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	Message: : For a bit of nostalgia the other day I downloaded Aleph One and fired up my : old incomplete total conversion, Apotheosis, then decided the files might : be of interest to whatever is left of the marathon community. : Click to download 29 mb ZIP file : Screenshots: : : : : : : : : : : Apotheosis died at the finish line. : Although dozens of people came and went from the project throughout the : years, whose contributions were invaluable, and whose names I have for the : most part regrettably forgotten, the main body of work was carried out by : myself and Ben Fisher. What you have in these files is an essentially : complete game, a bit rough around the edges and not tweaked for Aleph one, : but you can play it from start to finish, a total conversion with 22 : complete solo levels! : What's In Apotheosis: : - A 22 level single player game with brand new terminal art and a story : fleshing out the Marathon universe. : - 16 Network levels. : - A whole new weapons set. : - 5 New environments. : - 7 New in-game characters. : What you can do with it: : - Play it! Let us know what you think! Tell other Marathon fans about it! : - Finish it! Are you an intrepid marathon developer? Tie up our loose ends! : We don't know how to edit marathon files under OSX, but some of you lot : seem to! : - Use it for your own projects. Like the textures, weapons, monsters? Feel : free to use them. Please ASK first, and credit the Apotheosis team. : Apotheosis is incomplete Abandonware: : - It's essentially in late beta. : - The game seems to run bug free under the latest version of Aleph One. There : will be glitches in the HUD however, as all the data for the positioning, : naming and animating of HUD elements originally resided in the Marathon : Infinity data fork, and was never properly migrated to Aleph One MML. : - The title screen should work, the MML required to reposition the buttons : has been created. : - The ending of the last level won't work properly. We were trying to : simulate a reactor detonating, and you had a certain time limit to escape. : This required hacking of the Infinity engine, which again, was not : migrated to Aleph One MML. Instead, you'll just get drowned in liquid and : probably hear some strange sounds. : - There's no chapter screens. I've included the ending crawl as a text file, : which you can read when you finish the scenario. I've included the other : chapter screens, in various states of completion, as .jpgs. : - I lost a lot of final graphical tweaks, about half the landscapes are old : and inconsistent, the look of the Fenris natives is complete in the : terminals and as sprites, but the level textures and architecture related : to them are based on old versions of the plot. Some weapon sprites, icons : and ammunition are inconsistent. Many textures are outdated. : - Game balance is not quite right. It's very hard, but you have a lot of : ammo, and the difficulty is inconsistent. : So why did we drop the ball when we were so close to the end? : - My mac died, taking all my working files with it. No original photoshop or : illustrator files exist. This stopped me from doing final changes that I : wanted to make to the games graphics. The game files here are a back ups : from an FTP that are missing many of the final tweaks and several levels I : intended to include in the final release. : - I replaced my dead Mac with a new Mac, one that ran OSX. Marathons editing : tools all ran in classic, so this essentially put an end to editing most : of the game data. This was in 2003. The files have languished on my hard : drive since then. : - Ben got a PC then got a real job getting paid to make real games. He spent : the last year of the project writing terminals in his free time and not : really seeing the fruits of his labour. : - I got a real job as well, and lost interest in gaming and game modding. : A by no means complete list of authors, testers and contributors: : Todd Proctor, Ben Fisher, Richard Dierkes, Simon Dupuis, Jon Dickie, Jane : Davis, Simon something or other, the venerable Hamish Sanderson (HAS), : Robert Balmer, and many others whose names have escaped my memory . I'm : sorry if this means you. She BoB and Ydnar provided some textures from : their public texture libraries. : Some retrospective thoughts about the project (spoilers ahoy!): : - It looks pretty damn good. One of the prettiest Marathon TC's that never : got made. It lacks the polish of Tempus Irae and Rubicon, I made some of : the artwork assets at the ripe old age of 14, and indeed, most of the : themes present were conceived then as well. As a result there's an : inconsistency in quality that never sat well with me. The game is an : interesting document of Ben's and my own journey from 14 year old amateur : pixel pushers to professional designers in our respective fields. : - We were teenagers. There was no project management, no clear over-arching : goal, no milestones, deadlines or institutionalised quality control. Just : a bunch of nebulous ideas that somehow congealed into a working total : conversion. Again, this led to inconsistencies that bothered me once I was : old enough to realise and played a role in my reluctance to complete and : release Apotheosis. : - Everything is designed for the infinity engine. I think we did a damn good : job of pushing it to it's limits. There's no Aleph One features here at : all. : - It's too hard. I never listened to the anguished cries of my beta testers. : It relies too much on unfair tactics like teleporting monsters behind the : player, having attacks come from all directions and placing enemies around : the lips of abrupt corners. Surprise, you're dead! There's more carnage : and less switch hunts than your average Marathon adventure. : - There's never really a satisfactory explanation of level objectives in the : terminals. This is ok, most of the levels I designed are fairly linear and : small. Ben's and especially Richard's levels are slightly more complex and : require obscure solutions. : - There's plenty of ammo and guns. You wont be worrying about ammunition : conservation. : - There's no real difficulty gradation. The game is hard from the start and : stays hard. This is fine, anyone playing this knows how to play Marathon : by now, but it's a bit grating to go from a level like Knives, Sharp : Sticks into Eve Of Orbit. Completely different pacing. : - The defence levels are a fun gimmick, but I might have overdone it. : - The guns are good. They're meaty, powerful and satisfying to use. You get a : super weapon at the end that's kind of lame. : - The sounds are awful. : - The new monsters are shit. They're boring. The Veteran Fighter and Swarm : are melee only damage sponges. Melee only monsters simply do not work in : Marathon's ancient engine, they're no fun to fight at all. The Kasuma : Class Robot is too big, and as such looks utterly ridiculous with : Marathon's 8 angle sprite animations. It's also nothing more than a : Juggernaut with legs. Boring. The Battleroid looks pretty bad ass, but he : walks like a twat. I'm not a very good 3d animator. The revised MADD's are : pretty cool looking, but they're just a rehash from a monster Bungie : dropped with Marathon 2. The Fenris Natives are introduced in a way that : will hopefully raise the hairs on the back of your neck. You don't spend : long fighting them though. The Virals are literally Spht 2.0. : - The story is ridiculous and convoluted. I thought it up when I was 14 and : kind of stuck with it for 5 years. Ben did an amazing job of taking my : stupid ideas and reworking them into a narrative that actually works. : Regards, : Todd Proctor : 1/7/07 : work@7kdf.com
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