Where Are Monsters in Marathon…Maps

The Marathon trilogy only includes a few monster collections per level: Marathon 2: Durandal never exceeds three (except in the Windows 95 release, where one level contains four), while Marathon (1994) and Marathon Infinity only exceed four per level once apiece. There was a very practical reason for this: computers of the day had only a limited amount of RAM, and limiting the number of collections used meant the game required less memory to run. This had the added side effect of making each level feel unique. A sortable list of every monster collection used in all three games follows. Some general notes:

• For each table, clicking a column title sorts the table by that column’s values, though due to the arbitrariness of the monster order (I ordered them by their positions in the game physics), only the first two column sorts are especially useful. Clicking a column a second time reverses the ordering.
• “Collection” refers to how the shapes files for each game are organized. In lieu of a lengthy, potentially confusing explanation, I’ll simply link to Lochnits.com’s archives of all three games’ shapes by collection:
  • Marathon
  • Marathon 2: Durandal
  • Marathon Infinity
• “Flappyboi”, for those of you not familiar with Marathon community memes, is given the more boring name of “Tick” in the game’s code and editors, but we know better.
• Levels in each game use varying numbers of monster collections (although Marathon 2 is remarkably consistent, using three collections in every level except “For Carnage, Apply Within”, which uses two). If a column is blank, the level didn’t have that many collections.
• If you’re confused about aspects of mapmaking described here and desire further clarification, I recommend checking out my beginner’s and advanced guides for more information and links to additional resources.
• Please contact me if you notice any errors or omissions.

Table of Contents

1. Intro
2. Table of Contents (you’re looking at it)
3. Marathon (1994)
4. Marathon 2: Durandal (1995)
5. Marathon Infinity (1996)
6. …why put this together?
7. Acknowledgements
8. Endnotes

Marathon (1994)

• Caveat lēctor: I do not have a fast way to verify the accuracy of the Marathon 1 data at the moment; once I get a stable emulator setup working, I’ll double-check it.

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Marathon 2: Durandal (1995)

• In most versions of the map, all levels use three monster collections except for “For Carnage, Apply Within”, which only uses Compilers and Enforcers. The third column is hence left blank for that level.
• The Windows 95 version adds one additional exception, “Waterloo Waterpark”, as explained in the endnotes (you can also just hover over the level name, or click the link after the level name).

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Marathon Infinity (1996)

• Owing to custom monster physics, the monster placements on a level often don’t match the expected collections in the shapes. This list takes that into account.
• Marathon Infinity levels range from using no monster collections whatsoever (“Two for the Price of One”) to using five (“One Thousand Thousand Slimy Things”). Blank columns signify that a level didn’t use that many collections.
• I’m also not counting the Items collection, which always loads for every level; Infinity’s Items collection contains the “ambient wildlife” that the shapes file names Grendel (the small creatures that hop about on the ground), Potato Anus (the blue and orange spherical creatures seen wandering in all kinds of liquids), and Mothrid (the translucent flying octopodes). The names of levels that use any of these monsters are italicized.
• Since most of Marathon Infinity’s levels actually have Marathon 2-formatted physics models merged in, the physics for monsters in the VacBob slots aren’t set in stone (nor are the behaviours of the SMG and its projectiles). This is rarely consequential in the former case (most “VacBobs” you see in Marathon Infinity levels actually use the “Bob” slots), but there’s a spawn for a Security VacBob in the northwest corner of “A Converted Church in Venice, Italy” that could be something completely different if you’d loaded a physics model that reassigned the Security VacBob before loading “A Converted Church”. This list assumes the default physics for such cases.

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…why put this together?

Two primary reasons:

1. I think the techniques developers used to conserve memory in the ’80s and ’90s deserve much more attention than they’ve received. Frankly, modern developers could learn a lot from the efficiency of ’80s and early ’90s games. This is just a small microcosm of that tendency.
2. I’ve long held that most third-party scenarios place monsters too indiscriminately. If every monster is on every level, then the combat on every level becomes effectively interchangeable. Restricting monsters to a few types per level results in each level’s combat feeling far more unique. Seeing everything laid out like this may help drive home how restricted the monster placement in the original trilogy was.

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Acknowledgements

• Paul S. on Stack Overflow for his table sort script, and Fla for a revision that enabled it to sort numeric values. (My knowledge of JavaScript is effectively nonexistent.)
• Jason Karns and Davide Cannizzo on Stack Overflow for the CSS table of contents, which is beyond my relatively competent level of CSS ability.
• Solra Bizna for an incomprehensible amount of programming help, including the CSS that makes this exact page follow your computer’s dark mode settings.
• fracai, whose utterly invaluable maps saved me from having to open Pfhorte even once.
• Bungie, for obvious reasons.

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Endnotes

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