: My question is this - Is this cheating?
I would say, in the immortal words of Reverend Lovejoy, "Short answer yes with an if, long answer no with a but." :) "Yes": you are altering the game in a way that it normally does not allow (the ability to edit the map, especially in this way, was never exposed to the user), and as you say it may go against the intentions of the creators. "If" and "No": If you are editing this to fix a bug in the game which damages its functionality in some way, like being unable to beat the level on TC, or that time when I edited TI2 to slightly alter a level that was consistently crashing me, this action would be justified. "But": If anyone else has ever beaten the level on TC, then sorry, leave the map alone go practice more :P
: Marathon community - there have been numerous patches for other scenarios
: that were developed to improve performance or correct bugs (eg. the Trojan
: Weapons Pump). Would this patch be welcome, or would it be a cowardly
: cheat?
The Weapons Pump is an external (4th party?) product, but it appears to be endorsed by the Trojan team (it's linked off their download page), so IMO it's not a cheat.
