Aaron Freed’s Creative Portfolio
A No-Longer-Brief Introductory Note
This is a selected (and far from exhaustive) portfolio of my creative work, either with others or solo. Most, though hardly all, relates to Bungie’s Marathon trilogy, a series I’ve been modding for since 1997. Much also relates to sound in some way, as not merely am I formally trained in performing, composing, & arranging music, but I’ve picked up a lot of sound production expertise from thousands of hours using computers for composing music, working on sound for game mods, remastering music for my own personal listening, editing videos, & more.
Most of this content requires the open-source Aleph One engine to play, and a basic familiarity with the Marathon trilogy will also help. (For those unfamiliar with it, the Marathon trilogy, released from 1994 to 1996, was one of Bungie’s big series before Halo; I tell people that it was roughly the Doom (1993) to Halo’s Half-Life.) Aleph One enables you to play the Marathon trilogy on Windows, Linux, and modern MacOS; here are links to self-contained releases of the trilogy and to a standalone version of the Aleph One app that enables you to play third-party content.
I’m probably one of the most prolific modders in Marathon’s history, with credits in five major published mods ranging from “remastered the music” (Phoenix) to “co-led the scenario & contributed to every aspect of its development” (Eternal). I’ve remastered the 400+ sounds in the Marathon trilogy, plus hundreds of sounds from Pathways into Darkness & several major Marathon mods. Some of these were in especially rough shape (especially Pathways’) & improved miraculously, while others already sounded pretty good & experienced only minor improvements. I also have an ongoing project to locate the CD-quality sources of Marathon sounds & remix them from their sources.
Beyond this, I am also primarily responsible for an ongoing effort to update one of Aleph One’s two main texturing utilities, which I’ve renamed to Vasara AF. My other projects include beginners’ and advanced mapmaking guides for Aleph One, a Marathon Vidmaster’s Challenge YouTube channel, a Marathon music repository, & a catalog of links to Marathon content (currently included in the beginners’ mapmaking guide, though I’m planning to split it off to its own page soon). You may also be interested in:
- My YouTube “Personal Projects 101” playlist, featuring a channel trailer & some of my favorite gameplay footage & music videos
- My discography page, featuring free downloads of:
- Nearly all music I’ve released as a musician, composer, or arranger
- Several albums I’ve mastered or remastered
Please contact me if you have any questions/praise/constructive criticism/job offers.
N.B. I listed the dates when I worked on a project, not its entire development cycle (e.g., I remastered Phoenix’s music in 2020, but it’s been in development since no later than 2010). Partly this is because the latter didn’t seem as relevant for the purposes of this list, & partly it’s because I didn’t always know those dates. Also, “major credits” means that I consider my roles on those releases to have been major – I intend no commentary on which of those releases are more significant.
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Apotheosis X (2020-2023)
- Wrote most of the scenario’s Lua (and all in version 1.1) – as far as I can tell, it was the first major Marathon scenario to use any form of dynamic music
- My remastered Marathon Infinity sounds formed the backbone of Apotheosis X’s sound design
- Worked with project director hypersleep on remastering weapon sounds for the current 1.1 release. The new sounds have been widely regarded as a significant improvement
- Featured in PC Gamer (pcgamer.com/marathon-mod-apotheosis-x)
- Further updates have not been ruled out but are not currently under active development
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Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 1 – Not Recommended by Doctors (2020-)
Gameplay & soundtrack videos: YouTube playlist (including soundtrack video & complete playthrough by thechunks)
- Mastered soundtrack – corrected audio flaws, edited tracks for pacing, helped with sequencing, made OST video
- Wrote all the project’s Lua
- Maintained the master scenario directory for the latter part of its development cycle
- Partly or solely responsible for five levels, several terminals, the scenario documentation, & AI art prompts
- Still working on bug fixes (we couldn’t find testers due to the project’s difficulty, so we missed a lot of bugs)
- This is an iteration of creator tbcr’s long-running Dungeons show, hence its full title
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Major Credits (Unpublished/Incomplete)
Tempus Irae Redux (2020-)
- Reimagining of one of Marathon Infinity’s first & best major scenarios with which I’m assisting one of its original creators, James Hastings-Trew (the winner of Bungie’s mapmaking contest)
- Credits include sound, level design (including a new secret level, “Il grande silenzio”), music, soundtrack mastering, Lua, writing, & fixes to innumerable problems ranging from game-breaking bugs to misaligned textures
- Nardo website may not have been updated to mention Redux yet
- Not a straight remaster but more of a modern update; as it significantly changes several levels, players may find it interesting to play both
