Aleph One 1.0

The Aleph One 1.0 release contains numerous improvements to interface polish, OpenGL improvements, Lua enhancements, bug fixes, and support for playback of original Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity films.

It is accompanied by community-upgraded versions of all three of the original games, available as all-in-one apps (Mac OS X) and all-in-one zipped folders (Windows) for easy installation.

Aleph One 1.0 is network compatible with the previous stable release, with the exception of new Lua features and fixes, but all users are strongly encouraged to update to 1.0 for the best security and stability.

Important Note

Preferences and data file locations have been updated. Some of your data files and preferences will be migrated automatically. You may need to migrate others manually. See FileLocations on the wiki for the new locations.

Requirements

• 500 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM; 1 GHz processor and 256 MB RAM recommended
• Operating System
  • Mac OS X 10.4 or higher
  • Windows XP or higher
  • Linux or Unix-like operating system with SDL 1.2.14 and gcc 3.4 or higher
• OpenGL (Classic) renderer
  • AMD or nVidia graphics recommended
• OpenGL (Shader) renderer
  • ATI Radeon 9600 or nVidia GeForce FX 5200 or newer graphics required
  • Bloom: nVidia GeForce 8 series or ATI Radeon HD series recommended
  • Mac OS X 10.5 or higher recommended

New Data Files

Marathon (A1)

• All levels have been updated to be authentic to original Marathon.
  • M1A1 changes and secrets have been removed
  • Glue/glue trigger/superglue battles are emulated as closely as possible in Aleph One
  • Numerous other fixes to scenery, item placement, sounds, and puzzles
  • Startup sequence and epilogue now match those in the original Marathon
• New widescreen HUD with custom crosshairs
• Music tracks have been converted digitally using QuickTime 2.0 to sound just like they did when Marathon came out
• HD wall textures and landscapes from TTEP
• Marathon theme plugin

Marathon 2: Durandal

• Includes the full HD graphics pack from the Xbox LIVE Arcade game Marathon: Durandal
• Widescreen XBLA HUD with custom crosshairs
• Marathon 2 theme plugin

Marathon Infinity

• HD items, explosions, and weapons in hand
• Goran's HD wall textures and landscapes
• Widescreen HUD with custom crosshairs

Credits

• HUD artwork: Steven Tzé
• HUD scripts: Jeremiah Morris
• M1A1 upgrade - Bruce Morrison, Hamish Sinclair, Gregory Smith, Jeremiah Morris
• Marathon 2 HD artwork: Freeverse and Bungie
• Orange Marathon 2 compiler recoloring: thedoctor45
• SMG weapon graphics: Adam Fothergill
• Marathon HD textures: Tim Vogel and Jay Faircloth
• Marathon Infinity HD textures: Goran Svensson
• Marathon and Marathon 2 themes: Gregory Smith
• Special thanks: Bernie Yee, Ondraus Jenkins

Features

• Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity film playback support
  • For old films, select the correct playback profile in Environment Preferences
  • Films saved by Aleph One 1.0 are automatically played back with the correct playback profile, regardless of the selection in Environment Preferences
  • Films that span multiple levels are not yet played back correctly
• Interface improvements
  • OpenGL is now the default in Windows and Mac OS X. The OpenGL (Classic) renderer is now the prefered renderer.
  • When either OpenGL renderer is enabled, all menus, dialogs, and chapter screens are drawn using OpenGL. This should provide for smoother transitions into and out of games, and fix numerous bugs with entering and leaving games
  • The screen resolution is now changed only when necessary
  • Chapter screens and movies now use the in-game resolution when OpenGL is enabled
  • Screen fades now use OpenGL when it is enabled, rather than hardware gamma
  • An Automatic screen resolution is available in the preferences, which will automatically use the native screen resolution
• A "Choose Aleph One Scenario" dialog is displayed if Map/Shapes/Sounds are not found, allowing the user to choose a scenario directory
• 3D model improvements from Glen Ditchfield
  • More import types for 3D models MML
  • Model debug logging now uses the standard Aleph One log
  • 3DS and OBJ models are rotated to face east
• OpenGL (Shader) Improvements
  • Numerous speed optimizations
  • Landscapes, fog depth, miner's light, and lighting with bump maps off are now more similar to OpenGL (Classic)
• General OpenGL improvements
  • On video cards that support mirrored repeat, landscapes are mirrored at the top and bottom instead of blurred
  • An option to enable non-power-of-two textures is available in advanced graphics preferences. On systems with NPOT texture support, this can greatly reduce VRAM usage, but some implementations are buggy so it's disabled by default.
  • The near and far texture filters can now be disabled, in case you want OpenGL renderers to look more like software
• The new default themes use Tim Larson's awesome OFL licensed fonts: Marapfhont for Marathon, and Squarish Sans CT Medium for Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity
• The overhead map can now be viewed as a transparent overlay in single player games, and in net games when the gatherer allows it
• Lua updates (see Lua.html and Lua HUD.html)
  • Solo scripts now have access to the io library
  • accessor for goals
  • accessors for player, monster, and item starting positions
  • added Game.monsters_replenish
  • (HUD) added Player.velocity, so HUDs can react to the player's movement
  • accessors for monster and item respawn parameters
  • accessors for sound objects
  • (HUD) accessors for weapon-panel labels
  • (HUD) accessor for Overlay Map preference
  • Projectile:delete()
  • (HUD) API for drawing custom crosshair
  • Level.completed
  • Enhancements to light_switch, tag_switch, and platform_switch triggers
  • New trigger: projectile_switch
  • (HUD) currently viewed player API
• The static transfer texture mode is now supported
• Dragging and dropping films, saved games, maps, and more, is now supported
• Landscapes bloom by default; landscape bloom is now configurable via MML
• The "Play Ball" and "You're it" sounds for Tag and Kill The Man With The Ball games are now played
• Aleph One now displays a "Powered by Aleph One" button, which displays a dialog containing the version number, scenario information, clickable links to the Aleph One website and the FSF GPL website, and a list of contributors
• Ares Ex Machina contributed a new, modern-looking application icon
• Plugins now support Anvil shapes patches
• Aleph One can now play sound resources assigned to each intro screen
• Aleph One now uses version 3 of the GNU General Public License.
• Dialog sounds are now configurable
• The crosshair setting is now persistent

