My part in Rubicon started back in early 1996, when I decided to make a
contribution to the Marathon community by making a ten-level scenario.
Marathon Infinity hadn't been released yet, so I began work using
Pfhorte 2 and other Marathon 2 tools.

The scenario, tentatively titled "Charlie," was about a science officer
who had to save his ship when an alien attack damaged the computer core,
making one AI, Charlie, show symptoms similar to retardation in humans
and the other, Sharate 7, get mean. It would be something like Devil in
a Blue Dress in that the graphics would be lifted directly from Marathon
2, but everything would be re-named and it would have no connection to
Bungie's universe.

I had a lot of problems. The first was that I really didn't understand
the limits of the Marathon engine, and a lot of my early designs tried
to use true bridges and make switches do things they aren't supposed to.
The other problem is that I knew nothing about map making. Most of my
maps were only a hair over 50 polygons, and as you might expect, short
and undetailed. I also tried to base them all around gimmicks, and a
lot of them weren't fun gimmicks.

Then, I saw a post in alt.games.marathon by Quartz. He said he was good
at making maps, but was having trouble writing. I promptly e-mailed him
and recruited him to help with my project. I would write and he would
make the maps. He agreed, though pointed out my plot was incredibly
derivative of Marathon 1 and suggested I merge it with a plot he and a
friend had come up with about anti-technology terrorists and an evil corporation.

This was done, and it was now a bomb planted by said terrorists that
damaged the core. Aliens who had been shadowing the ship saw that this
was their opportunity to attack. Dangi, the afformentioned evil
corporation had some new terraforming equipment and two stable-rampant
AIs on board, the same AIs from the previous version. The aliens had
been trailing the ship and saw the perfect opportunity to attack.

Several new characters were added at this phase. Scott Moxley, an
enigmatic engineering lieutenant was the new protagonist. Henry
Laurence was the former chief engineer who found himself in command of
the ship due to the command crew being dead or incapacititated. And
there were the DADDs, experimental robot security guards manufactured by
Dangi that turned against the crew to protect Dangi's secrets. By this
time, Marathon Infinity was out, and I wanted to use the gray Bob
collection for them.

Quartz ended up leaving or creative differences after only making a
level and a half. Basically, he wanted to set it in the Marathon
universe and I didn't. I went looking for new recruits. I tried
everyone whose work had recently impressed me, and four bit.

One was Eric Hill. His maps in Rebel base caught my attention and he
agreed to come one. Another was Borzz, who's artwork in Olaf Fub had a
unique stlye that I liked. Nick Confalone was another artist. He did
Courier 11 pretty much by himself. I was a beta tester, and found his
art style, which generally incorporated heavily re-touched photographs
to also be intriguing. The most important recruit turned out to be
Chris Lund. He did a single-level piece called Endymio which made me
marvel at its complexity and sharp design. He came on to do maps for me.

Things were okay for awhile. Borzz did some nice terminal pics of Henry
Laurence, Nick did a chapter screen, and Eric produced a couple of
levels. In the end, it became clear that Chris was the big producer though.

With only one active contributor, things began to drag. That's when
Chris suggested that we merge with Chimera, another scenario he was
doing with D. Scott Brown and a few others. I was reluctant, as it
meant moving into the Marathon universe, but I agreed.

In the end, everything that wasn't by Chris or me was cut, and the
scenario changed names a couple times. Anyway, Rubicon is the result
of at least four years of work from at least three scenarios and about
two dozen people.

--

Dan Rudolph