#aleph one

Holy what--

Marathon!

I think it's a sign of a healthy fan community when all a game shows up on Steam and all the reviews are memes.

- Deus Ex > GMDX (Give Me Deus Ex) and The Nameless Mod fangame

- Thief: Deadly Shadows > Sneaky Upgrade

- FreeSpace 2 > FSPort+Silent Threat: Reborn, Derelict, and Blue Planet, among many others (particularly The Babylon Project, Shrouding the Light+StL: Origins, Sync, Transcend, Vassago’s Dirge, the Just Another Day series, and so on)

- Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance > Upgrade (can even apply with TIE Fighter > Total Conversion Mod)

- Pathways Into Darkness and The Marathon Trilogy (1, 2: Durandal, and Infinity) > Aleph One

- Battlefield 2 > Project Reality: BF2 and Forgotten Hope 2

- Battlefield 1942 > Forgotten Hope

- Call of Duty 2 > Spanish Civil War Mod

- Commandos 2: Men of Courage > Commandos: Destination Berlin

- Star Wars: Empire at War+Forces of Corruption > Thrawn’s Revenge, Fall of the Republic, and Awakening of the Rebellion

- XCOM: Enemy Unknown and 2 > The Long War

- Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2+Yuri’s Revenge > Mental Omega 3.3.5

- Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines > Basic and Plus Unofficial Patches

- Fallout 1 and 2 > Fixt mod and The Restoration Project respectively (and this is just ignoring the mods for 3, New Vegas, and 4, especially the Someguy series for NV)

I'd normally wouldn't exactly be sharing this kind of content, but seeing as Marathon is my Number One Spot of Brainrot, and most people who have played these games in recent years are likely just on Tumblr/Twitter/their own Discord servers and not the official Aleph One Discord, the following events are basically unknown to the majority of people. So, to better archive them than to let them get lost in time.

Firstly, I should establish the main players of for the redaction:

Aaron Freed: co-director & one of many composers and general maker of Stuff for Eternal, composer and level designer for the (as of writing this) the in-works Tempus Irae Redux, alongside his work on the currently still unreleased Chronicles and Where Monsters Are In Dreams, owner of the Marathon Vidmaster Challenge Youtube channel and dozens of compositions, Marathon-related or otherwise. He is, likely alongside Adminn_1 (aka NEFX) andn Hamish (owner of the Marathon Story Page), one of the most prolific creators for Marathon.

Gregory Smith, aka Treellama: the head programmer for the Aleph One project, as well as maker of Weland (map creator), ShapeFusion (modification of logic and physics files for Marathon) and Atque (a merger and splitter for Marathon scenarios). His work, overall, has helped the community a great deal, from modernised modding tools to supporting Aleph One and expanding the Marathon engine with every update.

Solra Bizna (or just Solra): another developer for Aleph One, most notable for having helped create a proof-of-concept code to showcase how Aleph One could run at 60FPS and more, which would eventually be expanded to the current FPS settings that Aleph One now has. He has also worked on a variety of parts of Aleph One, such as Lua overlays and netscripts, all important to current functions for modern Marathon scenarios.

So, What Happened?

On the 29th of May, Solra publicly announced his departure of the Marathon Discord server, explaining that due to unexplained blockage from the Aleph One team towards Aaron's PR (pull request; a way of proposing changes made made in a fork of the original source code that could be added to the original code), with no real explanation given beyond that "treellama finds [Aaron] irritating", he feels his energy put on fixing this have been wasted, and retires to work on his lonesome.

While some buzz would be made from this departure, nothing of note would be said until the 4th of June, where Aaron would expand on the details of the situation.

This thread, still available in the Marathon Discord, would go on details about events that led to Solra leaving. In short: Aaron had been under Solra's tutelage on programming (something that has been public as around 2022-2023), with the idea that, as she explained in his departure, he would contribute in his stead and give Aaron a chance to contribute to one of his greatest contributions. However, attempts to do such a thing would be stopped by the AO team with no real reason, and any attempts to gain an understanding as to why would be stonewalled. The only real reason given is, according to treellama in a ticket request, "unresolvable personality conflicts".

Alongside this, Aaron himself would bring up a few notes in relation to Aleph One, one of which is the very reason I'm writing this post (outside of the conclusion at the end):

For context in regards to the reaction: INTERPOLATED_WORLD.cpp is what currently allows Marathon to run at FPSes higher than 20. Aaron's reaction come specifically from the (still current as of me writing this) credits of the file, which note very specifically at the start Gregory Smith (treellama). The issue raised here by Aaron is that that code was originally started by Solra as a proof-of-concept (which can be visualised here), which would then be reiterated by Treellama throughout—something he tries to use as a sort of gotcha on Aaron, as he shows that, at most, only 15-to-40 lines of code, or 17% of it, is still Solra's.

I'm unable to find when exactly the credits were added as I suck working with Github, but if a smarter person can find it, I'll be holy appreciative.

Now, to interject with my own opinion on this: no matter if there's one line, three or half in the current code that are still part of the proof-of-concept, Solra should still be correctly credited; that, or use the generic "Credits: Aleph One Team". The immediate use of Treellama's real name makes it seem to anyone who doesn't know any better that he himself made it in collaboration with the AO team, which is objectively not true. He did try and present a solution to this, which just amounted to "if Solra is bothered by this, he should reach out", which is absolutely not what should happen. Properly crediting people, no matter in what way, should be done automatically, instead of awaiting for someone to make a fuss about it. It makes you look like you don't actually care to fix things or change them. Just do it. No need to pull out statistics of how much is yours vs. Solra's. It's a waste of time.

Sadly, this is the last post made in the thread before the moderators closed it down. After this, Aaron would more or less abandon all activity in the Discord server, still working on other projects such as TIR, and is now used by other high profile creators like cassis (Liver and Onions), hypersleep (Apotheosis X) and Ryoko (Phoenix), who all shared their own sets of issues with Aaron on the thread, as a punching bag quite publicly on the Marathon Discord server.

So, What's There To Do Now?

In the most immediate, wait for the proper launch of Aleph Bet (link here), a fork of Aleph One which Aaron, Solra and a few others are working on, and show your support by downloading it. Use death of the author if you wish on ApoX and Phoenix, or never play them, or whatever. Do what you feel is necessary to show your discontent towards this behaviour from the lead developer for Aleph One. But don't cross the boundaries of insults or death threats. That is unnecessary and entirely stupid. Be better than that.

Apotheosis X pushes the boundaries of what's possible aesthetically with the marathon engine whilst retaining its low resolution 90's charm.

The campaign features engaging combat that scales with player skill and aggression, with a roster of new enemies and weaponry that compliments the original games' nuance and high skill ceiling.

Features:

23 massive levels playable in solo and co-op mode

Eight new weapons

A completely redesigned roster of enemies and allies

High frame rate sprite animation

All new environments bought to life with hundreds of new textures, scenery and landscapes

Enhanced 16 bit audio and hundreds of new sound effects