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Scrapbook Pages 3 - 4
Posted By: REBDate: 2/25/02 11:37 p.m.

In Response To: Look What The Cat Drug In... (not typo) (REB)

This is typical: we talk and talk and talk, and the problem remains unsolved. Well, there's nothing I can do about it. I already typed down these two pages, so here they are.

Hey, Hamish or Claude, if any of you guys don't want more transcriptions, one word will be enough. The chinese spies are about to escape from the hangar with the weather-control machine, so I better return to my novel.

Page 3

Jason dropped by Alex's apartment fairly regularly to help shrinkwrap copies of Minotaur and swipe some of Alexander's food. On one of these visits, Jason Brought up a new project, a 3D, first-person-perspective, blast-fest with a handful of roleplaying elements tossed in. Jason called it Pathways Into Darkness/ Alex, knew a good thing when he saw it, and the two became partners to publish the title. Jason began to work on Pathways in earnest with the help of his friend Colin Brent, who did the artwork. Jason coded by day on the Mac IIfx in his apartment; Colin would visit in the evenings to work on the game's graphics.

Jason Wanted to create a compelling backstory for Pathways rather than simply dumpling players in a dungeon and instructing them to blast their way out. Numerous scenarios were written and discarded until Jason come up with an alien race know as the Jjaro, and their ultimatum to humanity: neutralize a Lovecraftian "alien god" buried in a pyramid or suffer a hideous fate at its hands.

Pathways pushed the technological envelope farther than any previous Macintosh game, offering real-time, three-dimensional texture mapping. "It's the closest you can get to virtual reality without a helmet" ran the advertising slogan. which is actually true if you ignore the fact that most "virtual reality" experiences do not include encounters with lurching, pumpkin-colored obscenities sporting tongues the size of a small dog. Alex and Jason harbored modest hopes for Pathways; they though it might sell enough copies to allow them the luxury of eating real food again. Pathways Into Darkness shipped in August 1993 and met with immediate critical and popular acclaim, winning a trunkload of awards and establishing Bungie as a major entity in the Macintosh games market.

The commercial success of Pathways allowed Alex and Jason to move out of their Hyde Park apartments to a real office in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. (Alex tried to retain that "homegrown" atmosphere by picking an office without heat. "The Crack House" behind the building provided Bungie with the name of their office fileserver.) More importantly, Bungie could now afford to hire additional programmers and artists for their next project - whatever that might be. Ryan Martell, halfway through a yearlong break from Duke University, signed on as a programmer at the end of 1993 and began work with Jason on a new game, code-named Marathon. Marathon was originally intended as a sequel to Pathways that addressed customer complaints about speed (not enough) and challenge (far too much.) Jason divided his time between Marathon and another 3D project dubbed Mosaic. (All that is know about Mosaic is that it had nothing to do with the web browser of the same name and that Jason is extremely reluctant to discuss it.)

Marathon started out as a series of coding experiments; Jason modified the Pathways engine to make it faster and more structurally elegant, but concentrated the most on enhancing monster intelligence. Bungie demoed the first alpha version, aptly titled Marathon Zero, at the San Francisco Macworld Expo in January 1994. But as Jason recounts, the game barely made a ripple at the show: many people dismissed the game as Pathways with minor cosmetic enhancements.

Determined to salvage the Marathon project, Bungie returned from the Macworld show, barricaded themselves in their Pilsen office and went to work. Jason abandoned the Mosaic project and devoted his full attention to Marathon. He and Ryan rewrote the game's rendering engine from the ground up. Ryan also began work on Vulcan, a Marathon map editor which is best described as all the madness and misery in twenty lunatic asylums, distilled into a single Macintosh application.

In February, Greg Kirkpatrick joined the Bungie team. Several months earlier Jason had declared that if Marathon was going to have a story, Greg would have to write it. Greg, who had recently suffered a direct blow to the head from a washing machine, readily agreed. Doug Zartman joined Bungie as their first paid employee in May. He started out doing tech support for Pathways but found his role expanding into public relations in the same way that petty larceny eventually

Note: "...Greg, who had recently suffered a direct blow to the head from a washing machine..."

