Another third-party Aleph One map out this week-- Underworld by Jon Irons. Check it out! Thanks, TheBattleCat.
UrsusArctos is using his Rampancy.net blog to wonder about what might be in store for fans in Halo 3, as well as look at the use of artifacts like Arks and the Marathon logo in the Haloverse.
Although they aren't, technically speaking, Halo story canon, the thematic and verbal similarities between the recent Halo 3 trailer and the Cortana Letters from 1999 have resparked interest in the latter; TraxusIV has embarked on an ongoing series of analytical articles that look at those themes and put the Letters into the greater context of the Bungieverse, past and present. The newest article looks at the second letter.
Bungie.net has an interview with Bungie's new programming intern, Jon Cable, who cut his teeth by replacing the Pfhor in Marathon with images of Barney. We love you, Jon. Do you love us?
Tuncer Deniz at Inside Mac Games has put up Part 1 of a series on his experiences at Bungie. Above all, he talks about how Bungie was always trying to do things differently:
Not all the Bungie game news is from E3 this week. Over at source.bungie.org, new releases of the Aleph One engine, CTF(Lua), and the netmap Conflict came out. Thanks Treellama and The Battle Cat.
Articles about Bungie's series of Mac/PC first person shooters, Marathon, Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity (developed by Double Aught and published by Bungie).
Part One of Simon Dupuis' Portal of Sigma scenario for Marathon has been released. Information about the release, which includes the first chapter and 11 net levels, can be found at Scenario News over at marathon.bungie.org. The files themselves can be downloaded from the Lh'owon Ar'kives.
Blayne writes on the Marathon Scenario News page that a new (admittedly small) desktop picture from the Where Monsters Are In Dreams scenario is up. The project, a prequel to the popular Rubicon scenrio, is still looking for people to help clean it up for release.
For those fans of Halo and Halo 2, or even of the Myth series of RTS games, that aren't familiar with Bungie's version of ancient history, also known as the 1990s, Inside Mac Games has put up a Marathon Primer, and the denizens of the Marathon Story Page are already picking it to pieces looking for small errors and omissions.
Thanks to ukimalefu who posted the initial link the Marathon Story Forum.
C|Net has up a list of ten PC games you can download for free; the Marathon Trilogy got included in its Aleph One incarnation. Somehow, Derek Smart's Battlecruiser 3000 A.D. also got included. (BC3K is free, but I think Smart sues you and your mom if you play it--Ed.)
Stosh at Bungie.net pointed out an article by Pat Miller in the latest issue of The Escapist. (If you're not familiar with the format, like I wasn't, the magazine issue itself is the downloadable PDF file linked at the bottom of the page--Ed.) The article is about Bungie's pre-Halo heritage, the Marathon Trilogy, and even includes a sidebar on the Haunted Apiary (ilovebees) alternate reality game. (Although I must strongly warn readers against believing them when they say that Rampancy exists in the Halo universe; ilovebees is the only place that link exists, and I've it on pretty good authority that Bungie doesn't see it that way--Ed.)
The Battle Cat at Forerunners.org (and Cortana.org) wrote last week that there's a group that assembles each Saturday night at the hl.forerunners.org Hotline servers to assemble for networked games of Bungie's Marathon series, using the latest builds of Aleph One. If you've only ever played the Halo games or perhaps the Myth series, you owe it to yourself to see what Bungie fans were playing while everyone else was shooting exploding barrels in Doom. It's well worth it.
Stosh over at Bungie.net passes on word that one of the latest nightly builds of Aleph One, the open source engine for playing Bungie's Marathon trilogy, has gained several new features more common among modern networked shooters: in this case, chat and server browser features.
In other Marathon-related news:
Today marks the start of a new series by a new staffer here at Rampancy. Sistimatic, a fan of Bungie games since the days of Marathon on the Macintosh, has looked back into the Marathon manual's retrospective on the battle at the Plain of Marathon to find war lessons applicable to Halo players today. Marathon Lessons is the first article in a series we're calling A Sistimatic Approach.
Other news: