Did Remedy make the wrong graphic-design decisions with Max Payne?

[MuffinMan]

Oh yea, first post images/icons/wink.gif

Anyway, all over the net I see people saying stuff like "Max Payne's graphics are boring" (actually, it's more like "Max Payns grafiks r boreng" images/icons/wink.gif ) or talk about how square everything is, or mention the lack of talk-textures, etc.

Why?

They try and compare it with other games (Wolfenstein, Quake3, Avp2, etc) and say that it just doesn't cut the mustard.

However, the graphics in Max Payne continue to stun me. The attention to detail is amazing. When I walk back through a level and see all the bodies, bullet-cases and wall/floor decals still there I'm always still amazed. Playing the game and looking at all the amazing particle effects and it just gets me hard. images/icons/smile.gif I could go on....

....and I will. It wasn't until a week or so ago that I noticed one little think that just made my jaw literally drop. I was using the Ultimate7 mod to play through (this doesn't really have an impact on that which dropped my jaw, but rather is probably why I noticed it) Payne for the 4th time. There I was in slomo mode, blasting away with the double-barrel shotgun. Said barrel was flipped open by Max and.... I thought I saw something.

So I exited the game, enabled developerkeys, restarted, blasted someone with the shotgun, waited for the reloading sequence, paused the game, went into camera mode, kept trying to get the camera in the right position and.....

.....there it was! Holy Crap, the gun barrel is really a barrel, testured inside as well as out. Then I did a little playing around and I found out that ALL the weapons have real barrels (as opposed to just a solid model for the gun).

To say this took my breath away is an understatement. But then, I though, who would notice? I did (4th time through) but would the average gamer who thinks that Quake 3 is THE word in graphics? Probably not.

Anyway, no real point to this post except to say that I love the game (sucky-sucky images/icons/wink.gif ) and I'm literally amazed by what has been done with the engine. Though many people think that other games have far superior graphics, Max Payne is one of those very rare games that unwittingly changes the expectations of gamers for future games. I don't think it'll be too long before gamers (like myself) get pee'd off when shooting up a room only to see that the decals are disappearing.

[MuffinMan]

In case no one knows what I'm on about: http://www.mybox.cz/muffinman/payne/barrels.jpg

And this one was just cos I like the cartridges: http://www.mybox.cz/muffinman/payne/cart.jpg

And this... just 'cos images/icons/wink.gif : http://www.mybox.cz/muffinman/payne/messy.jpg

[ 12-04-2001: Message edited by: MuffinMan ]

[The Baskinator]

images/icons/grin.gif Well said. I couldn't agree more. I notice more and more things like that.

Ahhhh....Max Payne is the best game ever. images/icons/smile.gif

BTW, don't I know you? images/icons/grin.gif
If you don't get that joke, i will be sad.

[Kickassguy]

Anyone out there arguing that Max Payne does NOT hands down have the best graphics out of any PC game to date is fighting a losing battle. images/icons/tongue.gif

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by The Baskinator:
BTW, don't I know you? images/icons/grin.gif
If you don't get that joke, i will be sad.<hr></blockquote>

If I don't find out for sure, then it's gonna bug me for a while, but are you referring to Shrek here? images/icons/smile.gif

[SkavenRMD]

Well yes, admittedly graphic detail has been put into places where it can't be seen before you stick your nose right in, but we figured it could be afforded with the polygon throughput of our engine. With hardware T&L, a single object can have quite a lot of polygons without causing much any slowdown, as long as it is a single, non-deforming mesh.

Maybe the detail was put there just in order to bring up topics like this? images/icons/wink.gif

[RollingBrass]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Kickassguy:
If I don't find out for sure, then it's gonna bug me for a while, but are you referring to Shrek here? images/icons/smile.gif <hr></blockquote>Baskinator's joke was referring to the same thing that Shrek was referring to.

[marcusparcus]

*Yawn*

Yet another post about how wonderful the graphics in Max Payne are. Don't you guys ever do a search before you post?

[maciam]

Have we played DeusEx? Great game TERRIBLE graphics. Juat as a comparison to how good the graphics in Max Payne are. Bodies and Bullets....yeeee haaaw...lol

[The Baskinator]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by marcusparcus:
*Yawn*

Yet another post about how wonderful the graphics in Max Payne are. Don't you guys ever do a search before you post?<hr></blockquote>


Why should they? The people who post "Max Payne sucks" or "Max Payne was too short" obviously don't do searches. images/icons/smile.gif

[Crim]

There are many graphical glitches in Max Payne, which I dont like. Like for example, aim your gun up high, vertical. Then press the pause key. You'll see that Max' jacket actually goes through 'inside' him. Also, there was this bad guy below the stairs. I did the john woo thing, and when I aimed below, I could see that only the crosshair would do the movement, not my hands. So , I was somehow magically shooting the bad guy below me by keeping my hands forward (horizontal). Guess thats the 'piss of death'.. And whats the big idea of modelling Max' legs right up to his waist ? When the jacket flapped over in many instances, I could see that Max did not have any kind of 'butt' - that is, his behind was just an extension of legs. Do the forward jump with rmb and you'll see that his behind is composed of two 'cones'. Also, when you get the sniper rifle, fire a shot (without zooming) then quickly, press the pause key. The sniper rifle is displaced right through Max' right hand. This is also same with shotgun but only, do the roll dive with rmb. There are many other little nuances here than there, but I cant think of them right off the top of my head. But you have to play Max Payne more than 3 times to notice these niggles.
Anyway, that doesnt detract from the great gameplay and overall superior graphics and its position to be the Game of the year.