On PiD, the american soldier named Greg says, when questioned about his death: "Those spider things were all around me, but I didn't stop firing until I ran out of bullets. Then something hit me like a dish washer- it must have been one of those zombies."

Furthermore: "Yeah, like a dish washer dropped from three stories or something. I don't even remember getting hit before that. I was spanking them until I died."

For more info, http://pid.bungie.org/

Page 4 (Pictures)

Picture 1: photo of Jason Jones sitting on a chair in front of a desk, posing.
Text: Jason (pictured) and Alex move into new digs closer to downtown Chicago. Jason hopes the digs will "impress" the chicks. Yeah, right...

Picture 2: photo of Jason Jones, barefoot, sitting on the floor.
Text: Jason putting Minotaur boxes together.

Picture 3: photo of Jason Jones and Alexander Seropian with what seems to be Pathways Into Darkness running on a computer monitor behind them. The pre-Marathon Bungie logo can be seen on a black banner, in the background.
Text: Jason (left) and Alex (right) at Macworld Expo San Francisco '95.

Picture 4: Marathon Zero screenshot
Text: The first version of Marathon was shown at Macworld San Francisco in January 1994. This version of Marathon was eventually canned because it looked too much like Pathways Into Darkness.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Is the Marathon scrapbook online somewhere?zudo 2/23/02 3:54 p.m.
     Sorry, don't think so. I'd like to see it too. *NM*Callie21V 2/23/02 8:06 p.m.
           Look What The Cat Drug In... (not typo)REB 2/25/02 1:38 a.m.
                 Re: Look What The Cat Drug In... (not typo)Fernando. 2/25/02 1:42 a.m.
                       Re: Look What The Cat Drug In... (not typo)REB 2/25/02 3:04 a.m.
                             Re: Look What The Cat Drug In... (not typo)zudo 2/25/02 3:09 a.m.
                             Re: Look What The Cat Drug In... (not typo)Fernando. 2/25/02 3:46 a.m.
                                   Abandonware?REB 2/25/02 5:24 a.m.
                                         Re: Abandonware?Mark Levin 2/25/02 6:48 a.m.
                                         Re: Abandonware?/hamish please readFernando. 2/25/02 6:49 a.m.
                                               ReadingHamish Sinclair 2/25/02 9:30 a.m.
                                                     Re: ReadingM-Class 2/25/02 3:15 p.m.
                                                           Re: ReadingDjof 2/25/02 5:00 p.m.
                                         Re: Abandonware?Callie21V 2/25/02 9:38 a.m.
                                         Re: Abandonware?M-Class 2/25/02 3:09 p.m.
                                               Re: Abandonware?Vid Boi 2/26/02 2:58 a.m.
                                                     Re: Abandonware?Hamish Sinclair 2/26/02 5:12 a.m.
                                                           Re: Abandonware?Dan Aris 2/26/02 6:06 a.m.
                                                                 Is that soon or Soon™ ?zudo 2/26/02 8:16 a.m.
                                                                 Is that soon or Soon™ ? *NM*zudo 2/26/02 8:16 a.m.
                                                           Oh yea, the action sack...I forgot that one. *NT*Vid Boi 2/26/02 8:29 a.m.
                                         Re: Abandonware?Malcolm 11/6/02 6:37 a.m.
                 Thanks REB! Great work! *NM*Callie21V 2/25/02 9:37 a.m.
                 Scrapbook Pages 3 - 4REB 2/25/02 11:37 p.m.
                       Re: Scrapbook Pages 3 - 4Hamish Sinclair 2/26/02 12:14 a.m.
                             Re: Scrapbook Pages 3 - 4REB 2/26/02 4:20 a.m.
                             Re: Scrapbook Pages 3 - 4Matt 2/26/02 11:09 p.m.
                                   Re: Scrapbook Pages 3 - 4Hamish Sinclair 2/27/02 12:25 a.m.
                                         Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...REB 3/1/02 2:34 a.m.
                                               Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...Hamish Sinclair 3/1/02 12:21 p.m.
                                                     Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...REB 3/3/02 4:30 a.m.
                                                           Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...Matt 3/5/02 5:31 p.m.
