Bungie's Marathon (& mods)

Not at all, the story's done. I'm just not sure where to post it. There's a Marathon fanfic site, but that hasn't been updated in forever. I asked about it on the Marathon story page forums.

No no no, I meant the Writer's Block subfora on the TV Tropes forums.

Ohh, duh. Should've figured that out, especially since I've posted there before. Thing is, nobody seems to comment on what I post. I guess it's as good a place as any though.

edited 15th Jun '10 10:18:57 AM by Destron

Here it is.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=po99c91ek7khp8m3s0gi0k0v&page=1#1

So yeah, I've been playing this game a bit (the first one), and now I'm stuck on "Fire!"(x5)

I have an idea of what I'm supposed to do. I've already found and activated the switch on that level to make the platforms rise out of the lava. However, I can't seem to master this "grenade hopping" trick to get myself out of that room and back to the main area. It seems that the grenade that gets me onto the platform is also the one that kills me, resulting in a nice, meaty *thud* when I land.

Can anyone out there give me some tips as to how to grenade hop properly?

One little trick that's fairly important in FPSs of Marathon's vintage is double-chording, where you use two strafe keys at once to move about a third faster than normal: As in, point your view about 45° to the left of where you actually want to run, then hold down “forward” and “sidestep right” at the same time to move. The extra speed should allow you to clear many shorter gaps without even grenade hopping, and will make grenade hopping more effective to boot.

Also, lob the grenade a ways ahead of you to minimize damage, fire the assault rifle's gun downward while in the air to add a bit of height at the expense of some length, make sure you're running actually running rather than walking, and if you're really having trouble surviving then look for the 2X shield charger.

This level isn't really very hard, but I bet you're REALLY going to enjoy the next level, Colony Ship.

Thanks for the tips. Managed to clear the giant lava chasm without even bothering with the switch

In addition, I made two discoveries of my own (although they might already be pretty well-known for all I know):

1. You can chain multiple grenades together in the same hop.
2. If you're running / jumping backwards, firing the Assault Rifle actually adds to the distance. (At least, that's how it seemed to work; I swear that this is what finally got me on the other side).

And yes, "Colony" certainly has some interesting surprises. For instance, I just found the Giant Crushing Piston of Doom.

Decided to try playing through again before I try some mods, since I finally got it working on this new computer. And that I'd go for 100% Completion. What the hell was that red-eye-ifying item in 1. Bigger Guns Nearby? Spoiler guide says Infrared Goggles, what do those do?

Oh right and why I'm necroing the thread:

WHO THE FUCK PLACED THE GHERITT WHITE TERMINAL

HOW DO I SHOT WALLCLIMB

edited 23rd Nov '10 1:56:22 PM by Tzetze

That was the infrared pickup, Tze. It colors items one color, Pfhor another color, hapless BO Bs/friendlies yet another color, and the rest of the environment an indecipherable blue.

It isn't that useful.

And Bungie placed the terminal. Really, isn't that all you need to know?

This post

Then I read in the Marathon Scrapbook thingie:

Rob wasn’t content to simply revise older aliens; he created several new ones as well. One such creation was the “cyborg tank” with its Michael Jordanesque weaponry - the bouncing bomb. These were originally conceived as surgically-altered Bobs, an “enemy” the player might feel bad about killing. (Then again, some people like to kill Bobs.) Rob explains how the idea arose:

“Remember after you and Durandal hoofed it away from Tau Ceti, the larger force of Pfhor show up and rain on everybody’s parade Being slavers they grab up what they can and turn the rest into sub-atomic salsa. Well I initially put forward the idea that you might run across these loin cloth-wearing shackled Bob’s on one of the Pfhor ships (and at several locations planetside), but no one would go for it... so then I came up with the idea that the Pfhor have all this information on you from tapping into the information stored in the ‘Pattern Buffer Devices’ that you dumped your ‘pattern’ into all over the Marathon. So the Pfhor have a bunch of schematics and all this raw material but no experience this sort of advanced surgery and only 17 years to ‘get it right’. So basically the ‘cyborg tanks’ are these unfortunate Bobs that have been ‘radically, surgically altered’ so that the Pfhor would have some hard guys of their own waiting for you when you got to Lh’owon! Of course none of this ever made it into the game.”

Spooky.

Wait 'til you see what gets used as a comm terminal/pattern buffer in RED.

I picked this up upon Tzetze's suggestion.

Holy damn I'm bad at these.

The Hard Stuff Rules.

I love the final level of Infinity. Majestic architecture considering the engine.

Apparently the level Ex Cathedra was based off of an actual cathedral. And originally you weren't able to swim in that level. Ouch.

Anyway, I'm up to "Two Plus Two Equals..." on whatever the difficulty harder than normal but not Total Carnage is called, and then I'll hopefully get to LP'ing the mods. Don't want to start with RED.

I'd start with Tempus Irae. Gameplay-wise it is completely like standard Marathon with some new graphics and slightly different way of handling keys and stuff.

EVIL is great, it's sort of like combining M2's open ended levels with M1's dark creepiness.

edited 30th Jan '11 4:49:16 PM by Charlatan

I had heard that Marathon was available on iOS, but I can't find it anywhere. Anyone know how to get it?

I had Marathon on iOS, but I think it's only available on iPad.

Every time I follow a link to get it, nothing comes up.