Lately, I, Modesty, and a friend of ours have been playing Aleph One with a home-made physics file made to compensate for the game's lack of perfect weapon balance. The file has been modified between each game in order to fine tune balance. After some weeks of playing we all have come to the conclusion that this is the version of Marathon with the best weapon balance we have played so far.

In hopes that other Marathon players will choose to use this physics model for their future games, I have included the file as well as a modified version of Delusions of Grandeur for download. The map has different weapon placement to compensate for the weapons that now have different functions than before, and I also took the liberty of modifying the map layout a bit as well.

For the first time ever I don't think "ah, free kill" when I meet someone equipped with the fusion or alien gun.

Download the file here: Click to view attachment

For what the file actually does:

Changes to weapons:
(Sorted by effective weapon range)

Fist

- Damage no longer scales with velocity and now always does the full amount. This was done to make the fist slighty more useful. (Mind you, it is still a last resort weapon)
- Damage is 50-60 (3 hits to kill)
- Damage type and sound effects changed to Flick'ta Claw for added kick and better sound effect.
- Optimal range: Short (Duh!)

Flamethrower

- Speed increased from 341 to 400. This also means a small increase in range.
- Is now "persistent and virulent", which means it will pass through its target and damage everything it comes in contact with as long as it exists. This also means that you will take damage if you are too close to the flames when they hit another player or monster.
- Optimal range: Short

Shotgun

- Amount of bullets per shot changed from 10 to 15.
- Damage lowered from 20-24 to 12-14 per bullet. Maximum damage is slighty lower than the original, but will still kill in 1 if most of the projectiles hit)
- Projectile error changed from 5 to 7. This means the bullets will spread out a bit more.
- Optimal range: Short

Basically, these changes mean that you will get less lucky shots at longer range, since bullets deal less per bullet, but will be easier to hit at all. In effect this makes the shotgun less deadly at longer range.

Rocket Launcher

- Now has a purtier contrail effect.
- Cooldown between shots increased from 18 ticks to 34 ticks. (Means it now fires slower. 30 ticks = 1 second)
- Can place time bombs with secondary trigger. Time bombs use the same ammunition as the primary trigger, and will be dropped where you stand. Once they stop bouncing they go off.
- Time bomb explosion radius is 3600 (rockets have 1500)
- Time bombs do the same damage as the rocket, which is 250-300
- Optimal range: Short

Note: The time bombs use shots ID 23, "Energy Drain".

Assault Rifle

- Projectile error reduced from 10 to 5. You can now actually hit your opponent.
- Projectile velocity increased from 1024 to 3024 (Yes, that's triple the original)
- Grenade error increased from 0 to 2.
- Grenade velocity increased from 256 to 285
- Optimal range: Short-medium

Fusion Pistol / Combo gun

- Complete redesign. The fusion gun is now actually useful in network games.
- Primary trigger now fires high velocity projectiles with small area of effect and high kick. The kick effect will disrupt the opponent's movements by tossing him around, thus making him easier to hit.
- Damage type is now "electrical staff" (required to get the high kick effect on impact)
- Secondary trigger fires a burst of 4 slower, less powerful projectiles.
- Primary fire damage is 50-55, secondary fire is 24-32 per projectile. (Shots to kill: 3 primary fire, 5-7 secondary fire)
- Optimal range: Medium

[i]Note: VacBobs now use the "unused 1" projectile which is a copy of the original fusion pistol shots, and so are not affected by the fusion pistol changes.

Flechette

- Projectile velocity increased from 1024 to 3024 (Yes, that's triple the original)
- Optimal range: Medium-long

Pistol

- Damage increased from 20-28 to 38-40 (shots to kill: 4)
- Projectile velocity increased from 1024 to 3024 (Yes, that's triple the original)
- Optimal range: Long

Alien Weapon

- Complete redesign. The alien weapon is now a long range single shot energy weapon with no error.
- Damage is 80-100 (Shots to kill: 2)
- Projectile speed is 3024 (Built-in conventional weapons have 1024)
- Magazine capacity 7
- Uses Fusion Batteries as ammo
- Is no longer lost when you run out of ammo.
- Optimal range: Long

Note: The projectile used by the Alien Weapon is now "Unused 2". Enforcers still have their old projectiles.

