people have had their hopes dashed to pieces.

• A new alpha has been leaked, for the VäporOS!
  Rumor has it that M4 will actually be bundled with this new operating system!
• Looks like i've gone bigtime. Inside Mac Games Magazine has written up a small news story about this page!
• Some vermin have somehow gotten ahold of the M4 engine and started a game called PREY!
  
• I've compiled a list of kind and supportive emails i've recieved, and posts to usenet!

Bungie told us they where done with the Marathon series, that they where working on something totally new.

They lied.
And i've got the scoop.

A few of us out there have *ehem* acquired a very early alpha version of this puppy, and let me tell you, its amazing. My non-authorative opinion is that it blows Quake right out of the water, no questions asked. As far as I can tell, its absolutely true 3D, with none of that psuedo-3D sloped floor rigamarole. There are some very impressive structures which could not have been done without a totally free 3D environment.
The lighting is just as amazing as the architectural engine. It doesn't just assign a light value to each poly, like some games. The lights are very natural and realistic, it gives the impression of ray tracing. I have no idea how they've pulled it off. I've seen some colored lights scattered about, as well, and of course not all of them are static. Theres this one really dark room, with some small windows, and occasionally there will be a bright flickering flash, which sends all kinds of cool shadows around the room. Ah yes. I havent mentioned shadows yet... objects, and of course structures on the map cast soft shadows. If you stand in front of a light, you actually cast a shadow! Very, very cool. The shadows aren't detailed, tho, you dont actually see arms and legs.

There are some things that are still not implemented, obviously. The most noticeable of which is probably that there are the same old M2 aliens running around. Im sure they're just place holders for cooler critters (3D ones, I would imagine). They run at you, but they pass right thru you and start running around in circles when they're 'in' you. They also dont shoot. The hunters act very interestingly... They dont run at you like just about everything else, they actually run away and hide (they will actually stand behind a pillar or wall), and then come out and run at you when you turn your back on them. all of the critters have a tendency to run thru small obsticals.

There also aren't any weapons, ammo, or scenery items. Theres also no sounds yet, which seems like something you'd notice right away, but I didn't notice for a couple of minutes 'cause I was so busy playing with my own shadow. :)

The controls are still basically the same, with the addition of four keys, and the loss of the action key. Those four keys are Jump, Crouch, grab, and push. The jump key should be obvious, crouch does a few things. Just holding it down makes you crouch, but you can also crawl (more like on your belly), and if you jump right after letting go of the crouch key, you jump higher. You can only do it standing still, tho. The grab key holds onto things, so you can pull open doors and such, and to grab onto ledges and climb some ladders. I havent found a use for the push key yet. Mouse control is very smooth, almost to the point of being too soft, imho. I've only been using the mouse for a couple of weeks, tho, so my opinion is not an informed one. :)

I hope to add some comments from other people here soon... If you want to voice your two cents, mail me. If you actually have the alpha, you'll know my email addy. :)

Here are some screen shots I got from the other M4 page, before it shut down. I dont know how he took them, since not even snapz would work for me. They're not very good quality (apparently he's never used JPG compression before :P) but I cant get any news ones, (yet) so live with it.

This is the M4 splash (apparently its called marathon: dr'ate'r, sounds kinda lame, maybe they'll change it). I took this one out of the resource, so the quality is better than the others.
You can see the shadow casting pretty good in this one, but not great.
Heres some of the blue spht which there are so many of.
On the map (which is cool) this is marked as "The Core". I guess this is probably leelas computer core. If you open up the world file (They renamed the map) with a hex editor, or something that lets you view the data fork of a file, interspersed with megs of map data, are chunks of text which sound like terminals. Leelas back. (I always liked Leela) But there are no terms in the game (yet?)
Here's a shot of an apparently new baddie, who likes to hang out in lava. I don't know why they'd add a new sprite monster... Maybe the creatures are still going to be sprites. :(

Don't ask me to send it to you. Its huge. (~43 megs stuffed. Thank god for FTP resume)
Don't ask me where I got it. You actually think I hand that kind of info out?