
-Standardization of levels (as many contributors worked on our levels) and use of tools in Shadow's UT99 SDK to further enhance visuals
-Improvements to weapons, including both performance and visuals
-Bug fixes to issues arising in the 2.0 release
-New levels (Netmaps, and possibly singleplayer)
-More new textures, more new sounds, more music, more more more(!!!)
Marathon: Resurrection project @ http://resurrection.bungie.org/

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Post Posted: 15 Feb 2008, 13:47

argh.. -.- no one posted yet...

as you may remember I told you about my old computer and the related impossibility of playing M:R, now I've a new one and played it, on the one hand it archives the old charme pretty good on the other hand I recommend map improvements under keeping the old charme alive, that's quite a difficult task, but you can archive that "omd I'm doomed on my own ship.."-feeling with better looking maps, but all in all it's a huge pack of contents and I enjoyed playing it, I'm also looking forward to help you adapting my SDK to suite your mod

Wail
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Post Posted: 18 Feb 2008, 01:59

Shadow wrote:argh.. -.- no one posted yet...

as you may remember I told you about my old computer and the related impossibility of playing M:R, now I've a new one and played it, on the one hand it archives the old charme pretty good on the other hand I recommend map improvements under keeping the old charme alive, that's quite a difficult task, but you can archive that "omd I'm doomed on my own ship.."-feeling with better looking maps, but all in all it's a huge pack of contents and I enjoyed playing it, I'm also looking forward to help you adapting my SDK to suite your mod


Yeah, absolutely. Improving maps is definitely on the list. And understandably so. There were probably about 10 different mappers, and not everyone has the the same aesthetic sense or proficiency with UnrealEd.
Marathon: Resurrection project @ http://resurrection.bungie.org/

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Post Posted: 19 Mar 2008, 01:38

I'll probably be able to give a bit of feedback on this soon; I was going to play Marathon (I decided to get around to playing it, since it's always bought up in discussions about awesome stories) like this, then I realised it has two sequels, and, since I knew I wouldn't be able to resist continuing with them I decided to play the original game (with Aleph One), so I could get used to the older graphics and any technical issues without without throwing myself right into an older engine after playing the first Marathon game on the Unreal engine. So I'll play Resurrection later.

I did play the first couple of levels in Resurrection though, and it definitely seems very faithful (perhaps a little too faithful visually).

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Post Posted: 25 Mar 2008, 05:34

Played through it, note that there are minor spoilers for people who haven't played it. Worst first; "Welcome to the Revolution..." has a bug where the end teleport is outside of the level, making it completely impossible to finish the level, how the hell did that get through testing? I just manually loaded the next level (there were enough Alien weapons for the penultimate level, but I had to cheat through the last level).

The visuals definitely differ quite a lot; while they all stick to the original layout, there are quite a few variances in the detail, Wail's levels are definitely the best (the pfhor levels in particular), with the most little extra details, lighting, sounds and other things to add life, without diluting the overall style of the levels, while others are very similar to the originals; several could definitely have done with some touching up to have the details of Wail's levels.

Feedback on weapons/enemies (this was on normal, so I'm guessing my issues amplify as the difficulty goes up):

Fists have too much range, in the original they could be used but there was always a risk, in Resurrection, Staff Pfhor (ones that can't do range attacks anyway) are completely harmless with them. That's before you get the new Pfhor staff, which seems to be an enhanced fist, although I got that in a secret room, so I guess it might have been an intentional one-off easter egg.

Did I miss a second pistol in Resurrection? Thinking back on it makes me realise I only had one throughout the game, and that isn't too good, considering the origin of dual wielding is one of Marathon's several claims to fame.

I'm wondering what the "idle" animation on the Assault Rifle is about; it looks like your guy is trying to club the air in some strange way, it doesn't seem to make sense to me. Also, I could use this in the vaccum level, despite not being supposed to be able to (I intentionally made sure not to though).

I found the Fusion pistol ironically different; in the original games I found the primary one of the most effective all-round weapons in the series, while the secondary was almost useless. In Resurrection, the enemies dodging made the primary feel useless and the new multi-hit laser beam secondary incredibly useful (I thought it was a bit overpowered at first, but I found it all right by the end after things heated up). That's more an observation than a suggestion.

