Classic Marathon Trilogy on Steam gets a Beta with Linux support and lots of overall improvements

Classic Marathon, Classic Marathon 2 and Classic Marathon Infinity are getting some big upgrades with a Beta now available to test. All three of these Bungie classics now supported by the community are getting their Native Linux versions on Steam, along with various other major improvements to the retro shooters.

The Beta for all three of them went up on Friday, August 8th with all these 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

• 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)

Behind the scenes:

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

• Uses ASIO for networking instead of SDL_net

They've done it a little weirdly though, instead of just putting up an opt-in Beta it seems you need to request a special Beta Steam key to actually get access to it. Probably just so they're not overwhelmed with feedback on it. Once they see it working well enough, the update will be released for everyone.

Nice to see more improvements coming for these classic retro games.