The Marathon Open Source project has posted a new Carbon build of Aleph One for Mac OS X that is said to work quite well.

Aleph One is the game engine based on the source code to Marathon 2, the classic first-person shooter from Bungie that pushed the technical envelope of its day and that remains a giant of the genre for its engrossing story and addictive multiplayer gameplay.

Aleph On features OpenGL acceleration, high-resolution 32-bit textures, scripting, support for 3D models, and nascent IP networking for multiplayer gaming over the Internet.

The Aleph One source tree has a couple of branches to it, each of which has a number of dedicated developers. In addition to the new Mac OS X-only Carbon build by Jeremy Parsons, there is a Carbon build by Stephen Bytnar that runs in Mac OS 9 as well, and there are mature classic Mac OS builds by Loren Petrich and Alexander Strange.

Another branch of Aleph One development uses the Simple DirectMedia Layer and features builds for Mac OS X (via BSD), Linux, and other UNIX flavors, BeOS, and even Windows. It is this branch that has seen greater progress in the development of IP networking, and recently Mac OS X and Linux gamers have been able to play Marathon with each other.

Aleph One works with the data files from Marathon 2: Durandal and from Marathon Infinity to allow players to experience these all-time greats in a startlingly good-looking engine. Naturally, Aleph One also supports a great many third-party Durandal and Infinity scenarios, and a few classic scenarios have even been enhanced with high-resolution textures to take full advantage of the Aleph One engine.

Notable recent projects designed specifically for Aleph One include the M1A1 total conversion, which allows gamers to play the original Marathon in full Aleph One glory, and Marathon: Rubicon.

If you haven't been keeping up with the recent developments in the world of Marathon, follow the links below to see what you've been missing.

Marathon: Aleph One

Aleph One/SDL

M1A1

Marathon: Rubicon (add to watch list)

Loren Petrich: Aleph One for Classic Mac OS

MGF: Aleph One (Cocoa SDL) 0.12.0

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