A busy day for Marathon news. Just recieved this PR from Pfhor, announcing another alternative future course for Marathon's evolution:

Shortly following Rhys Hill's release of Aleph One v0.10.6 comes a v0.10.7 courtesy of Loren Petrich. Packed to the gills with new features, this version unfortunately doesn't combine the new features and fixes in v0.10.6... perhaps a .8 is not far off. An excerpt from the features list:

A new version of Aleph One up at Marathon Open Source, and a bit of a bug report to go with it. Improved monitor support and faster code are the fruits of codewarrior Rhys Hill's labors, so stop buy a and pick up the latest build if you're just dying for an excuse to play Marathon again.

Although the maps haven't yet been released, the winners of the Simplici7y Contest have been announced, according to the Marathon Story Page.

The grand prize winner, Richard Dierkes, wins a Marathon Trilogy box set and, oddly enough, a copy of Super Marathon for the (ill-fated) Pippen. Along with the Story Page, we wonder what he'll be able to do with that, exactly. Anybody have a Pippen prototype lying around?

There's an interesting tidbit in a Game Guru column by Nate Birkholz over at MacCentral today, a reaction to all this Doom 3 controversy, and about games that imitate other games. Marathon, however, is specificially listed as a game that while also a first-person shooter that came out after the downloadable Doom but before the shrinkwrapped Doom 2, was innovative and new:

Now don't get me wrong -- not every first person shooter was a copycat.

Version 0.10.5 of of theOpen Source Marathon project, Aleph One , is available. The new build features changes to field-of-vision management, teleportation and other effects, as well as some bug fixes. Go check it out!

The dedicated folk over at Marathon Open Source have a few updates for a lazy Thursday afternoon. Progress being made on Pfhortran, and some additions to the future Aleph One plans, network games and map editors in particular. Very cool to see Marathon being reborn... just can't keep a good game down.

There's a new release of the Aleph One build at the Marathon Open Source site. The highlights include: