Here are the most frequently asked questions about the Marathon Cheater (slightly paraphrased for your reading enjoyment):
Q: What does this program do?
A: It allows you to edit saved games from the Marathon Demo. You can add to your health, give yourself incredible powers and increase your arselnal of weapons.
Q: What╒s new in version 1.1?
A: You can now edit your health as well as giving yourself four extra powerups: invisibility, invincibility, night vision and fisheye vision.
Q: I can╒t get it to work! How do I use it?
A: Save a game in the Marathon Demo and drag it onto the cheater program.
Q: I tried opening a saved file and the program said it wasn╒t the correct type of file. What am I doing wrong?
A: Does the file have a blue icon that looks like a strip of film? If so, it is a movie file, not a saved game.
Q: Oh, so how do I save games?
A: You must activate a ╥Save game╙ panel (also known as pattern buffers) in the walls of Marathon. One is located in the top room of level 1, just beside the entry to the maze.
Q: What maze?
A: Never mind.
Q: OK, I managed to open a game file and get the editing dialog box. What is all this stuff?
A: Find out for yourself. Turn them on one at a time, open the game in Marathon and see what has changed.
Q: What is the point of the fisheye view?
A: Beats me.
Q: I╒ve finished the demo. Now what?
A: Give youself a lot of missiles and invincibility and try going through the game again using missiles only. When you've done that, give yourself a lot of health and do it all over again using only your fists.
Q: I was using the invisibility/invincibility/night vision/fisheye powerup and all of a sudden it disappeared. What happenend?
A: These goodies only last for a limited time. When you turn them with the cheater the time is set to maximum (about nine minutes and six seconds). If you can't get to another saving panel in that time you'll just have to live without them.
Q: Wow, this program is the coolest thing I have ever seen!!!!! It╒s cooler than Marathon itself!! You are a genius!! Did you do this all by yourself?
A: Actually, no. Sean Howard and Paul Vader found the weapons info, Benjamin Trumbull told me where the health was stored (I actually managed to find the powerups by myself) and Paul M. Hoffman wrote the Dragonsmith shell which is used for the drag╒n╒drop-ness of the Cheater.
Q: Why is Marathon so slow on my mac? I only bought it six years ago!
A: Tough luck. Buy a PowerMac.
Q: Will the Cheater work with the real version of Marathon when it is released?
A: Maybe.
Q: If it doesn╒t, will you make another version that does?
A: Maybe.
Q: I found a bug. Will you fix it?
A: Maybe.
Q: How do I get in touch with you?
A: My e-mail address is eggth@ismennt.is
Q: What does ╘.is╒ stand for? Israel? Illinois?
A: Iceland.
Q: Can I get a copy of the source code?
A: No. This was a one night hack, and the code is so ugly, I don't want to look at it myself. And besides, all the comments (what little there are) are in Icelandic.
Q: Is this program shareware or what?
A: It╒s freeware. You don╒t have to pay anything. You can distribute it in any way, but you must include this file with it! When I released the first version, someone actually bothered to download it, remove the ReadMe file and reupload it to the net. Why he did this is beyond me, but since then I have been pestered with stupid questions, most of which were answered in the ReadMe. I would like to avoid that this time, so please remember to include this file when you give a copy of Marathon Cheater to your friends.
The small print: I take no responsibility for any damage to software, hardware, disks, the ozone layer or your mental health that this program will undoubtedly make. Use it at your own risk.
