No more dams I'll make for fish;
Nor fetch in firing
At requiring
Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish;
'Ban 'Ban, Ca-Caliban,
Has a new master - Get a new man.
Freedom, hey-day hey-day, freedom! freedom, hey-day, freedom.

Stendando: O brave Monster! lead the way.

Grendel(whispering): And so do monsters lead men.



If you want to have truly curvy walls in Marathon, there is a handy trick for doing so. It's pretty simple and straightforward, but not extremely obvious. On By Committee we used this technique to make all of the curving hallways on the map.


First thing to do is turn off the "snap to grid" from the Map Manager. Then select the grid length to World Unit. Now, start drawing lines. Hold down the option key to constrain the line length to the current grid setting(in this case 1 W.U.).

I. To start making curvy walls, draw constrained lines one after the next. Each time, increase the angle of the line a teeny bit. To change the radius of the curve you're making increase or decrease the angle of the line.

II. Ok, so you're wondering where the trick is right? Now draw some guidelines. Take the first few points you've placed, and draw lines either horizontally or vertically from these. In our example we've used horizontal lines, which means that we'll extend the curvy wall around to the right.





III. Use the Guidelines to continue the curve. Keep drawing constrained lines from the last one you added, and simply have the point end on the guideline. This way, you can make the curve symetrical.






IV. We've deleted the guidelines from our example and started adding lines that will later form the facing side of stairs. Again, we're making these lines a constrained size, this way we can have the inside of the stairs match the outside curve. You have to draw these new lines so they bisect the angle between the two lines on the outside of the curve. (Note that we did a very poor job of bisecting the lines in our example.)


V. Now draw the inside of the the stairs by connecting each of the lines we just drew. Of course here you don't want to constrain the size of the lines, just make them as long as they need be to complete each stair.




Final Notes. In the example on By Committee we had to put in columns to make the whole thing go faster. As a side note, columns are a really good way to speed up things. If you ever get the dialogue that tells you to remove some polygons, try just adding a column. Sometimes, a "node" count can be avoided by reducing the number of sides that are attached to other sides. Columns are really good for this. We'll talk more about this in the Busted section when we get around to it.