Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge

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Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge

Merlin in Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge
by Richard Bushey
Initial release 22 May 2007
Latest release 3.0.1 / 25 June 2007
OS Cross-platform
Platform SDL
Genre first-person shooter engine
License GNU General Public License
Website http://emr.excaliburworld.com/

Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge is an epic story[1] involving the Sword of Power, Excalibur, the wizard Merlin, the sorceress Morgana, and the United Earth Federation (UEF). This is an expansion story based upon the legend of Arthur and Excalibur. The story takes places across three time periods[2]. During the fall of Arthur's kingdom, Morgana had used the Charm of Making against Merlin and imprisoned him in ice. During the battle for Camelot, an electrical storm erupts, and Merlin disappears from Camelot[3].

The electrical storm represented a break in the space-time continuum, and Merlin was thwarted into the future, becoming part of the UEF computer system on the Starship Kronos. At first introduced to the Federation as an unusual artificial intelligence of unknown origins, Merlin the A.I. helped the Federation Marines take on the space pirate raids of 2289. Fighting against the pirate starship Diablo, the Federation put a stop to the pirates in a battle known as "Devil in a Blue Dress".

Following this battle, the hero of the Federation battle took rest on the Starship Kronos, where he learned the secret of Merlin. Merlin explained that Morgana was behind the pirate raids, and that she had learned how to time travel. Using the unstable time travel technology developed on Kronos, this Federation marine begin a journey to stop Morgana and her diabolical plot to control mankind's destiny. Hunting down Actinium crystals in the Jurassic time period, freeing Quest Knights and hunting down Mordred in the Camelot time period, and having a final showdown with Morgana and her evil minions in the future time period, this brave marine sets forth on an epic journey through untamed raptor-infested jungles, castle arenas, and war-torn streets of the future.

The Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge story is created and owned by ExcaliburWorld Software.

The story is brought to life by the first-person action adventure game by the same name. Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge, the game, uses the Aleph One open-source game engine, and is available on the following computer platforms: Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge home page

Contents

[edit] Development history

The roots of the MMMG can actually be traced back as far as Wolfenstein 3D for the Mac. After searching for countless secret doors, players discovered WolfEdit, a program which allows you to create custom levels in Wolfenstein 3D (WolfEdit was written by MMMG member, Greg Ewing). In 1994, Bungie Software released Marathon. Running through dark corridors with eerie background music, going up and down on stairs and platforms, confronting strange aliens, and interfacing with terminals as the Marathon story unfolded, the Marathon experience was unique on the Mac. To add to the excitement, along came Pfhorte, a Marathon map editor.

With Pfhorte, swarms of Marathon players made the leap from player to map maker. Marathon map editing had its challenges, and the internet was the best place to turn for help, and thus began the Marathon Map Makers Guild[4]. Questions, answers and ideas were flying through the MMMG mailing list on a daily basis, and eventually led one MMMG member, Craig Durkin, to bring up the idea of a group project. The concept stirred a lot of discussion in the group, and these discussions eventually led to the Devil in a Blue Dress project. From this collaborative group effort evolved the Marathon Scenario "Devil in a Blue Dress", spearheaded by Claude Errera[5].

As the positive feedback poured in for Devil in a Blue Dress, the ambitious members of the MMMG decided to start a new project, this time to incorporate distinct textures, sprites, sounds, weapons, and anything else that was possible to change. This project began in November of 1995, and after 10 months map making blood, sweat and tears, the first demo for Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge (EMR) was released to the public. While work continued on EMR, Bungie released Marathon 2: Durandal. This sequel incorporate some cool new features such as ambient sounds and liquid media. Claude Errera decided to direct the porting of Devil in a Blue Dress (DiaBD) to the Marathon 2 engine to take advantage of these features[6]. Meanwhile, Bill Catambay continued with the efforts of completing the EMR project under the Marathon engine.

