Aleph One 1.0 Released 105
First time accepted submitter treellama writes "Nearly 12 year since Bungie released the source code for Marathon 2, the Aleph One team is thrilled to release version 1.0 of the Aleph One game engine. Aleph One is a Free software, cross platform game engine that supports all three original Marathon games with enhancements such as OpenGL and Internet play; as well as numerous third party mods known as 'scenarios.' Easy to install full versions of Marathon, Marathon 2, and Marathon Infinity, now featuring high resolution graphics and modern widescreen HUD support, can be downloaded for free from the project website!"
Re:Heard about Marathon (Score:5, Informative)
Marathon and the Halo Series (Score:5, Informative)
As someone already noted, the Marathon series was made by Bungie.
By the time Bungie was bought by Microsoft, much of Halo's building blocks were done, a game originally designed for both Macs and PCs.
There's plenty of Marathon homages in the original Halo (haven't yet played 2 or 3 myself). First, look on Captain Keyes's uniform for the Marathon symbol at the game's starting adventure on the bridge. Just as you leave the captain, look on the bulletin board at the entrance: An ad there says "Colony Ship for Sale" (a reference to a Marathon game level). Cortana, the AI, is another name that parallels the name of another mystical sword, Durandal (Marathon's sassy AI). See http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Marathon_references_in_Halo [wikia.com] for more.
Marathon was among the first (if not the first) FPS with multiplayer support (thanks to the Mac OS local networking) as well as establishing the convention of using the mouse for head-target movement. The concept of the Vidmaster (See http://marathon.bungie.org/vidmaster/ [bungie.org] ) (using the weakest weapon at the game's highest difficulty to completion) was a Marathon first.
Re:Heard about Marathon (Score:4, Informative)
Just want to clarify your "Doom-like" comment, in case anyone mistakenly thinks this meant it was a Doom clone for Mac.
Bungie's Marathon was based on their Pathways into Darkness game, which came out before Doom. Marathon is also credited as the first FPS to have vertical aiming and free-look/mouselook controls, and multiplayer deathmatches.