- Redux isn’t planned to supersede the original Tempus Irae, whose original Aleph One release will continue to be available on Nardo’s website after we release Redux; however, we recommend Redux for anyone playing Tempus for the first time
- Estimated completion date: late April or early May 2024 (warning: my estimates are notoriously optimistic; nonetheless, we opened a limited beta test in mid-October 2023, although we haven’t yet reached feature completion)
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Where Monsters Are in Dreams (2019-)
- Codirector alongside Blayne Scott, thedoc, CryoS, & hypersleep
- Other credits include sound, music, level design, story, & Lua
- Began life as an Eternal sequel & Rubicon prequel, though its connections to those games have been somewhat reduced over time
- Development began ca. 2001; has been completely overhauled several times
- YouTube videos are already two years old – many graphics & levels seen in them have since been replaced
- In late 2023, hypersleep, CryoS, & I recommitted to finally finishing this monster (pun intended) & have a detailed, step-by-step roadmap to do so
- Estimated completion date: late 2024 or early 2025. However, we’ve overshot so many estimates that it’s become a running gag, so take that with not just a grain or even a boulder of salt but in fact an entire salt mine
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Return to Marathon Chapter 2 (2023-)
- To be clear, I didn’t work on chapter 1, but chapter 2 & onward will continue in the same style
- No new assets to show yet: development only recently resumed after a hiatus of over 20 years
- Big House site may not yet be updated to mention project’s revival
- Too early to estimate completion date yet
- Planned roles include audio, soundtrack, Lua, story, & level design
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Marathon Chronicles (1997-)
Download: Latest public build (which is still a few years old)
- Scenario I’ve been developing off & on since eighth grade (currently “off” until I complete other projects)
- I’m the project director & have worked on maps, sounds, music, graphics, writing, scripting, & more
- A love letter to the trilogy & several major fan scenarios, including hopefully dead-on Tempus Irae pastiches
- Chronicles is planned to be a sort of grand finale to a loose arc between the fan games Rubicon, Eternal, Phoenix, & Where Monsters Are in Dreams (listed in original release order rather than in-universe chronology), & to wrap up several unresolved plot elements of Eternal & Rubicon. It is planned to resolve Hathor’s story, to address some ramifications of Rubicon’s story, & to resolve the ramifications of the conflict revealed towards the end of Eternal
- Despite its having technically been in development for nearly two-thirds of my life, Chronicles may still well be less than half complete
- I plan for its second half to be fairly atypical for Marathon gameplay, with perhaps dozens of interconnected levels featuring nonlinear objectives & items that enable players to progress in several different ways; they’ll be able to obtain these in nearly any order, meaning its objectives will have several possible solutions. None of this is implemented yet, though, & Chronicles is currently on the backburner at least until Tempus Irae Redux is complete
- A build from a few years ago is linked from the above YouTube playlist. Much of its contents are far below my current capabilities (some of it is over two decades old) & will likely be completely remade as time permits
- Estimated completion date: late 2020s at the earliest
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Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste (2023-)
- Again doing level design, Lua, soundtrack mastering/video, writing, & scenario documentation
- Have also composed original tracks for the OST & remixed tracks by other musicians
- Level submissions for Vol. 2 are now closed, though it’s not too early to begin work on levels or level ideas for Vol. 3
- We’ll welcome most sorts of contributions from anyone, but we don’t need more people to send us music: more than seven hours of music have been submitted for Vol. 2 – i.e., more than enough for both Vol. 2 & Vol. 3, while giving us a pretty good head start on Vol. 4
- Estimated completion date: mid- to late 2024
- Gameplay & music preview: youtu.be/lebTkbIkt5I
- Opening music track, “7:6:5:4” (named for its polyrhythms), & first five levels shown, “Sega Genesis featuring Peter Gabriel”, “Spinning Wheel”, “StairWAVE to Aaron”, “Gateway to Aaron”, & “GateWAVE to Aaron”, are my work
- Includes one music track from each composer; the other tracks, in order, are by Matrix_XV, tbcr, CKT1138, & NEFX
- Levels & music seen here may not necessarily appear in this form in the final release, as neither the level order nor the music to accompany each level have been finalized yet
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Other Credits (Published)
Trojan Standalone Edition (2021-2022)
- Standalone re-release of one of the most famous Marathon 1 total conversions with some added or revised content
- Remastered all the game’s sounds & music
- Several sounds remain quite rough, which was likely unavoidable unless I outright replaced them (which was outside the scope of what we aimed to do), but they’re noticeable improvements over the originals