Simultaneously, we both began to realize that neither of our projects were easy nor trivial tasks. Contributors often came and went through the process, and completion of the project was sometimes a questionable goal. DiaBD 2.0 was completed first, and was a bigger success than the original DiaBD. Meanwhile, progress on EMR began to lag. With all the physics, sounds, graphics and music needs of EMR, the work that needed to be completed seemed endless. Miraculously, the MMMG persisted. During the final months of EMR, new contributors appeared out of the blue, such as Jim Bisset who wrote original music for EMR[7], Candace Sheriff who created the Archer and Cavebob sprites, and Jeremy Dale who created the EMR player sprite. Finally, in June of 1997, EMR v1.0 was released to the public[8].

As fate would have it, Bungie then came out with Marathon Infinity, with an extra texture collection, new weapons slots, and a new physics and shapes editor called Anvil. Map makers drooled over the added features and expanded capabilities of the new engine, and the MMMG imagined what EMR could become with these new features. Understanding the complexity and time involved for such an undertaking, Bill Catambay resisted the temptation for a short while. However, less than a month later, work began on the EMR port to Infinity with Bill leading the way.

Two years later, the EMR Infinity port was still not completed. As anticipated, the amount of work required to do this port was enormous. There would be over 50 levels in the final product, with most of the ported levels enhanced greatly, and the addition of many new levels. There were more graphics, both new ones and improved old ones, a physics model was needed for every level, new sounds and music, new images, new story additions, and the countless terminal graphics. The complexity had increased 10x, and so the amount of fine tuning and beta testing had also increased. Once again, the work seemed endless, but finally, in April of 2000, EMR 2.0 was released using the Marathon Infinity engine[9].

A few years later, Bungie released the source code of Marathon Durandal to the public, and so began the Aleph One open source project[10]. In 2004, Glen Ditchfield approached Bill Catambay to convince him that Aleph One was now stable enough to port EMR. Considering all of the new features in Aleph One, including the MML and Lua scripting languages, it was likely that this port would become another 3 year project. With Glen's encouragement, the fact that Loren Petrich had already initialized a starting point for EMR MML, and the temptation of all the new features, Catambay gave in to the addiction, and work began on EMR 3.0 in the Autumn of 2004.

While previous EMR projects engaged over 40 volunteers around the world, the number of volunteers in the Marathon world had significantly dwindled over time, for various reasons. The port of EMR to Aleph One started with about 5 people, ending with a total of 15. Fortunately, a lot of the work from past contributors could be re-used, but there was still an immeasurable amount of work required for this new rendition of EMR. Work was needed for upgrading every texture to high resolution, converting every sound to 16-bit, completely revamping the music and creating new music, intense editing and expansion of maps, and hours upon hours of MML and Lua coding. Once again, the work was daunting, and the project trudged on for years. Finally, in May of 2007, EMR 3.0 was released to the public[11]. Unlike it's predecessors, EMR 3.0 requires no installer to run. Users would download the package and be able to run EMR immediately. Also, because Aleph One had been made a cross-platform endeavor, EMR 3.0 could now be run on Windows and Linux machines, as well as Mac PPC and Intel machines[12].

[edit] Chapters

The EMR story[13] is broken down into 12 chapters .

1. Mission
2. Jurassic
3. Expedition
4. Deliverance
5. Knighthood
6. Siege
7. Morgana's Lair
8. Nightmare
9. Valour
10. Droids
11. Infiltration
12. Showdown

[edit] Time Line

The following events are based upon the EMR story page[14] .

