Created by Hamish Sanderson
If you've built complicated elevators (lifts, to those across the pond from us Americans), you've almost certainly run across a Marathon engine limitation which can make it impossible to use the action key to trigger the elevator control (punching or projectiles are all it recognizes). This happens because the active area for a switch comes at some fixed percentage of the floor-to-ceiling height, which may or may not correspond to where you've got a switch. HAS has released a quick demo map showing a rather elegant way around this problem. (If you don't understand my wording of the problem...
Detailed information on reactivating (or activating, depending on your view) the unused slots available in the M2/Mi Sounds file. This is a great way to add new sounds, without losing what's already there. The doc mentions that you can see the technique being used in "M1->Mi Hunter conversion patch that this doc is bundled with"-while the patch does have these docs bundled, this version is just the docs. If you want the patch, you need to get it from the Alterations section.
One question that has come up more than most is "How do I get the Marathon CLUT in a form I can use it?" Hamish Sanderson has answered that question, with two files: a Photoshop CLUT file (directly importable), and a PICT containing all the colors in a nice grid, that you can eye-dropper anywhere you need in any painting program. There are also some very useful hints on making Marathon artwork in the readme... if you're doing serious work in Anvil, and having troubles making things look right, get this file. 'Nuff said.
Another one from the master. A tutorial/base for building Marathon sprites... includes three poser models, a detailed readme, and sample output picts. If you're thinking about creating new humanlike sprites, this is a wonderful place to start.
Hamish Sanderson might know more about the down-and-dirty details of color editingfor Marathon than anyone outside Bungie. (He has, after all, done 2+ total conversions...) In an effort to find some external value in the enormous amount of work he put into this stuff, he decided to write out some helpful hints for those folks interested in shape editing for Marathon. Beginner or expert, you should read this... you'll almost certainly find something useful here. (Heck, it's only 35K. Download it twice!)
Here it is!! For all of you that has emailed me along with the posts on agm. This has been compiled by Josh, Chris and Hamish Sanderson. This file is put together in open doc format.
From the creator of Trojan comes this collection of tips, hints, and step-by-step instructions on how to create new art (sprites, not chapter art) for the Marathon series. Most of the work was done with M1, but the information is perfectly appropriate for use with Anvil. All documents are in Simpletext format, except for the Photoshop color tables and the like... If you're trying to create new monsters or weapons for Marathon, you'll find information of use to you here.