Physics changes:

- The maximum look up/look down angle has been increased from 42,6666 degrees to 85 degrees. Note that this will make the built-in landscape textures look odd, but will otherwise not affect gameplay in a bad way.[/i]

Sounds great! I messed around with the assault rifle a while back, and made it much more powerful and accurate. I thought the fact that the pistol > armor piercing rounds (or at least big bullets) was stupid.

I can agree with that. Unfortunately, to keep the balance between the weapons I have made the pistol bullets even more damaging. Let us just pretend they are 12,7mm incendiary rounds, ok?

you can upload .zip files, I know, but watch out for size limits (may or may not be an issue for you)

Natch. I was going to half the ammo in the game to balance it, but I never got around to it.

Thanks! File now uploaded and available at the top of the page.

You should be aware that a few things you're doing undo decisions Bungie made to mask engine limitations; engine limitations which still exist in Aleph One:

• You can increase the radius of an explosion, but it still can't spread to more than one polygon. The reason behind this, from what I've determined, is that when you have adjacent polygons, you need a more complex algorithm to figure out if the explosion should be blocked by a wall and such. So increasing the radius will make this more noticeable: sometimes the timebomb will hit an enemy, and sometimes it won't, when the enemy was the same distance away both times. A secondary reason is that Marathon's damage doesn't fall off with distance, which isn't as noticeable with small radii.
• The maximum speed of projectiles in Marathon is 1024 because if you use a speed greater than that, the collision detection starts to fail. Bullets will occasionally seem to go right through a target or wall. I suspect this is affected by the hardcoded 30 updates-per-second limit of Marathon.
• The angle at which the player can look up or down was minimized because Marathon's renderer 'cheats': when you look up or down, you are not tilting the camera, you are panning the camera. Plus, Marathon's sprites are made to look like they're at the same height as the camera. So if you go too far, the map geometry may look distorted enough to start tripping people up.
• In contrast, making the flame projectiles persistent and virulent was a neat idea. I can't believe that's all it takes to make the player able to set himself on fire; you'd think somebody would have thought of it before.

In short, I'm glad you designed these physics through a lot of trial-and-error testing. However, your gameplay experience will be somewhat inconsistent by using these physics.

Thanks for the comments, but I would like to add my own comments:

As for the splash damage limitation, I also thought that explosions could not expand to other polygons than their own, but testing this over and over produced variable results. Earlier today I tested this again, and found that this only happened when I placed the bombs as close to a polygon edge as possible. Somehow it seems like this problem only appears if the projectile detonates close to a poly edge.
Anyway, this problem exists in the normal game as well, and it will happen with both missiles and grenades. Besides, it is not like the time bombs are now the main function of the launcher. They are merely an addition for extra options.

I have been playing with the projectile speeds as high as 3024 for weeks now, and the only thing I have noticed is that projectiles sometimes impact in the middle of the air. This happens very rarely and always at the same places. Probably connected with some specific placement of polygon edges. Otherwise it works like a blast, and these freak occurences have not really posed a problem. The camera adjustment also has not made any problems appear.

The persistent & virulent flag will only hit something once, then it has to hit something else to be able to hit the previous target again. What this means is that you can fire into a wall without taking any damage, but if you fire on another actor up close you will get burnt.

All in all, gameplay with this mod feels no more inconsistent than gameplay with the regular physics.

What God2.0 says is true.
I have tested this with him for a while, and none of the engine limitations have any real effect on gameplay.

I had this same effect with my AR physics model.

You should take these physics over to the Pfhorums and the story board. They might be interested as well, especially the folks on the Pfhorums.