I think Jared is a time traveler. On last week’s podcast, The Bearded One asked us what happened to Marathon for the iPad. We reported on that back in February, but the project seemed to have gone dark. And here, just yesterday, Bungie out of the blue issued an update of sorts and interviewed the designer behind the project. Turns out that things have been going well enough. The iOS Marathon port will hit the App Store for $0 as soon as it clears certification, which it appears, presently, to be in.
If you’d like to know more about the designer, check out Bungie’s interview with him. It has a lot information about his experience with the Marathon series, development of the port, and even has some advice for would-be programmers.
Development iPad game screenshot. More here.
I’ve plucked this notable out of it just for you. As most of you know, Marathon is an old FPS built specifically for a mouse and keyboard. It took a lot of revisions, but it appears as though the nut for this game has been cracked.
There are still a lot of controls. For now, there is a left thumb virtual joystick for moving, the “action" button is tucked under. On the right thumb, you have primary and secondary fire buttons; the weapon switch buttons are at the bottom.
There are a few hidden buttons as well. Touching the HUD motion sensor brings up the auto map. The left and right sides of the ammo display switch weapons and the center toggles between the ammo and inventory displays. The original Marathon didn’t have an aiming reticule, and by default the iOS version sticks to that, but it can be enabled in the options.
There is also an option to tap-to-shoot, but two finger tap for secondary fire didn’t make it into the final build. Sorry to the lefties out there, a future release will have adjustable controls!
In other news, Bungie is releasing the source code for its final title in the Marathon series, Marathon Infinity. It’s now “open source,” so I suppose there’s a chance that we could catch it on the App Store, too! That’s hot.
Have a look at some Mac Marathon gameplay while you wait.