I think the staff Pfhor look wrong, while I was playing the first game the Resurrection look seemed fine to me, but after the more detailed sprites in the sequels, seeing them as hunch-backed things feels wrong (they seem portrayed as more upright in the originals).

I really like the Hulk look; it really gives the feel they are massive monsters. They are almost harmless, but that's how they were in the original too :P .

I think the Wasps are a bit too damaging; they are supposed to be pests, but they can slaughter you in about five hits max (with a red bar) at close range.

I like the concept behind the new Hunters, but the execution feels off, making them fast close range killers fits their image better than the gunners they were in the original, but the contrast in danger between their melee and range attacks is way off. Their range attack is insanely fast and knocks off chunks of health, in contrast, their melee attacks are relatively glacial and barely damage you. They either need a stronger melee attack, or a range attack that is either slower or less damaging (I'd rather the last, as they are dangerous enough as it is, and that wouldn't nerf them too bad).

The Enforcers are bad enough that I'm inclined to call them broken. In the original game they were hitscan nuisances who could chip away at you if you weren't careful, but were no real threat, I support making them a little tougher, as they were a bit of a joke in the original (and the sequels did a good job at that by giving them a non-hitscan weapon, but one that could actually hurt if it hit), but Resurrection goes way over and turns them into walking death, they can snipe from distances and tear your health to pieces in seconds if you get caught off-guard. This also leads into the Alien weapon, which I support making more useful (and, again, I thought the sequels already did a good job of that), rather than just a way to save a few shots, but it's perhaps a bit too strong for a throwaway weapon now (lowering its effectiveness would fix the Enforcers and this issue).

That's the main things I can think of now, are you going to do the sequels too? More detail is going to be important there, as Alien worlds will be harder to make look convincing with cube-like architecture in comparison to a human colony (it would be awesome if you could capture the curvy organic look you see in the background throughout Lh'owon). On that note, if you are going on, will you be changing up the original weapons like Marathon 2 did? While it was presumably to add more detail, I liked how weapons had changed in the course of seventeen years, rather than just staying the same.

Here's a bunch of shots of various other technical/progression issues I had:

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You can walk inside the satellite at G4 sunbathing (at the lights), to see this.

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This is a room in the first level, clips are here and can be collected, but are invisible, this is an issue in various levels, but I just showed this one as an example.

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More ammo oddities.

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This Woman is dead, but like this, it may just be a UT issue and not a Resurrection one, but I posted it anyway.

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This is near the start of "Cool Fusion", there is a zone portal here that seems distractingly placed; there are many enemies in the next room (and it's only a room) and the portal leads to several weird glitches in fighting them, it would probably be better off removed.

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The lava here (the start of "Fire!" (etc) ) does nothing, and isn't even a liquid, meaning the only way out if you fall in is a grenade jump.

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What are you supposed to do here? I recall shooting a switch or something in the original game, but I had to fly to use the terminal and exit here.

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There are MANY health terminals with the triggers set up wrong to either make them near unusable or outright unusable. I just posted the worst here; the start of "Habe Quiddam" requires you to go through lava, and with this terminal not working you could potentially get totally stuck.

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Pressing this and not running out fast enough caused some very weird bug where all the movement keys would fail to function.

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Self explanatory (Football field in "No Artificial Colors").

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The fog here (in "Two Times Two Equals...") made the FPS SO bad it made the game near-unplayable until I turned off volumetric lighting (and I should be able to handle UT easily and then some). There are other places like this, but this was the worst.

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This switch in "Two Times Two Equals..." is unusable.

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The "prison" textures here are scaled too small, removing the creepy effect of the original games ones and just looking odd.

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How are you supposed to get back? I recall no issues in the original game here, but I had to grenade jump when playing Resurrection.

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This "jumping" puzzle is very easy in the original game due to the physics, but it's incredibly hard in Resurrection and should be rethought (the fact you can't exit the level after making it as it is also a kick in the balls :) ).

