Jul -- Projects and Creations: Maraiah

marrub

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From: colorado (previously hell (aka. ohio))

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Posted on 03-17-19 02:16:59 PM

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cr% cat 68
                                ~/jul
                            

So, I guess it's kind of weird to post this on a forum that has nothing to do with what it's actually for, but I have a few reasons for this:

* All of the Marathon forums suck.
* The Marathon community is dead.
* This place is cozy and I wanted to post here.

So, uh, here it is: A Marathon tools project! Except I haven't really made much yet, because I'm really bad at managing my time. For those of you who don't know what Marathon is, it's Bungie's precursor to Halo for Classic Mac OS. Of course, being from 1994, it's a Doom clone. There's something a little off about the game though, lots of things which make it unique. Terminals spout exposition at you and alien creatures attack you non-stop, the dimensions of space start to make less sense as the portal-based renderer drags you down into the pits of rampancy and madness. That kinda stuff.

It is one of my favorite game series of all time, regardless of its (mostly spiritual, although also somewhat direct) successor. But there's a problem: I can't mod it. Well, I can, there are definitely tools that exist. But all of them are, to say the least, far less than adequate. The easiest workflow is to use Bungie's original map editor, Forge. From 1996. By emulating it, or by using an actual classic Macintosh, saving the maps and transferring them to your PC, polishing in Weland, going through the entire map in-game with a texture editor mod, and so on until your sanity depletes and you eventually give up. Being a programmer, I like to bring the most overkill solution to any problem, therefore, I started this project about a year ago in hopes to bring, uh, hope, to me ever finishing a mod for Marathon.

(Yes, I cloned two logos in one, sue me. Wait, don't sue me, please. I swear that's not trademark infringement. I'M NOT SELLING ANYTH* `Alison was banned from irc.bungie.org)

Everything's written in Rust. Original code was C++, then D, and some experiments with Go, but ultimately Rust won. The code and documentation is licensed as public domain and available here. When things are actually usable, I'll start making Win64 builds to play with.

Stuff that's done, from lowest level to highest:

Data readers for:
- All of the parts of a map file, except the iidx and PLAT chunks. The map structure is interpreted as a non-precalculated map regardless of if it is one or not, so these are not an issue.
- All of the parts of a Marathon 1 map file, except the NAME chunk, which even Aleph One doesn't know how to load. I will probably try to figure this one out some time.
- All the parts of a binary terminal definition.
- Any QuickDraw PICT image (used primarily by mods.)
- Physics files (and embedded Physics.)
- M2 Sound files; all of the data within them.
- M2 Shapes files; ditto.
DEFLATE loading. I need this for PNG (yes I know I could use libpng shut up) so that I can make importing images easier.
A command-line program that can output the structured data loaded from a Map file as YAML or debugging data, output images from anything as TGA, output sounds as WAV, et cetera.
A GUI prototype. Does not function yet, but there are some parts laid out which have screenshots below.

Stuff that needs doing:

PNG reading. I'm currently working on this.
Reading for Marathon 1 format Sound and Shapes files.
GUI functionality.
Map geometry functionality, especially CSG tools.
Writing functionality for everything not listed above.

I've also written annotated documentation of the format of all of the data in Marathon I've gone through so far in Markdown. The code has many, many unit tests to ensure validity. I still need to write more.

Here are some screenshots of GUI prototypes:

The design of the UI is to be similar to DoomEd, though hopefully quite a bit more pleasing to the eye. Here's a screenshot of DoomEd for reference, it's what id Software used to make Doom:

This is mostly a project I'm making for myself, but I would really love some feedback on what's finished and ideas for the future. I'd also appreciate help on the project if anyone here is really inclined, but I don't really expect anyone to be interested in the project in the first place. (Also please tell me if I forgot to put something in the OP, I'm writing this when I should really be asleep.)

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"cr" 14:31 25-Jul-49

Q
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From: Nowhere

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Posted on 03-17-19 04:44:42 PM

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Marathon is cool & good, and I appreciate this very much.

Thank you for your hard work, and I'm looking forward to future updates!

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2Tie

Rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated.
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Since: 02-22-10

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Posted on 03-17-19 04:47:51 PM

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UESCTerm 802.11 (remote override)

044 05.10.2337

as someone who has only succesfully gotten obed (another windows marathon editor) working twice and weland working zero times, i'm definitely looking forward to this

also i noticed you're in the marathon speedrunning discord but not the general marathon discord, nor the pathways discord

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marrub

Level: 19

Posts: 69/84
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Since: 01-23-18

Pronouns: they/them - others are welcome
From: colorado (previously hell (aka. ohio))

Since last post: 1.5 years
Last activity: 299 days

Posted on 03-18-19 12:27:45 AM

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cr% cat 69
                                ~/jul
                            

Originally posted by 2Tie
also i noticed you're in the marathon speedrunning discord but not the general marathon discord, nor the pathways discord

A friend of mine had someone invite me to that server because they were talking about making an alternate source port to Aleph One which I was interested in, but then I kind of completely forgot about it.

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"cr" 14:31 25-Jul-49

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Since: 01-24-18

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From: Park City

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Posted on 03-23-19 07:03:22 PM

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i have almost no experience with marathon ever, i never grew up with it, and hell, we never could afford a classic Mac, let alone a new one, but i'm still really excited to see people make modern tools for old-as-heck games. i always love seeing people trying to get old games modernized by making modding tools for them, it's so dang neat.

thanks for posting this!

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I don't know what to put here.

marrub

Level: 19

Posts: 70/84
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Since: 01-23-18

Pronouns: they/them - others are welcome
From: colorado (previously hell (aka. ohio))

Since last post: 1.5 years
Last activity: 299 days

Posted on 07-11-19 05:22:54 AM (last edited by marrub at 07-11-19 05:25:58 AM)

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cr% cat 70
                                ~/jul
                            

Hi it's been way too long since I last posted!!! I've been really busy IRL and Not Dying Under Capitalism™ but also working on this. A few major updates:

I refactored a lot of internal stuff! Some stuff is more efficient while others are easier to use.
Parts of the UI are now written in C++, using some pretty complex magic code I'm able to write Qt objects in Rust and use them as a part of my C++ code. Everything is linked by Cargo still, despite the C++ being compiled with CMake.
There's full compatibility with macOS!
More and more of the UI elements are actually working. Yesterday I wrote code to paint on Qt surfaces using Rust, so today I'm going to make the map view work.

Generally speaking I'm getting pretty close to having a working editor. Here's some screen shots of stuff working:

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"cr" 14:31 25-Jul-49

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