Don't mind me, just putting up some links to things that are necessary to get Forge, the ancient Marathon Infinity map making utility, working on your modern PC or Mac. As I discover more necessary links, they'll be added to this post. If you find a dead link somewhere, please let me know and I'll find an alternative source and update the page. Be sure to check the notes at the bottom.
Premade Sheepshaver
If you want the easiest setup possible for getting Mac OS 9.0.4 up and running on your Windows or Mac setup, go no further than these links. I'll leave my original links below if you want to roll your own, but honestly, the fellow who made these is professional and thorough.
Windows
Mac
Sheepshaver
A PPC Mac emulator capable of running Mac OS 9.0.4. We'll be using this as our primary work environment.
Windows
get this first
then update with this
Mac
get this first
then update with this
QEMU
A very complex multi emulation environment which we will not be using, but has a couple of tools that we'll need to help get things set up. If you are really struggling with Sheepshaver (which may present some challenges), Qemu is a workable alternative. Qemu is very much a moving target, so it is possible this will eventually replace Sheepshaver, which has not been worked on for years. Qemu is a command line tool that requires more know-how on the part of the user to get working.
Windows
Mac
Mac OS 9.0.4
note: you will have to create a membership on the site to be able to download
Espy Font
https://web.archive.org/web/20070331054839/http://users.crocker.com/~pistrang/files/espy_mac.sea.bin
Stuffit Expander
Marathon Trilogy
you'll need this to get the game and the Forge & Anvil editing programs
May as well grab the Map Collection too.
All in one download
I'm making available an "all in one" download of a Mac hard drive image file. This comes with Mac OS 9.0.4 preinstalled, as well as the Marathon Trilogy, Photoshop 4, Acrobat 4.05, Tempus Irae, The Lost Levels, some of my original working files for Tempus, as well as a couple of other old-school games from the golden age of the Macintosh. This is a 10Gb .img file (which Sheepshaver can use, but is unable to create on its own), so there is plenty of room for your own creations on there. The file is about 780Mb.
Notes:
If you get no sound from Sheepshaver in OS 9, shut down the emulation, go to the Sheepshaver folder, and delete the file "SheepShaver_nvram.dat". Restart Sheepshaver, and make sure 'Built In" is set at the sound output in the Mac Sound control panel.
If any of the Marathon games act up, start crashing at 'Begin New Game' or display weird stuff in the Environment preferences, 2 things to try: Do not put any map merge folders in the same folder as the game. Do delete the System/Preferences/Marathon* preference and recording files.
Games in general will not work correctly with mouse control in Sheepshaver. A better solution is to map some game controller movement to keys, and run the game with only Keyboard input, using the game controller. This trick works in all of the Marathon games, Tempus, and ZPC.
Preferences in the latest version of Aleph One have moved from the local game folder to the normally hidden App Data folder. At least on Windows. Not sure (yet) about Mac. I was going through the folder looking to tidy it up to current standards, and couldn't help notice that while the preferences in the game were indeed being saved... they were not saving to either location I was expecting them. They've now relocated to:
C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\AlephOne\nameofgame
That's all for now. More discoveries ahead!