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Many of the usable objects in "Try Again" require you to look at this weird angle to use them.

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"Try Again" again; above the doorway is a HOM.

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This is one piece of lighting (in "Defend This!") that seems really wrong. Greenings much?

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I couldn't seem to pick up any of the items in this hidden cache in "Couch Fishing"

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This floor in "Smells Like Napalm, Tastes Like Chicken" goes invisible (as you can see).

Also, in "The Rose" it seems like you can exit early without killing all the enemies, like what the mission is supposed to be.

It's a good job at porting the game so far, but it seems like a bit more testing was needed.

Wail
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Subject:

Post Posted: 25 Mar 2008, 22:58

Thanks for taking the time to play through and post your feedback, it's really appreciated Mman!


Worst first; "Welcome to the Revolution..." has a bug where the end teleport is outside of the level, making it completely impossible to finish the level, how the hell did that get through testing?


The following level was the last one we finished... Was actually assigned to someone else who (IIRC) never came through with the level and so Designator Hawk and I were desperately trying to get that one done. Once it was, I went in to point the teleporter URL in Revolution to the next level I must've accidentally dragged it off into space.

That one really frustrates me as well. There's another one you haven't mentioned - The M1.utx included with the full download is not actually the correct version, it's an older version without the proper high-res alien textures. Not really any excuse, just the sort of things that result from trying to hit the deadline we set for ourselves with little sleep and not enough manpower or time.


Feedback -
-Fists, I never had a problem with being too powerful. In fact, they strike me as weaker than in the original just due to the way the Pfhor will dodge them now. Staff pfhor were never a real threat in themselves anyways, though, they're only there to soak up hits or crowd you in.
-Pistols, I can't remember where the second pistol first shows up in the SP, but it's definitely implemented. Shows up plenty in netmaps.
-Fusion, definitely my favorite weapon of the group. You're right that the primary bolts are significantly less effective -- But the alternate fire is great, and is completely necessary with the way wasps fly all over the place given true 3D movement.

-Wasps, they were actually a lot deadlier in previous releases ... They were probably the most difficult creatures in the game. Fortunately I managed to make enough fuss to get them toned down, but I'd like to see a little bit more done to weaken them.
-Hunters, yeah, their shoulder cannon might be a bit too powerful. I think they could stand to be more powerful in melee as you suggest. For some reason they've never felt really right to me ... Too easy to take down compared to how I remember it, even though all the damage and health values are right.
-Enforcers I never had a problem with in the game, although that's mostly because the alien weapon is much better than the original. (I wonder why you say that the alien weapon is improved in the sequels though - I actually found it became virtually useless in M2 and Infinity, compared to being quite good in the original) I actually advocated for the weapon to be toned down, as it seems to be able to fire about twice as much as in the original game, meaning you can mow through all kinds of enemies and just pick up another one when all the enforcers are dead.


I don't think it's really feasible to do the sequels given how long it's taken to get this project to this state. I mean, each of the sequels are at least as long as the original Marathon - That's 60 more levels at least, plus new creatures.
What I do want to do is to fix up the current project - Revamp the singleplayer and net levels (and potentially add more). It's known from years of fans digging into Marathon that there were supposed to be more levels in the original Marathon - Probably more alien ship levels and story sequences involving the Tau Ceti colony. I'd kind of like to add in optional levels to explore these areas of the storyline, but I can't say for certain that it'll happen.

Lately I have far less time to spend on M:R, so I need help to make any real progress come about. Whether that's modellers who want to revamp some of the weapons or monsters, add in new weapons or monsters, or scripters who'd want to help clean up the code, add in coop mode, or mappers to help spruce up the existing levels to what Unreal is really capable of. Anything on any of these fronts would be awesome.
Marathon: Resurrection project @ http://resurrection.bungie.org/

Wail
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Post Posted: 25 Mar 2008, 23:43

I wanted to address the other specific things, but since my previous post was getting too damn long I broke it up.

Mman wrote:This is a room in the first level, clips are here and can be collected, but are invisible, this is an issue in various levels, but I just showed this one as an example.


Strange, I've never encountered this myself. I'll check it out later.


