Technical problems . . .
1. The background music won’t work
There are several things that could cause this. Check the following first:
• You must have QuickTime 2.0 or newer and QuickTime Musical Instruments in your Extensions folder.
• Music requires memory. Try allocating Marathon Demo 6000K or more memory, especially if you use 16-bit (thousands of colors) graphics. Also, if you’re not able to use 16 bit graphics although you should have enough VRAM, try allocating more memory if you can spare it. Marathon seems to run fine with RAM Doubler installed. Marathon might require up to 8000K.
• To use stereo sound, you need Sound Manger 3.0 or newer.
Sound Manager is available via anonymous ftp at several locations on the net (see Where can I get it), but QT 2.0 is not. You can obtain the needed files from the CD version of System 7.5 or purchase QT 2.0 separately. QuickTime 1.6.2 is the newest QT that can be found on the net. That version will not help with Marathon music, though.
If your music still doesn’t work, you might try allocating Marathon a little less memory, so that after launching it there will still be about 500K - 1Mb free for the system. The logic behind this is that the system needs some memory for creating the sound channels, etc. So on a 8 Mb machine the system takes about 1,5 Mb, allocate Marathon about 6 Mb and leave 500K - 1Mb for other purposes. If it still doesn’t work, try consulting your physician for hearing problems ;-)
2. Bugs & conflicts
A) Screen savers
Marathon and After Dark (or many other screen savers) don’t like each other. You might be able to launch Marathon Demo and play it, but upon quitting you might get a message saying “Application ‘unknown’ has unexpectedly quit.” and your system might became very unstable and crash soon. It appears to exist with old and new versions of After Dark as well as several other screen savers, such as Darkside. To be technical, all screen savers that install a ‘SAVC’ Gestalt selector might exhibit the same problem. This will be fixed in the release version (or so Bungie says).
B) Looking down
Quite often when playing you can’t seem to look down except for maybe 15° or so. It is quite annoying, especially in the staircases. I know of no other fix for this except to look all the way up and back down again. This happens only when playing with the mouse and does not appear while playing with the keyboard. I do not know exactly what has to be done to replicate this, but it is really common whatsoever.
This bug is fixed in version 1.1.
C) ‘A’ key stops working
If you use the ‘a’ key for something like glance left, turn left, or sidestep left, you’ll often be left with no way to perform that motion. It stops working for some reason on some machines. The only way to fix it is to trash the Marathon Preferences file, but the problem will recur. The best way to avoid this bug is not to use the ‘a’ key for anything.
This bug is fixed in version 1.1.
D) Quadra 630 acceleration (“Use Hardware Acceleration” in version 1.1)
Your monitor must be in 640x480 mode to use the Q630 acceleration –if it isn’t the screen won’t center properly.
E) Net play
Sometimes the game will present the carnage report before the 5 minutes are up. Usually, the other player can just keep on playing. This only happens during net play.
This bug is fixed in version 1.1.
F) Microphone
I have heard reports that the microphone won’t work on PowerMacs (I don’t have one so I can’t verify). It might help if you set both preferred and minimum memory requirements to something big (such as 8 Mb), but this hasn’t helped everybody.
On 68K Macs the microphone works OK, though.
G) AppleTalk Remote Access
This did not work in version 1.0, but in 1.1 it does. However, even on a 14.4K line between two ‘‘040 machines the load on the CPU is so big the game becomes extremely slow. And Bungie says there will not be a direct modem-to-modem connection patch made for Marathon.
H) Speedy Mouse
An extension called Speedy Mouse that doubles the speed of the cursor will cause the 3-D view to wiggle in Marathon. Boot without it or press down the Caps Lock key to prevent this. Of course, the screen won’t wiggle if you’re playing with the keyboard.
Next Chapter
1. The background music won’t work
There are several things that could cause this. Check the following first:
• You must have QuickTime 2.0 or newer and QuickTime Musical Instruments in your Extensions folder.
• Music requires memory. Try allocating Marathon Demo 6000K or more memory, especially if you use 16-bit (thousands of colors) graphics. Also, if you’re not able to use 16 bit graphics although you should have enough VRAM, try allocating more memory if you can spare it. Marathon seems to run fine with RAM Doubler installed. Marathon might require up to 8000K.
• To use stereo sound, you need Sound Manger 3.0 or newer.
Sound Manager is available via anonymous ftp at several locations on the net (see Where can I get it), but QT 2.0 is not. You can obtain the needed files from the CD version of System 7.5 or purchase QT 2.0 separately. QuickTime 1.6.2 is the newest QT that can be found on the net. That version will not help with Marathon music, though.
If your music still doesn’t work, you might try allocating Marathon a little less memory, so that after launching it there will still be about 500K - 1Mb free for the system. The logic behind this is that the system needs some memory for creating the sound channels, etc. So on a 8 Mb machine the system takes about 1,5 Mb, allocate Marathon about 6 Mb and leave 500K - 1Mb for other purposes. If it still doesn’t work, try consulting your physician for hearing problems ;-)
2. Bugs & conflicts
A) Screen savers
Marathon and After Dark (or many other screen savers) don’t like each other. You might be able to launch Marathon Demo and play it, but upon quitting you might get a message saying “Application ‘unknown’ has unexpectedly quit.” and your system might became very unstable and crash soon. It appears to exist with old and new versions of After Dark as well as several other screen savers, such as Darkside. To be technical, all screen savers that install a ‘SAVC’ Gestalt selector might exhibit the same problem. This will be fixed in the release version (or so Bungie says).
B) Looking down
Quite often when playing you can’t seem to look down except for maybe 15° or so. It is quite annoying, especially in the staircases. I know of no other fix for this except to look all the way up and back down again. This happens only when playing with the mouse and does not appear while playing with the keyboard. I do not know exactly what has to be done to replicate this, but it is really common whatsoever.
This bug is fixed in version 1.1.
C) ‘A’ key stops working
If you use the ‘a’ key for something like glance left, turn left, or sidestep left, you’ll often be left with no way to perform that motion. It stops working for some reason on some machines. The only way to fix it is to trash the Marathon Preferences file, but the problem will recur. The best way to avoid this bug is not to use the ‘a’ key for anything.
This bug is fixed in version 1.1.
D) Quadra 630 acceleration (“Use Hardware Acceleration” in version 1.1)
Your monitor must be in 640x480 mode to use the Q630 acceleration –if it isn’t the screen won’t center properly.
E) Net play
Sometimes the game will present the carnage report before the 5 minutes are up. Usually, the other player can just keep on playing. This only happens during net play.
This bug is fixed in version 1.1.
F) Microphone
I have heard reports that the microphone won’t work on PowerMacs (I don’t have one so I can’t verify). It might help if you set both preferred and minimum memory requirements to something big (such as 8 Mb), but this hasn’t helped everybody.
On 68K Macs the microphone works OK, though.
G) AppleTalk Remote Access
This did not work in version 1.0, but in 1.1 it does. However, even on a 14.4K line between two ‘‘040 machines the load on the CPU is so big the game becomes extremely slow. And Bungie says there will not be a direct modem-to-modem connection patch made for Marathon.
H) Speedy Mouse
An extension called Speedy Mouse that doubles the speed of the cursor will cause the 3-D view to wiggle in Marathon. Boot without it or press down the Caps Lock key to prevent this. Of course, the screen won’t wiggle if you’re playing with the keyboard.
Next Chapter