[edit] EMR: Date Logged Events

2290 Present day
2289 Diablo Pirate raids began
2285 T9000 railgun invented
2273 Hightech upgraded to incorporate plasma bursts (EMF4000d)
2270 Morgana assumes control of WorldSoft's fallen coporate empire
2269 Kronos set out on a 30 year mission of exploring the space time continuum
2268 Fall of Worldsoft Empire, Unknown begins to acquire Worldsoft property, Kronos upgraded to Class B exploration vessel
2267 Starship Kronos built, SPAM production began, Alpha Merlin starbase is built, Red dwarf SAO 71292541 discovered
2266 First prototype of Hightech missile launcher (EMF4000a)
2265 GAT production began
2263 Time-traveling properties of Actinium crystals discovered
2262 Federation A.I. "Merlin" self-perpetuates
2259 Worldsoft Library renamed to Davenport Library
2258 Worldsoft coup (Forraje assassinated)
2251 First holodeck is constructed, First sleep chamber is constructed
2250 Forraje clone project flops, cyborg clones manufactured
2245 Forraje Clone project begins
2240 Forraje moves to Wysiwyg, establishes TABO security system
2238 Quebec renamed to Wysiwyg
2237 Supersonic titanium radon phaser gun invented
2236 The Hilo Incident; The city of Hilo is attacked by Anacreon guerillas
2234 Forraje begins buying up property in Quebec, Canada
2232 RIKEM strike destroys Anacreos
2231 Forraje pushes RIKEM missile attack to end Anacreon war
2215 Dachron mini-gun invented
2214 Earth/Anacreon War began
2204 Studies began on Dachronian fluid mechanics, Worldsoft A.I. "Tiny" implemented
2180 Planet Dachronia discovered, Daniel Davenport born, COPRE begins study of Dachronian minerals, First successful Federation light speed space exploration mission
2127 Great Flood of Canada
2095 Snyper gun invented

[edit] EMR: Estimated Medieval Events ~851 - 900 A.D.

Morgana learns the Charm of Making
Merlin imprisoned by Charm of Making
Mauvair emerges as Morgana's Master Sorceror
Quest Knights search for the Holy Grail
The Mannenhaum Massacre and Siege of Camelot
Merlin transports to the future
Mordred claims Castle Graeden

[edit] EMR: Estimated Medieval Events ~800 - 850 A.D.

Excalibur is forged
Uther Pendragon ascends the throne
Arthur ascends the throne
Merlin builds Camelot
Mordred is born to Morgana and Arthur
Merlin courts Hazelle in Avalon
Morgana is banished from Camelot

[edit] EMR: Estimated Jurassic Events ~100 Million B.C.

Actinium crystals flourish on Earth
The Grog species develop language
The Grog invent the spear
Morgana makes contact with the Hakawa and Timbawa Grog clans

[edit] EMR: In the Beginning

Earth is formed
The Beast spawns

[edit] Charm of Making

A central theme to the Excalibur: Morgana's Revenge story is the "Charm of Making", a special incantation spell that Morgana had stolen from Merlin. This was used to freeze Merlin during the Arthurian period, and it is also a spell the Morgana used to control a lot of her forces, both during the Camelot period as well as the Jurassic and Future time periods. In the EMR story, the hero eventually discovers the spell during the final battle with Morgana. An audio of the Charm of Making can be found in the movie Excalibur by John Boorman.

Merlin's Charm of Making[15] incantation is spoken as such:

"Anal nathrach, orth' bhais's bethad, do che'l de'nmha."

The English translation of the spell is:

"Serpent's breath, charm of death and life, thy omen of making."

[edit] References

  1. ^ epic story[1]
  2. ^ time periods [2]
  3. ^ story intro [3]
  4. ^ origins of MMMG [4]
  5. ^ Claude's DiaBD project [5]
  6. ^ DiaBD v2.0 [6]
  7. ^ Jim Bisset's EMR page [7]
  8. ^ EMR v1.0 [8]
  9. ^ EMR v2.0 [9]
  10. ^ Aleph One project [10]
  11. ^ EMR 3.0 Press Release [11]
  12. ^ EMR on Windows and Linux [12]
  13. ^ EMR story page[13]
  14. ^ EMR story page[14]
  15. ^ [15]Charm of Making

[edit] External links