Mman wrote:This Woman is dead, but like this, it may just be a UT issue and not a Resurrection one, but I posted it anyway.


Probably my fault. We had BABs, but no pawns for them, so I set one of the BOBs to use the BABs skeleton, textures and sound effects.


Mman wrote:This is near the start of "Cool Fusion", there is a zone portal here that seems distractingly placed; there are many enemies in the next room (and it's only a room) and the portal leads to several weird glitches in fighting them, it would probably be better off removed.


If you look at the level in the editor you'll see why it's done that way.


Mman wrote:The lava here (the start of "Fire!" (etc) ) does nothing, and isn't even a liquid, meaning the only way out if you fall in is a grenade jump.


I remember when I was rebuilding this level I had a lot of problems with entire rooms becoming lava zones improperly. I guess I missed that and figured everything was finally correct.


Mman wrote:What are you supposed to do here? I recall shooting a switch or something in the original game, but I had to fly to use the terminal and exit here.


The Pfhor are supposed to ride the platform down, then you ride it back up. I'm pretty sure you can miss the platform and be stuck down by the floor in the original.

Mman wrote:There are MANY health terminals with the triggers set up wrong to either make them near unusable or outright unusable. I just posted the worst here; the start of "Habe Quiddam" requires you to go through lava, and with this terminal not working you could potentially get totally stuck.


Yep, this is a known issue. There's actually two types of rechargers in the game, those set up as movers with a shield recharger actor, and those which are a single deco-like shield recharger actor. The latter are the type that seem to give people problems, so I know I want to replace them all and get that sorted out.

Mman wrote:The fog here (in "Two Times Two Equals...") made the FPS SO bad it made the game near-unplayable until I turned off volumetric lighting (and I should be able to handle UT easily and then some). There are other places like this, but this was the worst.


Yeah, a lot of people have complained about the volumetrics. Gives me problems too at some points. Not much I can say about that except I hope Shadow gets that UT99 extension pack done so we can try other approaches to creating fog other than volumetrics.


Mman wrote:This switch in "Two Times Two Equals..." is unusable.


Think this is a known issue. At least you can go back around the other way (!), heh.


Mman wrote:The "prison" textures here are scaled too small, removing the creepy effect of the original games ones and just looking odd.


See my previous post. The scaling is right, it's just the version of M1.utx you're using is an older one.


Mman wrote:How are you supposed to get back? I recall no issues in the original game here, but I had to grenade jump when playing Resurrection.


Stand on the lifts as they rise. It's possible to get stuck here in the original too (although in M:R it's a lot more practical to grenade jump out)

Mman wrote:This "jumping" puzzle is very easy in the original game due to the physics, but it's incredibly hard in Resurrection and should be rethought (the fact you can't exit the level after making it as it is also a kick in the balls :) ).


Yeah, I had some concerns about this as well. However, I did adjust the gravity in this room to make it easier and was able to do it without huge difficulties myself. You can also simply grenade jump up to the terminal, or ride one elevator up and jump to the wall and walk along the wall.


Mman wrote:I couldn't seem to pick up any of the items in this hidden cache in "Couch Fishing"


Yep. When I was making that level I realized that was a problem, but didn't know enough to address it. What I should've done is made a factory to spawn the items once you open the door, or make a mover and attach the items to it and push them out.


Again, thanks for taking the time to write out such detailed feedback.
Marathon: Resurrection project @ http://resurrection.bungie.org/

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Post Posted: 26 Mar 2008, 01:58

Thinking about it, I guess the fist thing doesn't matter much, since, as you said, staff Pfhor are pretty much harmless anyway, and fists are still weak against anything else.

Wail wrote:-Enforcers I never had a problem with in the game, although that's mostly because the alien weapon is much better than the original. (I wonder why you say that the alien weapon is improved in the sequels though - I actually found it became virtually useless in M2 and Infinity, compared to being quite good in the original) I actually advocated for the weapon to be toned down, as it seems to be able to fire about twice as much as in the original game, meaning you can mow through all kinds of enemies and just pick up another one when all the enforcers are dead.


