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Drink Your Wine

A square arena, with a ledge around the outside and a raised square fortress in the center. Simple, but well-designed for flow. The hill (The central fort) is accessible from both the ledge (via a bridge) and the bottom (via a fast elevator). There are a few pillars to use as cover... but more than two people in the game, and staying on the hill is a non-trivial excercise.

Home Grown Carnage

A mostly enclosed, tight-hallwayed map. (There's open space, too, but the dominant type is closed-in.) A few minor glitches, but mainly pretty nice mapmaking. Flow is good-there are multiple exits from most areas, and you won't get hung up on edges too much. Effort has been put into lighting, which (because of the mostly small spaces) shouldn't affect framerates. (The map could use a bit of sound, though...) Comes in two flavors-heavy on the weapons and ammo, for large groups, and lighter on both, for smaller groups.

3rd and 7

A large football field, surrounded by seats (?). Nicely laid out, if a little bare... but ammo is really sparse, probably for anything more than two people. Gets a little better once you find the entrance to the control booth, but it's still not enough for bigger games.

Apocalypse Ranch

A remake of the first outdoor area from Kill Your Television, with the addition of a pair of Juggs. Sort of weird... there's tons of SPNKR missiles here, but not one SPNKR. The physics model included, though, gives you missiles instead of grenades, and a whole boatload of 'em... so you should be okay. I suppose.

Descent into Death

A huge arena surrounded by rising hallways. With big groups, this might be fun, but smaller groups would have a hard time getting close enough to kill. There's a switch in the central pillar which I don't understand at all... all it seems to do is make the upper hallways vulnerable from below. Since only those in the upper hallways can flip the switch, it seems, well... pointless. (I suppose it also makes the area around the hill targetable from above... but there is much more freedom of movement down below, so it's more dangerous to those in the passageways.)

Test Arena

A simple concept, elaborately (and extremely well) executed. This is an arena for testing monsters. Standard monsters, custom monsters... doesn't matter. You get lots of ammo, and a safe island, and a setup that allows the release of exactly the number and kind of monster you'd like, when you want it. It's way more elaborate than you'd ever really need for this task, but hey-if you're going to do something, why not do it right? If you need a test map for your new monster, this would work quite nicely.

Not a Good Landing v1.1

A four level solo scenario. Mostly well-built, with nice architecture, and decent gameplay. Play would be better, I think, if it weren't quite so predictable.

Level Detector

From the master of cool tricks comes a bizarre, but thought-provoking idea... a mechanism by which you can determine the difficulty level at which someone is playing. The included demo simply has different terminal messages for each difficulty level (kindergarten through total carnage), but you could, in theory, use the technique to decide where to send a player, depending on what level he's playing on. The possibilities are pretty far-ranging...

A Breakfast Cafe in Vienna, Austria v1.0

A huge, sprawling level, with just about every possible environment. No matter what sort of battlefield you normally prefer, you should be able to find it here...

Counter Revolutionary

He's done it again... In response to Mark Levin's Coop-Only Level Bypass Demo, Jason has once again extended the scope of the marathon engine with a cool new tool. The enclosed map shows you how to set up a counter that can count events (number of players appearing, number of secret areas, you name it). The attached readme adds a few extremely innovative potential uses for the technique... if you're making a solo scenario, download this and process it. Use the technique... make Marathon better.

Stacked Walkways

A pretty neat demo of two walkways on top of each other. The technique uses scenery items to fake the look of the walkway, so you don't look like you're floating... it seems pretty clear that with a little bit of artistry, the proper scenery items could be created to make the upper walkway look nearly flawless. Also contains an intriguing extension of the author's untextured wall experiments.

Brief Nardonic Requiems v1.4

Two very good levels from what a great marathon author. The first level Translation into Loyalty, consists of a few mini arenas with the Tempus Pfhor texture set. The second, I Used to Be uses the outdoor enviroment from Tempus. Two very fun levels that can also be played solo. 1.4 update tweaks lighting, textures, and layout to improve gameplay.

Act of Violence

A small square arena with a pit surrounded by a ledge, four pillars, and four rooms. Vacubobs and devlins will duke it out in the pit... you can watch, or you can jump in for the nuke guns.

Bungie Maps Turned EVIL

Three Infinity net levels (Duality, Morpfhine, and 'Fugee Camp) retextured (and weaponed) for Evil. Nicely done... Morpfhine with nuke guns is a blast!

Coop-Only Level Bypass Demo

Wow. Mark wanted a way to set up a level such that coop players would be forced to bypass the level, but solo players would have to complete it. He asked for advice on the discussion forums at Marathon Central, but didn't get any answers... When he came up with a solution, it was complicated enough to warrant a writeup, so here it is. It's actually a demo map, showing (and telling, with detailed terminals) exactly how he accomplished the feat. (It's way more complicated than you might think...) The technique's biggest drawback is its resource utilization... 26 platforms used to divert play...

Kill the Player (SPN)

A small mazelike map, with an embedded physics model that keeps you on your toes. (It's designed to be played solo-the SPN stands for SIngle Player Network.) You get one magnum (and, if you kill the infrequent vacubob, a fusion pistol), and your job is to kill as many bobs as you can. (There is no end.) Good for target practice... the bodies really pile up. Enough recharge canisters appear that you can keep going as long as you want to.

Nuthouse of Idiosyncrasy

A small level with a pit reached by two long mirrorimage corridors. You got enforcers, you got vacuexplodabobs, you got a jug... you gotta kill 'em all, and still find your co-players. Would be horribly crowded with more than two or three.

Patio De Recreo El Diablo

In the author's words, a "glorified Return to Thunderdome". (That's like saying that the Titanic is a glorified rowboat, but who am I to disagree with an author?) Designed as a "net simulator" (which means it requires the Rockets of Fury Shapes patch to turn bobs into rocket-totin' cowboys), it pits you against a passel of nasty bobs in a gorgeous, fast-moving arena. Look for the additions... some of them are truly spectacular. (There's a texture that probably shouldn't have been used as a landscape texture, but it's really my only gripe.) I found carnage rates to be pretty high playing ag...

The Sons of Ludd

A six-level, action-packed solo scenario. This was released (and announced on alt.games.marathon) last fall, but there wasn't any active archiving going on at the time.

The Marathon Sound Set v1.2

Not technically Marathon sounds, but rather a MacOS 8.5 SoundSet. Pretty well done, overall... a few sounds are rough, but so were the originals.

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