Classic Marathon trilogy on Steam now has Linux support

Originally from Destiny and Halo developer Bungie - Classic Marathon 1, Classic Marathon 2 and Classic Marathon Infinity get Native Linux versions on Steam. Nowadays, the retro games are supported by the community as part of the Aleph One open source project.

This Linux release comes after a Beta was put up previously for the community to test, which also pulled in numerous other improvements to each game.

Pictured: Classic Marathon 2 running on Linux

Full list of changes:

Highlights:

• Native Steam Linux support

• Audio improvements

• Additional sprite rendering option for 3D perspective

• Replay films for saved games

Changes:

• Numerous audio improvements:

  • Pauses/resumes in-game audio when the game is paused/resumed

  • Intro music now continues to play in preferences dialogs

  • Shield/O2 charger now fully loop to prevent pops

  • Adds 3D spatialization for stereo sources

  • HRTF no longer affects music, streaming sources and 2D sounds

  • Fades in ambient sounds when they start playing

  • Sound obstruction adjustments

  • Allow HRTF settings only when stereo + 3D sounds are enabled

• Adds a sensitivity/deadzone preference for each controller aim axis (#525)

• Adds a few cheats to Cheats.lua

• Adds support for Steam Linux including workshop upload

• Films are now recorded when starting from saved games

• Allows viewing terminals when the overhead map is active (#549)

• Adds a new setting to tilt sprites parallel to the camera when 3D perspective is on

• Shell casings are now interpolated at 60+ fps

• (Lua) Adds Game.player accessor for Tag/KTMWTB/Rugby

Other fixes:

• Fixes players sprites when gathering a network game (#527)

• Fixes stats board displayed twice before the epilogue in coop net games

• Fixes hotkey issues with dead players and ball carriers (#516)

• Fixes aim issues with aim getting stuck when both mouse and joystick are plugged in (#513)

• Fixes an issue with DPDI and alien weapon ammo (#509)

• Fixes network-only items not spawning on the first level (#517)

• Fixes teleporting (local) effects when transiting to another level in coop net games

• Fixes an issue where players can't respawn in net games on some broken maps (#457)

• Stability improvements to dedicated servers

• Improvements to native file dialogs (#550)

• Fixes window focus loss when replaying a film selected with native file dialog (#401)

• Fixes an assertion failure with some Marathon 1 maps (#533)

Behind the scenes:

• Uses libmatroska, libvpx, libyuv and pl_mpeg instead of FFmpeg

• Uses ASIO for networking instead of SDL_net

• Build fix for new versions of Boost (#556)

While the games did work with Proton, or you could have just run Aleph One directly, it's nice to see the Steam releases of the classics directly supported on Linux like this. Open source games are where Native Linux build should (in theory) thrive compared to running Windows games in Proton, since anyone can help make them better.