- The music doesn’t sound noticeably different than it originally did, as it was already very dynamic
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Marathon Phoenix SE (2020)
- Remastered the soundtrack
- Note that my remaster of the title theme is not included with the game; also, the FLAC soundtrack might differ in minute ways from the in-game versions
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Selected Discography
Complete Discography: aaronfreed.github.io/discography.html
A General Overview
Selected Works, 2014-2023
- Having released (by some measures) over five hours of music in 2023 alone, I compiled some of my favorite tracks from the past decade
- “1-CD” version runs for 86 minutes and features eight tracks
- Originally fit on one audio CD until I significantly expanded “Flippant” & “Fat Man” & updated the collection to match
- I’ve considered yeeting a track so that the collection will fit onto a single CD again, but I’ve grown attached to its present state
- With the collection clearly no longer fitting onto one CD, I got cheeky enough to compile a proper 2-CD version with fifteen tracks (a few pieced together from multiple sources) that run for nearly 155 minutes
- Both versions include:
- Original compositions
- Covers
- Remixes of others’ music
- Solo tracks
- Collaborations with other artists
- “1-CD” release includes liner notes with detailed credits & track-by-track commentary (which I’m still writing for the 2-CD release)
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Selected Solo Works
See You Starside: The Marathon Soundtrack Reimagined (released February 4, 2023)
- Completely new arrangements that nearly double the OST’s length from 40:16 to 78:17
- Several melodies & riffs now reappear in several other tracks
- Nearly every song contains new original melodies, most of which I wrote for See You Starside
- Deliberately retro arrangement/production, with intricate, densely layered mixes that retain their dynamic range (album Dynamic Range Meter score of DR13, with track scores from DR11 to DR16)
- Main influences: ’70s progressive rock, ’80s pop, ’90s VGM
- Secondary influences: blues, jazz, metal, classical, Baroque, choral music, ambient, post-rock, kosmische musik, electronica, disco
- Download link includes 16-page liner notes with album & track commentary, track metadata, artwork, & credits
- I made See You Starside entirely in GarageBand & almost exclusively used GarageBand instruments; one of my goals was to show that it isn’t necessary to spend a fortune to make music that sounds good
- I’ve since made several variants, including the following two that I’m no longer editing:
These mostly employ GarageBand & Logic instruments, though “Aliens Again” & “Chomber” make limited use of EastWest ComposerCloud+ instruments
- I’m now making new versions of all three of these (i.e., See You Starside, Violins Again, & …And Beyond) in Logic Pro, using both Logic & ComposerCloud+ instruments. Relatively current revisions of some of these may be heard here; however, note that many have major instrument balance flaws that I haven’t yet fixed. Part of why I exported them was to identify the changes I’ll need to make, since many of my projects have gotten so complex that even my M2 MacBook Air can’t play them in real time. I plan to do draft mixes of all sixteen tracks before I fix the instrument balance – repeated listening will reveal flaws I otherwise might not notice
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Demos 2014 (released November 24, 2014)
- Competent piano demos of original material & Genesis, Nobuo Uematsu, & Johann Pachelbel covers
- All songs, including the covers, feature at least some improvisation
- Last two tracks were somewhat successful attempts to learn jazz scales
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Compositions 1993-1997 (released 2008)
- While these are juvenilia, I remain fond of them (I omitted the exceptions, hence the missing “Untitled” tracks)
- I rearranged some segments in 2008, but most are as I arranged them in 1993-1997
- The most conspicuous influences I can identify are Johann Sebastian Bach & Pink Floyd, though I don’t think I consciously modeled most of its compositions after any particular artist’s style
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Marathon Remixes (1997)
- Much less sophisticated than See You Starside: imported into MIDI editor, added reverb & panning, doubled up some tracks, reassigned voices, re-exported, saved as AIFF in QuickTime 2.5
- Still interesting at times – “Splash (Marathon)”’s main riff sounds especially cool due to how it alternates between stereo channels
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Selected Collaborations
Eternal X 1.3 Original Soundtrack (WIP)
by Trey J. Anderson, Aaron Freed, Dr Craig Hardgrove, Thomas Livingston, Cory King Tucker, Matrix_XV, Nicholas Singer, Solar-Tron, Eike Steffen, Dan Storm, Talashar, & wowbobwow
based on compositions by Alexander Seropian, Martin O’Donnell, Michael Salvatori, & Chris Christodoulou
- Soundtrack for Eternal X 1.3, listed above
- Expands soundtrack from around 75 minutes to over 7 hours of in-game music (with another half-hour of bonus tracks)
- Every level now contains unique music
- Over 80 minutes of the OST are entirely or largely my work; around two hours more are my collaborations with other artists
