It's two months for the price of one, since we missed the roundup last month.

Aleph One, the open-source continuation of Bungie's Marathon 2 engine, has reached its 1.0 milestone after 12 years in development. For those unfamiliar with the project, Aleph One allows all three games in the Marathon trilogy (which are now freeware) to be played on modern systems, with OpenGL shader support, mouse-look, gamepad support, mod support, and Internet co-op and multiplayer. The new version fixes lots of bugs, offers a plethora of Lua updates, adds HD graphics to Marathon 2, and more. Get it, and the Marathon games, from the Aleph One homepage.

Legacy computer emulator OpenEmulator has reached version 1.0.1. The Apple I emulation is now working. The authors claim to have the first emulator that features a fully functional Apple Cassette Interface Card and CFFA1 expansion card emulation. Other new features include an audio recorder and a selection of several virtual monitors. Check it out on the official OpenEmulator website.

ScummVM is celebrating ten years of existence with a new release. Version 1.4.0 adds support for Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, Blue's Birthday Adventure, and Ringworld: Revenge of the Patriarch, along with the Amiga version of Conquests of the Longbow. Notable new features include PC speaker support for SCUMM v5 games, better handling of digital/synthesized sound effects in SCI, and out-of-the-box support for building with MacPorts. See the Release Notes for the full list, or head over to the ScummVM homepage.

Mini vMac author Paul C. Pratt is now offering a Custom Variations service for custom-made, sponsored versions of Mini vMac. If you want to support the development of classic Macintosh emulation, this is currently the best option.

Continue reading for more emulation updates...

Today we announce the home of Archive and the Blue Door: http://archive.vg/

Archive.vg will be the central hub of a project which has grown far bigger than I had imagined over a year ago when we started.  Originally ViGi was imagined to be a simple video game database with user submittable content akin to an IMDB for video games.  Archive has evolved over the past year and has really grown into an incredibly ambitious project guided by an incredible group of developers, designers, and editors.  Media center developers, designers, large and small companies, emulator developers, video game enthusiasts, and retro gaming enthusiasts from all over the world have contacted us asking what the deal with this project is.  We've reached over a half a million calls to the database, with over two-thousand different developers and testers.

Obviously we're doing something good here.  And we want the MacScene community to be a part of it...

Archive has just launched our Blue Key registration page.  Obtaining a Blue Key will grant you exclusive access to beta material (sites, apps, etc) as the project progresses.  Our hope is that our Blue Key holders will serve as our lasting beta testing crew.  There are a limited number of Blue Key spaces available, so go grab yours now.

Typically when MacScene reaches the end of development for a new version I write up a long description of new features.  I won't do that this time because we believe that the new version is the best designed, best organized, and best coded version, that there's no reason to waste your time explaining features you can discover on your own.  We have a beautiful new design, a media-rich focus and a huge speed increase (thanks to server upgrades), new forums, and a Made for Mac emulator database.

One behind the scenes change is upgradability.  MacScene can now be themed 100%, and each of components making up the different aspects of the site are independently upgradable without having negative impacts on the other pieces.  This (hopefully) means the end of the road for complete redevelopment of the site every two yeas or so.

We also have a lot of people to thank for the completion of this development.  Mucx, who did the logo advised on the design and set a high standard of excellence (over at the Archive project) which allowed us to pull flexible design elements from.  mossy_11, who spearheaded the content management of the old system and who has helped navigate the needs of our content editors for the new system.  menace690 who has always been a huge help at MacScene as well as Elemodo Software, serving as a truly extraordinary wingman.  Pixelcade, dickmedd, IUG, seanstar and everyone else who contributed to the discussion about the new site.

And of course, a special thanks to the community who make everything worth working on.  Enjoy the new MacScene.