                                                                 Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...Hamish Sinclair 3/6/02 12:07 a.m.
                                                                       Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...Matt 3/6/02 12:05 p.m.
                                                                             Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...Hamish Sinclair 3/6/02 1:03 p.m.
                                                                             Re: Bungie Live Up To It's Promise...Speaker-To-Animals 7/3/03 10:09 p.m.
     I would if I had a scanner *NM*Vid Boi 2/24/02 3:38 a.m.
           I'd scan it all but i dont have the scrapbook!Ernie TMBM 2/25/02 6:54 p.m.
                 Re: I'd scan it all but i dont have the scrapbook!Callie21V 2/26/02 2:26 p.m.
     Actually...Hippieman [B.Org] 2/26/02 1:23 p.m.
           Re: Actually...Pedrof 2/26/02 3:37 p.m.
                 Re: Actually... (+Hamish)Djof 2/26/02 5:00 p.m.
                 Re: Actually...Matt 2/26/02 11:07 p.m.
                       Re: Actually...Hippieman [B.Org] 3/1/02 12:09 a.m.
           Re: Actually...archon 2/27/02 12:28 a.m.
                 Re: Actually...Hamish Sinclair 2/27/02 12:40 a.m.
                       Re: Actually...archon 2/27/02 9:18 a.m.
           Scrapbook Pages 9-10REB 2/27/02 5:49 a.m.
                 Typo!REB 2/27/02 5:55 a.m.
                       Scrapbook Pages 11-12REB 2/28/02 2:30 a.m.
                             Scrapbook Pages 13-14REB 3/1/02 4:47 a.m.
                                   Scrapbook Pages 15-16REB 3/2/02 2:41 p.m.
                                         Scrapbook Pages 17-18REB 3/3/02 4:21 p.m.
                                               Scrapbook Pages 19-22REB 3/4/02 9:01 a.m.
                                                     Scrapbook Pages 23-26REB 3/5/02 1:22 p.m.
                                                           I Want My Zombie Pfhor!REB 3/5/02 1:28 p.m.
                                                           Re: I Want My Zombie Pfhor!Callie21V 3/5/02 3:59 p.m.
                                                                 Re: I Want My Zombie Pfhor!Vid Boi 3/5/02 4:49 p.m.
                                                                 Re: I Want My Zombie Pfhor!Djof 3/5/02 5:10 p.m.
                                                                 Re: I Want My Zombie Pfhor!Boomer 3/6/02 4:18 a.m.
                                                           Scrapbook Pages 27-31REB 3/6/02 9:56 a.m.
                                                                 Thanks Raul! :-) *NM*Hamish Sinclair 3/6/02 10:09 a.m.
                                                                       Re: Thanks Raul! :-)D-M.A. 3/8/02 1:46 a.m.
                                                                             Re: Thanks Raul! :-)REB 3/8/02 9:48 a.m.
                                                                                   Re: Thanks Raul! :-)Hamish Sinclair 3/8/02 1:14 p.m.
                                                                                         Speaking of typos and errors...poena.dare #CP# 3/8/02 2:03 p.m.
                                                                                               Re: Speaking of typos and errors...Hamish Sinclair 3/9/02 4:52 a.m.
                                                                                               Then There Were Eightpoena.dare #CP# 3/9/02 9:19 a.m.
                                                                                         Scrapbook Pages 5-8REB 3/9/02 1:09 p.m.
                                                                                               Whoa! the man is back! Nice post. :-) *NM*Hamish Sinclair 3/9/02 4:11 p.m.
                                                                 Re: One last word...mnemesis 3/6/02 11:26 a.m.
                                                                 Re: Scrapbook Pages 27-31Vid Boi 3/11/02 4:18 p.m.
                                                                       Isn't F**k Microsoft 2 words?REB 3/11/02 6:41 p.m.
                                                                             Re: Isn't F**k Microsoft 2 words?Vid Boi 3/12/02 4:28 a.m.
                                                     Re: Scrapbook Pages 19-22Andrew Nagy 3/7/02 6:51 a.m.



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