- “Ecce homō corpulentus” & “Dona eis pietātem” contain four-part harmonies with Latin lyrics, both of which I wrote myself (apart from eight words from “Dies Īrae” in the former)
- I arranged the songs into suites, selected each level’s music, mastered the OST, & wrote up the liner notes
- Remains a work in progress, but it contains many of the works I’m proudest of
- For those wanting them, I’ve also posted standalone mixes of my collaborations with other artists (including a few that aren’t yet worked into the soundtrack)
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Dungeons Presents Hellpak: Vol. 2 – An Exercise in Questionable Taste OST (WIP)
by Aaron Freed, Matrix_XV, NEFX, tbcr, & Cory King Tucker
- Soundtrack for hellpak vol. 2, listed above
- I’ve contributed original compositions (which at times delve into unapologetic knockoffs of Nobuo Uematsu & Hiroki Kikuta), an arrangement of Johann Sebastian Bach, & remixes of several other composers’ tracks
- I’ve also done what might be considered “pre-mastering” & compiled several tracks into suites (e.g., “Impshanuh”, “Digitality”, “It’s All Been Said and Done”)
- This doesn’t yet contain any semblance of a coherent running order, but it contains some of the strongest work several of these composers have made, in my admittedly biased opinion
- Our composers have been ridiculously prolific; this soundtrack currently contains over seven hours of music
- As a result, much of this will undoubtedly not actually appear on Vol. 2’s OST; some may not even appear on Vol. 3’s
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Other Marathon Projects
Vasara AF
- Lua texturing utility for Aleph One, based on @Hopper262 and Ares Ex Machina’s Vasara (which in turn is based on @treellama and @jonirons’ Visual Mode.lua)
- At the time I began work on this project, neither Vasara nor Visual Mode.lua had been substantially updated since 2016 (though Visual Mode.lua is now being updated again)
- Aleph One 1.7’s incorporation of several new transfer modes incited me to undertake a serious effort to update it, with a little help from @SolraBizna and @murbruksprodukt
- Several new features and bug fixes, documented in detail in the project repository. Highlights include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Much more versatile and finely honed grid settings that provide mapmakers much greater control over texture alignment, including:
- Separate X and Y alignment
- Align textures to the center, left, right, bottom, north, south, east, or west
- Over a dozen new grid sizes
- Overlays that identify the player’s target, which mapmakers can use to speed up their own scripting or to identify problems
- Aleph One 1.7’s six new transfer modes
- Option to edit transparent sides of the same line independently, allowing them to be lit, aligned, or textured differently, or even for a transparent texture to be applied to only one side of a line
- Fixes a persistent and highly annoying Lua error that could occur when lights 56 or greater were selected
- Preserves state of “Must Be Explored” polygons while it’s active (so that you won’t have to restore them after texturing)
- Fixes alignment for most textures placed on previously empty lines (transparent sides still, in certain cases, don’t align correctly, but they don’t align correctly in any other texturing utility either)
- Still a work in progress; several other planned features are not yet fully (or at all) implemented, and several persistent bugs remain in the code
@MarathonVidmaster YouTube channel (2018-)
- Planned to encode the entire contents of Hamish Sinclair & Jim Mitchell’s Marathon Vidmasters’ Page
- Never finished – plan to re-encode old films in 60 frames per second at 16:9 aspect ratio with treellama’s Basic HUD
- I’ve also posted films of third-party scenarios, new Vidmaster films, scenario previews, & game soundtracks
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Aleph One Mapmaking Guide (2023-)
- No one had made a mapmaking guide in roughly a decade, so I wrote an admittedly opinionated guide detailing many mapmaking pitfalls & providing some solutions
- Features include, but are by no means limited to:
- Weland setup guide
- Weland, Visual Mode.lua, Vasara, and ShapeFusion tips
- List of known sound sources
- Annotated Anvil help balloons
- Detailed notes on map complexity
- How to simplify maps without negative repercussions on sound or appearance
- Links to other Marathon content, both mapmaking-related & otherwise
- Still a work in progress; is in the process of being split off into multiple pages, and I’m working on several additional sections
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Marathon Remixes & Fan Soundtracks (2023-)
- A supplement to Dr Craig Hardgrove’s page (themarathonmusic.com), which he hadn’t updated in years
- Ultimately, he wound up also linking to my page to avoid having two pages that largely duplicated each other’s content
- I may eventually add incomplete sets of remixes that I find especially noteworthy, but these are currently limited to complete projects, with exceptions for Eternal 1.3 (owing to its massive length), my Logic Pro WIPs (since they’re updates of released albums), & Tobacco & Cannibal Whore Feast’s remixes (since together they make a complete set, & it’s unlikely either artist will make any new ones)
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Remastered Pathways into Darkness & Marathon Trilogy Sounds (2020)