The Battle Cat's Anvil Tips

Gary L. Simmons

rev 05/22/07

http://battlecatslitterbox.com/Anvil/AnvilIndex.html

Whee doggies. I guess I should have known that when I created the Forge Tips portion of this web site that the Anvil Tips half was looming on the horizon like some disowned evil twin that seeks revenge on the sanity of those who neglected it. You too can participate in this craziness. If you have an Anvil tutorial you would like to have published on these pages then please feel free to contact me. For the moment, I especially need something on Physics Models or even a beginners guide to Anvil that will cover the basics for the person who has decided that life was not complicated enough and selected Anvil to muck up their gray cells like an eggbeater in a pile of dog squeeze. Why am I talking like this? Gorsh, I am just repeating the gist of what you guys tell me!

For the initiate, Anvil is a Marathon game editing

tool created by Bungie Software Inc released with Forge when Marathon Infinity hit the market. Used in conjunction with Forge, you can create an entirely new game of Marathon. Whereas Forge deals with map creation and the placement of rooms, textures, sounds, monsters, guns and ammo etc, Anvil deals with the creation of new never before seen textures, sounds, monsters, guns and ammo. Anvil masters think that the difficult Anvil skills are little appreciated compared to the "sexier" Forge skills. In comparison, Anvil requires an encyclopedia sized knowledge base compared to the dictionary sized knowledge base required by Forge. This is why Anvil masters wear reinforced steel and concrete neck braces and prop their heads up with two by fours. This is also why you hear that pebble in a can sound when Forge masters shake their heads.

Click on one of these links for a hat's off tour of Anvil
Hamish Sanderson's EditNotes	Here folks is the most respected voice in all of Marathon land concerning the care and feeding of Anvil. This is the Marlin Perkins of nature shows, the Elephant Man of side show attractions, the only Scotsman alive who will show you what he wears under his kilt. Buckle up kids cause this is going to be a bumpy ride as this legendary Anvil master takes you through the scary twists and turns of what I am sure Michael Hanson has described as, "The biggest kidney stone I have ever passed", ANVIL! (HAS, I want my 5 bucks for this intro or I'm telling the truth!)
Bungie Anvil Manual	This is the Infinity users manual that was originally provided by Bungie Studios. In it is the original Anvil tutorial. This file has since been removed from their site. With Matt Soell's permission, the manual is available here. No collection of Anvil information would be complete without this official Bungie Manual. Use it wisely young Padwan.
Quartz' Quarry	Welcome to Quartz' Quarry. Join Quartz, the long lost 8th dwarf, in his continuing effort to dig and mine for the facts. Quartz is famous for his multi-year effort to produce the most exciting and anticipated piece of vaporware ever to grace Marathon land, HOTH. Quartz did however learn a book load of knowledge along the way and he is here to share with you some of what he finds missing in the Anvil Tips section.
Mark Levin's PM Reference	This is the guy I refer to as my resident expert. Mark has an awesome thinking machine so powerful that it can out think 90% of the people in the Northern Hemisphere. A brain so large and heavy it would exhaust Mark to have to lug it everywhere. So much for Mark's blue Apple G3 tower, now on to his organic brain, it's a good one actually with lots of little gray folds and it has decorated many a wall in many a net map. But Mark is more than just a pretty brain and is here to prove his mettle in the arena of tutorials with his Physics Model Reference. Everything you wanted to know about those damn little PM check boxes but were too distracted by the sex questions to ask.
Claude Errera	Claude Errera weighs in with a very helpful tutorial on Marathon Installers. This is a must read for TC scenario makers.
Raúl Bonilla	Any modern Marathon fan will immediately recognize the name of Raúl Bonilla from his conversion of Marathon 1 into the modern engine of Aleph One in the now definitive classic, M1A1. Raúl is now involved in a total conversion by the name of "Where Monsters Are in Dreams" and he is producing tutorials in the associated blog. With his permission, I am reproducing his tutorials here. Raúl informs me he is no longer in the tutorial business.