Aleph One 0.22 Preview 1

A preview build is available from treellama.org:

Mac OS X: http://treellama.org/alephone/AlephOne-20090531.dmg

Windows: http://treellama.org/alephone/AlephOne-20090531.zip

Source: http://treellama.org/alephone/AlephOne-20090531.tar.bz2

Source (Mac/Win): http://treellama.org/alephone/AlephOne-20090531-MacWinSrc.7z

Highlights include Lua persistence, a network stats display, joystick support (from Eric Peterson), various other improvements and bug fixes. Jeremiah Morris has also joined us to contribute HUD scaling and some improvements of his own. This preview build is compatible with the the previous release, except for the new Lua features.

Features:

• Add .filA extension to saved films
  
• Add .sgA extension to saved games
  
• Add an option to hide file extensions in dialogs
  
• Display file modification date in file selectors; allow sorting by date
  
• Add a "Network Stats" display (accessed by pressing the non-number-pad 1 key, by default), which displays color-coded latency, jitter (standard deviation in latency), and CRC errors. Consequently, the .ping command has been removed. Every second, stats are also sent to joiners, who can access them with the same key. You must be connected to a gatherer running the preview build to receive stats updates.
  
• Joystick/gamepad support. Some things are configurable in the preferences screen, but more advanced settings like sensitivity and dead zones require editing the preferences file
  
• Lua functions for restoring some custom fields from before level teleports, and for restoring all custom fields from saved games (see Lua.html)
  
• Preferences for scaling HUD and terminals up by 2x, or to fill the screen
  
• Lua: monster.external_velocity and vertical_velocity (see Lua.html)
  
• Draw in-game OpenGL dialogs without blacking the whole screen
  

Bug fixes:

• Fix missing metaserver login failure message
  
• Fix Lua texture palette crash with landscapes
  
• Support building from the Mac OS X command line using autoconf
  
• Fix host crashing in net games after a joiner disconnects
  
• Fix "could not receive map" bug
  
• Fix a crash when opening the ALSA net mic fails
  
• Fix the Lua texture palette on maps with glow mapped textures
  
• Respect monitor gamma calibration when rendering fade effects
  
• Make OpenGL crosshairs look like the preview
  
• Don't read the map when idle at the menu screen
  
• Fix Lua documentation for long cinematic fade in mnemonic
  

modification times

File selectors now display modification times of files, and Continue Saved Game defaults to sorting by most recent. This should make resuming your last saved game easier.

Aleph One 0.21.2

A bug fix release is available from http://source.bungie.org/get or
http://marathon.sourceforge.net/

Changes:

• Added support for custom window sizes (by editing prefs file)
• Fixed assertion failures when changing levels in net games
• Restore the previously selected map when finishing a net game
• Restore support for UTF-8 prefs / MML
• Added a VSync checkbox in OpenGL

Aleph One 0.21

Aleph One 0.21 is available from http://source.bungie.org/get/ or http://marathon.sourceforge.net/

Highlights of this release are screen resolution detection, level embedded Lua and MML, and bug fixes. This release is not network compatible with previous releases.

Full release notes are available here: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?group_id=1997&release_id=647017

Prelude in D-flat

Inspired by this drawing by irons.

Download (4.2 MB mp3)

Atque

Atque is a tool for merging/splitting Marathon maps and images files. Atque is available for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, and can split maps and extract resources to regular files on all platforms, eliminating the need for ResEdit.

For instance, chapter screens and terminal pictures are exported as BMP or JPEG; CLUTs are exported as Adobe Color Table files; and chapter sounds are exported as WAVs. TEXT resources are stored as editable text files, allowing, for example, easy find-and-replace operations. Once split, these files can be edited with commonly available editors, and then merged together again into a Unimap 2 map or images file.

Unimap 2 files use the Marathon 2 for Windows 95 style of resources, where each resource is stored as a chunk in a level of appropriate resource ID in the wadfile. Some advantages over the old MacBinary Unimap format:

• Can be opened directly with Forge, to view/export levels
• No 16 MB limit on stored resources
• Removes dependence on the classic Mac OS utility ResEdit

There are a couple minor drawbacks:

• There is only one name per resource ID in Unimap 2, whereas Unimap allowed storing a name for each resource type/ID pair
• Aleph One 0.20.3 (9/13) is required to view Unimap 2 chapter screens / terminal pictures

In addition to resources, Atque handles levels, merged physics, merged shapes patches, and can compile and decompile terminal text. It has support for some terminal features Forge didn't, such as creating wide terminal pictures without resorting to the distasteful Cinemascope hack.

Atque is available under the GNU GPL. You can download Atque 1.0 binaries and source code from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/igniferroque

A basic manual is available at
http://apps.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/igniferroque/index.php?title=Atque_Manual

Aleph One 0.20.3

A patch release of Aleph One is available from http://source.bungie.org/get or http://marathon.sourceforge.net/

This is a minor feature release of Aleph One, which includes Windows improvements and support for the Unimap 2 format. It is network compatible with Aleph One 0.20.x

Changes:

• Recognize PICT resources stored in M2-Win95 format (completes Unimap 2 support)
• AlephOne.exe now requires a Pentium-class processor. Windows 2000 or higher is recommended.
• Applied SDL patches from Tim Angus (from ioquake3) to allow DirectInput mouse control while OpenGL is active. If you have trouble with Vista, disable the "DirectDraw / DirectInput" option.
• Added window manager icons in Linux and Windows
• Added support for #STATIC terminal groups