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Eat The Path

This is a plugin for any marathon scenario that will act kind of like GPS navigation when activated. It can show just about any worthwhile objective on the map, and in many cases lead you directly to them.

With some scenarios, it may require editing the script to provide a reasonable in game graphic for the path.

This is a huge cheat, so it's not really recommended if you want the true marathon experience. It's for people that either don't have the patience to navigate through mazes themselves, or for people that just want to make sure they found everything on a given level. It can be very useful for tracking down all secrets.

It is not magic and will not automatically guide you to everything. It makes a best effort to guide you to objectives, and failing that, it will at least point out where things are on the map. If you have to hit a switch to activate a platform, or jump over a gap, it is likely to fail to give you a valid route. Different hotkeys perform different actions, which you can learn about in the readme.

NOTE: This will disable achievements for Marathon Infinity, so only use this if you don't care about achievements, or you already unlocked them. It is not compatible with any other plugin that uses solo Lua, such as BRUTAL MARATHON.

This plugin is also available outside of steam: https://simplici7y.com/items/eat-the-path/.


-- Configuration
When tracking an objective, the path will be drawn onto the automap. However, it will also place ephemera in game along the path to direct you without using the map. If you don't like this feature, you can turn it off by turning your scripted effects off. Preferences -> Graphics -> Advanced -> Scripted Effects Quality.

This plugin also uses hotkeys 10, 11, and 12 and the aux trigger. Make sure you note what they are set to, and reconfigure them as needed.

If you're using this for a fan scenario, the ephemera it uses to draw a path may not show up, or might look bad. This can be changed by editing the 2 lines near the top of the Eat The Path.lua file: EphemeraCollection, and EphemeraSequence. Set them to a collection and sequence that makes sense for the given scenario.


-- How to use

This script has a few different modes that can be activated using hotkeys. Until you use a hotkey, it will not do anything.

Hotkey 10 - Pressing this will attempt to calculate a "strict" path to your objective. Strict in this case means it will try its best to not give you a path that you can't actually traverse. (Through small windows, up cliff walls, etc). It's not always perfect, and will sometimes lead you down an inaccessible path. This should be very rare, however. More commonly when it doesn't work right, it simply won't give you a path at all. There are some limitations in its ability to detect a good path, such as when you need to jump across gaps, or when you need to flip a switch to activate a platform.

Hotkey 11 - Pressing this will calculate a path using very lenient pathing logic. This means it will very likely give you a route that you can't actually traverse. However, it should give you a decent idea of where you need to go when hotkey 10 is failing.

Hotkey 12 - By default, the objective is chosen using "smart" logic, that tries to pick the most important next thing you need to do to complete the level. If it is not picking something that makes sense, or if you just want to find something else, you can use this hotkey to override the objective. Each time you press it, it will select a new objective. The selected objective will blink on your map, and have an X annotation. You can then use hotkey 10 or 11 to try to find a path to it. If you cycle through all of the override objectives, it will eventually go back to the default smart objective. To quickly return to the default without needing to cycle through the whole list, hold down the aux trigger while pressing this button.

Aux trigger - After hitting hotkey 10 or 11, a path will be drawn to your map and in the game for 10 seconds. If 10 seconds isn't long enough, you can use the aux trigger to bring it up for another 10 seconds, without recalculating a path. You may notice a pause in the game when using hotkeys 10 or 11, as it tries to calculate paths across the level. Use the aux trigger to pull up already computed paths without the slowdown of another full computation.

Ignore a monster or item - If your override objective is set to "Regular Items" or "Monsters", and it is leading you to something you either can't get to or don't care about, and want it to move on to something else, you can have it permanently ignore that monster or item by holding down the aux trigger and hitting hotkey 10.