IMPORTANT NOTE: The regular scenario levels in Marathon Infinity contain their own physics files. If you try to use one of the sample physics files from this folder in the regular game, it will not override the embedded physics file in the Map. In addition, the network levels "Mars Needs Women" and "Wrath No More" contain their own physics files. Using one of the sample physics files from this folder will not work with these two levels. All the other net levels do not have their own physics files.
Here's some sample physics models to get you started with editing the Marathon environment. Some changes are minor, while others are immediately obvious and completely change the play of the game! You can use these levels in any of your network games, or use them in the normal Marathon levels by Exporting the levels from the normal Marathon Map file into a separate map file with Forge. To use the models, simply place them in the same folder as Marathon, run it, and select the model you want from the Preferences:Environment dialog box.
Each model has its game effects described and also has a "how to make it" section that describes how to use Anvil to reproduce the model effects. Have fun!
Flare Pistol
The standard-issue Magnum can easily be modified to fire flare rounds, which cause standard damage but light up an entire room.
How To Make It: Increase the flare intensity of the pistol and give it a nice long decay time (say 5 seconds or so).
Mines
Another useful trick is to modify the standard-issue assault rifle to lay proximity mines rather than grenades. The mines are keyed to your battle-suit frequency, so they will not explode when you walk past!
How To Make It: Simply decrease the speed of the Grenade shot to 0, change its sequence ID to that of a fusion shot, and turn off the "affected by gravity" flag.
Cats and Dogs Living Together...
What a wonderful world it would be if all the aliens hated each other and killed each other without your help! This model makes it so.
How To Make It: Every alien has all of the "Friend" checkboxes turned off and all of the "Enemy" checkboxes turned on... mass carnage follows.
Powered-Armor Bobs
A simple change: the most powerful class of Bobs has been upgraded to Powered-Armor suits with shoulder-mounted fusion cannons! Strangely, the Pfhor Hunters seem to use a similar style of armor... :)
How To Make It: Simply copy the Appearance information from the Hunters to the Security Bobs, and change their ranged attack to be a multiple-fire fusion gun. Just for fun, we add a shrapnel death to them as well. To make the Bobs look different from the Hunters, you can use color table ID 2 for them (which is the same as the Mother of all Hunters, but is very rarely used).
Hand Grenades
Every Marine really ought to come with a belt of hand grenades as standard equipment, right? This model adds an option-key shot to the Fist that allows you to flip a hand grenade out and down... very useful for when you're at the top of a ledge.
How To Make It: First a new Shot record was created for the grenade and placed in the "unused 1" slot. Then the Fist record was changed to make use of the new shot as a secondary weapon. To keep things fair, the grenade-fist was given a long recovery time so you can't saturate the entire map with free grenade fire.
JetPack
A simple, but nifty, effect can be had by giving the flamethrower a negative recoil. Simply point yourself in the direction you want to go and let 'er rip!
How To Make It: Very simple: open the flamethrower weapon record, and assign a small negative recoil to the primary trigger.
Rambo XXXIII
Okay, this is a little silly, but fun anyway. All of the weapons have just been ridiculously overpowered. Play it on Carnage or not at all.
How To Make It: Most of the weapons have had their burst count, recovery time, shot time, and ammunition boosted. One noteworthy technique is that the pistols have had their graphic replaced with the Assault Rifle to allow more rapid fire -- even if the pistol is set on full automatic with 0 delay, you need to wait through the entire pistol-firing animation before another shot can be fired. By opening the Shapes file, you can see that the pistol-firing animation has a tick-per-frame rate much higher than the assault rifle, so it will always take longer to fire (unless you change the Shapes file with Anvil). Also, having two assault rifles looks really cool.
Alien Weapons
Suppose that the Marathon's AI's weren't able to beam weapons in to you and that you were required to salvage all of your weapons from the aliens you encountered. What would that be like? This model lets you find out.
How To Make It: All of the Weapon entries have been changed to act more like the weapons of the monsters you encounter. The Plasma Pistol, for example, is now a S'pht-Bolt pistol. The Missile Launcher is now a shoulder-mounted Hunter-bolt cannon. Then, all of the monster records need to be changed so that the monsters drop the appropriate kind of weapon when they die. Lastly, just to make things more interesting, all of the weapons have been marked as non-reloadable (like the Alien Weapon) so that you need to keep beating monsters if you want to use a gun.
Network Carnage
This model makes a number of minor changes to speed up the pace of network play. Running speed has been increased (both forwards and backwards). Most of the weapons work under water (fusion still hurts, though) and many of the weapons can be readied and reloaded faster. And, to prevent the instant-kill missile launcher attack, missiles have been changed to do just slightly less damage than a fully- charged shield -- but the missile launcher can fire four missiles without reloading. (Special thanks to the LTI Physics designers for excellent ideas!)
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Thanks to everyone on the Internet who experimented with earlier versions of physics model editors to contribute many of these ideas!
