The Pfhorums

Hi,

I just flooded Simplici7y:

• I copied Xmas 1 from fileball.whpress.com to Simplici7y for completeness.
• I uploaded Xmas 2 from my backup drive.
• I uploaded Xmas 3 from my backup drive (in 2013).
• I uploaded Winter 1 from my backup drive.
• I released Narcotics: a 2-level mini-scenarion derived from my contributions to Marathon Syndicate.
• I released Thrudnesday, a cool map I once made for Marathon Shadow.

This is also my farewell to this community.

Cheers!
Drictelt

Dunno if you'll see this post, but: many thanks for uploading these. I was worried that the Xmas series and Winter would remain lost.

Thanks for posting those.
When I discovered Xmas3 and found that the others were unobtainable as zips I was sad
but now I'm happy again.
Best wishes on whatever you're going to do.

dude thanks

I just realized that these uploads may be unusable on non-mac operating systems.

I've just downloaded Winter I and I've noticed that the resource forks have been severed from their corresponding files and put in a __MACOS folder, as described here (likely a consequence of zipping the folder using the Finder's zip functionality).

When I try to open the parent folder with alephone from the command line, I get the infamous error message which makes me assume that important information has been severed from the files.

Does anyone know how to properly reinclude resource forks into Aleph One file formats without access to a Mac OS X / macOS installation?
I figured it's a question for the marathon community, because I suppose the .sceA etc file-format specifications specify how to bind resource forks to their files in a way that survives non-mac file systems.

Running files with resource forks through MacBinary should make them usable on other operating systems.

But also, if you're using a modern Marathon build chain including things like Atque, the files it makes shouldn't have resource forks in the first place, because it merges to the M2-Win95 format where resources are encoded as fake level chunks.

Ok, I noticed that the scenario-specific files indeed did not have resource forks, so I just replaced the included infinity files with ones that were non-mac-proof and now it's working. I intend to upload a new version soon, and check if my other Simplici7y uploads have similar issues.

Is there a way to "run files through MacBinary" without using Mac OS X?

I've been able to extract them from SheepShaver images using HFVExplorer. However, HAS (for whom I’m doing remastered sounds for the upcoming Trojan re-release) has reported that it’s not possible to drop these versions onto MacBinary. Unfortunately, I can’t get MacBinary to run either on Mac OS X Yosemite (yes, I need to upgrade, but I’m also still unpacking from a house move, so who knows when I’ll find the time) or in SheepShaver, and haven’t gotten around to troubleshooting it yet. But if you don’t care about that, HFVExplorer will probably work just fine.

Nice to see you around again, btw! I don’t know if you’ve had time to play through recent versions of Eternal; if you have any feedback on those, or on what we’ve done with your WMAiD level, I’m curious to hear it. (I should’ve responded to your WMAiD post something like six weeks ago, but: [1] due to the aforementioned house move, I probably forgot, and [2] wait, the Pfhorums still have new posts? In the 2020s?)

Wow… I was just thinking about this the other day… hard to believe Winter 1 was 11 years ago...

I have the original versions of the Xmas 3 and Winter 1 maps, and I think I posted later versions of Xmas 3 and Winter 1 on fileball.bungie.org instead of simplici7y, but that site seems to have gone offline now.

• For Xmas 3, I posted up a version where my second map, “Flat Earth Society” was actually a vacuum.
• For Winter 1, there was a problem with terminals on one level, but I think there was some other bug with the last level’s terminals.

I also just played these yesterday and noticed that the custom landscape texture with the planet horizon isn’t displaying properly, at least on my PC. I could make a new texture for it.

Years ago I actually made two other levels for Winter I. My first was to be a replacement for “Goo Lagoon”, since that level was kind of rushed in retrospect. I also see that the other level I made has found a new home in WMaiD!

If you want I can send you an Atque-merged version of all of the updated Xmas 3 and Winter I maps.

Uh well the maps I have are Atque-merged, but maybe not the most recent versions. I did notice that Kick the Can was unfinishable. There was one switch that was probably part of the objective that just didn't respond. I haven't got a map editor or texturing mode up and running currently so I haven't investigated yet.
I've made some tiny improvements myself: added a scenario script to make the thing behave like a proper alephone scenarion :-)

(I'm talking about Winter I here, haven't looked at the other scenarios recently.)

@ The Man: I haven't looked at anything other than Winter I and KTA for now. I'm considering to write a lua script that replaces every Marathon Shadow texture in Thrudnesday with an appropriate one from a scenario that saw the light of day, then release it as a playable stand-alone map for that scenario. But since I released it as creative commons earlier, don't let that stop you from incorporating your version in your scenario!