First game. :)

    Well, more like games, lol. Today I will be talking about Aleph One. It is a great engine to run the Marathon Trilogy, or any of the open source games that continue the Marathon legacy.

    Today, this will be installed using Ubuntu 10.04.4. These instructions will work with all versions up through the most recent version released.

    There are two ways of doing this One, is to download the source code and compile the software. That's all fine and dandy if you're well versed on the command line, but more than likely, if you're reading this, then you most likely aren't. So, we will do it the easy way. :)

    First thing you need to do is to click on System/Admin/ and Software Sources. Enter your password and hit Enter. Once the window opens up, look at the tabs at the top. Click on "Other Software". At the bottom you will now see a button labeled "Add". Click it, and in it enter this:

http://ppa.launchpad.net/gjditchfield/ppa/ubuntu

    That is the repository that holds Aleph One. Click on Ok, then Close, the it will ask you to reload. Let it do that, then go to Applications/Accesories/Terminal. In the Terminal, enter the following.

sudo apt-get update 

    I do it a second time to make sure the repository was correctly installed and that it has the right key. After that, Enter:

sudp apt-get install alephone 

    Enter "Y" if it asks, and grab a cup of coffee for a second. Once that finishes, you now have Aleph One installed! But wait! There's more! Having Aleph One installed properly is great and all, but it won't run without the game files from Bungie. Download the game of choice, Marathon M1A1, Marathon 2: Durandal, or Marathon Infinity. Right click and extract the tar file. The folder you get needs to have its contents put in the folder for Aleph One now.

    Press "Alt" & "F2" at the same time. In the box, type:

gksudo nautilus

   Enter your password if it asks for it, and now you're in your system as a superuser. Navigate from System, to Usr/share/games/Aleph One. There's where those game files need to be.

    Or, on the other hand, if you want all the games downloaded and ready to play at a moments notice, then instead of putting all those files in the Aleph One folder, put that folder on your desktop or home folder. THen, when you want to play the game, navigate to the folder where the game files are, and double click on the map file, and voila!

    There you have it. Installing Aleph One and the Marathon Trilogy. Simple enough right? Exactly. :)


    Now, my personal review of the games. I've played the Marathon games since they were Apple only starting in 1994. Makes me feel old saying that, lol. Running the games using the Aleph One engine in Linux puts the original versions to shame. Less glitches, smoother graphics, OpenGL (if your video card supports it), and better support. I haven't tested Net Play in the Aleph One run versions of the games yet, but so far, I give it a 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Awesome job Bungie!