Bug Fixes

• File save dialogs now allow directory navigation (SF 1780604)
• Aleph One now runs on case sensitive HFS+ filesystems
• Fixed crash when calling Scenery.new() when scenery limit is reached
• Fixed reading values in the Lua texture palette
• numerous gamma corrected blending fixes, including SF 3090718, fog looks wrong with gamma corrected blending
• Fix a crash when saving invalid Lua custom fields
• Lua cameras are updated each world tick, now, instead of each FPS as before. Fixes SF 1344287 and should allow cameras to be used safely in net scripts
• Fix Lua Effects accessors, which were mostly broken before
• Fix #static sections in terminals (SF 2942859)
• Fix SF 3057146, cannot use strings for Lua HUD Shapes.new
• The chase cam is now usable in replays, and should no longer cause net games to go out of sync
• Aleph One will now fall back to the OpenGL (Classic) renderer if OpenGL (Shader) is enabled by GLSL is not supported
• Don't skip oxygen warning sounds when draining multiple points per tick (SF 1663071)
• <texture> MML only overrides the attributes specified, rather than overwriting the entire entry for that descriptor
• Applied a patch from pickle136 to fix --disable-opengl
• Fixed on-screen messages when SDL_ttf support is not enabled
• Disable glClipVertex in Mesa (SF 3198132)--however, AMD or nVidia binary drivers are highly recommended for OpenGL (Shader)
• Fixed compressed textures on drivers without S3TC support
• Don't let the user proceed to gathering if a valid level isn't selected in Setup Network Game
• Log a warning rather than trying to parse missing MML files in plugins
• Log an error when running a Lua script fails
• Fixed outstanding timing adjustment jitter compensation, which was causing laggy LAN and Internet games
• The directory argument now takes precedence over ALEPHONE_DATA
• + and - are accepted for model side and depth_type attributes, as documented in MML.html
• Unhandled exceptions are now logged to Aleph One Log.txt instead of stderr
• Fixed net game and co-op freezes
• Fixed 8-bit sound
• Marathon: Durandal (XBLA) wall textures, which are missing one mipmap, are now recognized without conversion
• Fixed Lua control_panel.uses_item
• Allow restarting sounds if the original sound's volume is 0; fixes switches in M1A1

Deprecations and Removals

• So-called "single player net game" support has been removed
• The 8-bit software renderer has been removed, and the true color software renderers have been optimized for accuracy over speed. Aleph One is designed to play the original Marathon trilogy on modern operating systems, which no longer offer the kind of direct access to hardware necessary to render efficiently in software
• The Gamma Corrected Blending option has been removed. None of the current assets are designed to use Gamma Corrected Blending, and its maintenance was deemed not worth the potential benefits. There is one exception: bloom always uses gamma corrected blending now; if gamma correction is not available in hardware, it is emulated with shaders. This may cause a bloom slowdown on older cards compared to 0.23.3, but will result in consistent, high-quality visuals
• The "Solo Script", "HUD Script" and "Theme" options will be removed in a future version of Aleph One. This functionality is now provided by Plugins.
• Compatibility mode for old API Lua scripts will be removed from a future version of Aleph One. Most scripts that use compatibility mode have been updated, or don't work in 1.0 anyway.