The Alien weapon in Marathon 1 is hitscan but extremely weak; so weak that it can only kill a couple of enemies above the level of a Staff Pfhor before running out, the Marathon 2 and 3 version is non-hitscan, but does a lot more damage so you can take out stronger enemies before needing a replacement, plus it burns stuff alive, for extra awesome :P .

I noticed the Alien weapon seemed to last way longer (along with being much more powerful) in M:R too, I think a mix of both decreasing its ammo and damage would work best. The Enforcers current danger seemed to make half the challenge of the tougher levels memorizing where they are and nuking them with rockets (or getting close with the Alien weapon) before they had a chance to mow you down.

Wail
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Post Posted: 26 Mar 2008, 03:28

Mman wrote:Thinking about it, I guess the fist thing doesn't matter much, since, as you said, staff Pfhor are pretty much harmless anyway, and fists are still weak against anything else.

Wail wrote:-Enforcers I never had a problem with in the game, although that's mostly because the alien weapon is much better than the original. (I wonder why you say that the alien weapon is improved in the sequels though - I actually found it became virtually useless in M2 and Infinity, compared to being quite good in the original) I actually advocated for the weapon to be toned down, as it seems to be able to fire about twice as much as in the original game, meaning you can mow through all kinds of enemies and just pick up another one when all the enforcers are dead.


The Alien weapon in Marathon 1 is hitscan but extremely weak; so weak that it can only kill a couple of enemies above the level of a Staff Pfhor before running out, the Marathon 2 and 3 version is non-hitscan, but does a lot more damage so you can take out stronger enemies before needing a replacement, plus it burns stuff alive, for extra awesome :P .

I noticed the Alien weapon seemed to last way longer (along with being much more powerful) in M:R too, I think a mix of both decreasing its ammo and damage would work best. The Enforcers current danger seemed to make half the challenge of the tougher levels memorizing where they are and nuking them with rockets (or getting close with the Alien weapon) before they had a chance to mow you down.


I'm not so sure about the more powerful bit. All the health and damage values are preserved from the original game, so I can't see how it would be that the weapon does any more raw damage. The ammo is different, but Marathon never gave a definite value to that (AFAIK). I'd like to reduce the ammo, myself, at least for the singleplayer. Adding in the M2 alien weapon for an easter egg / netplay could also be cool and not that much work.

Enforcers probably are a lot better with the weapon than they used to be, due to Unreal's AI. It's something I think that could bear looking at, just like the Wasps and how ridiculously annoying they are to kill sometimes due to their mobility.
Marathon: Resurrection project @ http://resurrection.bungie.org/

Yhe1
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Subject:

Post Posted: 21 Oct 2009, 04:19

There is still no patch for the "Welcome to the Revolution..." bug?

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Post Posted: 31 Jan 2010, 14:50

Is this project still active ?

Yhe1
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Subject: Re: Marathon: Resurrection

Post Posted: 11 Oct 2014, 05:47

" Worst first; "Welcome to the Revolution..." has a bug where the end teleport is outside of the level, making it completely impossible to finish the level"

I am thinking of trying this TC, but is the above mentioned bug ever fixed? Can somebody with map making skills fix this bug? Thanks!

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Subject: Re: Marathon: Resurrection

Post Posted: 19 Jan 2015, 15:14

Also, for the future, if you can't finish a level, don't switch to the next one with OPEN command. Use ADMIN SWITCHCOOPLEVEL command followed by the level's filename just as in case of OPEN. ADMIN SWITCHCOOPLEVEL will move you to the level desired while keeping everything you've amassed.
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Subject: Re: Marathon: Resurrection

Post Posted: 19 Jan 2015, 21:18

Delacroix wrote:Also, for the future, if you can't finish a level, don't switch to the next one with OPEN command. Use ADMIN SWITCHCOOPLEVEL command followed by the level's filename just as in case of OPEN. ADMIN SWITCHCOOPLEVEL will move you to the level desired while keeping everything you've amassed.
all of the links are dead on the bungie site, how is anyone playing this?

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Subject: Re: Marathon: Resurrection

Post Posted: 19 Jan 2015, 21:28

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