[Salv]

All games have the same "problem" where 3D objects get "misplaced" and "cut through" by other objects or the enviroment but you just know that happens because its a computer game!? right? images/icons/wink.gif not reality.

[MuffinMan]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by marcusparcus:
Yet another post about how wonderful the graphics in Max Payne are. Don't you guys ever do a search before you post?<hr></blockquote>

Yea, I've seen some of those other posts. I've also seen you express your views as to how Payne is a rip-off in quite a number of threads.

You wouldn't be being somewhat hypocritical here, would you?

[MuffinMan]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by SkavenRMD:
Well yes, admittedly graphic detail has been put into places where it can't be seen before you stick your nose right in, but we figured it could be afforded with the polygon throughput of our engine.<hr></blockquote>

The thing is, you didn't really have to do it, yet you did. Little things like this make me happy images/icons/smile.gif

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Crim:
There are many graphical glitches in Max Payne, which I dont like.<hr></blockquote>

I agree. A couple of times (especially when using the Ultimate mod and therefore more slowdowns) I noticed that I was diving and shooting the guy above me but the guns were pointing ahead. There's also some pretty bad clipping. As for the former, it's a slight annoyance but I've rarely seen it. The latter is more noticable though. However, I'm guessing that it's a tradeoff made for playability as it's prevalent in every shooter I've played.

[MuffinMan]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by The Baskinator:
BTW, don't I know you? images/icons/grin.gif
If you don't get that joke, i will be sad.<hr></blockquote>

images/icons/frown.gif I don't get the Joke. If it's something to do with The Grinch, then I haven't seen it. If it's something else, then it may be a cultural thing (I'm Czech).

So, now you have to explain images/icons/grin.gif

[SkavenRMD]

The arms not pointing up or down while shootdodging is not a glitch. It's just one of those "not worth the *ing trouble" cases. In addition to blending between 8 animations according to the character orientation (that's how the shootdodges currently work), the arms would have to be rotated separately, which would have required a custom bone grouping and the pivots would have to re-orient themselves according to the character orientation because their parent, the torso, rotates when you aim (how would you do that?) - or maybe by blending between 24 animations (shootdodging in 8 directions, shootdodging upwards in 8 directions, shootdodging downwards in 8 directions) at which point you start wondering if the memory used by them could be spent elsewhere. Plus if/when you're lying down on the ground and aim downwards, the arms would definitely go through the floor, you'd need to figure out an additional measure for that case. Plus the fact that in 90% of the shootdodges, the shooting happens along the horizontal plane. If we had done it by just rotating the wrists and the head, someone would have pointed out it looks silly, and that would not have worked with 2-handed weapons anyway.

In other words, not worth the trouble.

I hope you haven't lost much sleep over these huge, severely irritating, completely unacceptable graphical errors that all the game developers keep doing despite several intelligent, vigilant fans pointing them out (because the devs are too dumb to notice them themselves). graemlins/hhg.gif

Yet still, no vigilant fan has noticed that Max actually fires most of his guns in an unnatural pose. Take the shotgun, for example. Max doesn't take aim with it correctly. He holds it to his right, quite far away from his line of sight. Only movie stars fire guns like that. That's a graphical error, right? Nope. It's for playability reasons: it's easier to aim and fire the guns in 3rd person if you can line it up with the crosshair and the character is not in the way. Want proof? Take the Sniper Rifle: it's shot in a "natural" pose, and you may have noticed how hard it is to fire when you're not zooming.

As for the hand clipping through the Sniper Rifle, well, I've fixed that animation maybe 3478563876 times by now, but the pivots of the rifle kept exploding over and over again despite endless pivot-adjusting, pivot-reseting, transformation-reseting, unlinking, relinking and remodelling. One of the mysteries of 3D Studio Max we couldn't figure out. Maybe it doesn't like sniper rifles? images/icons/blush.gif

And for what it's worth: Thanks to Z-buffers we now have clipping instead of freakily overlapping polygons. Be happy. images/icons/grin.gif

What would you suggest as a solution? Making the hero shaped like a cylinder? Making the collision cylinder so huge that the character can't walk closer than 1m to any wall or object? A magic IK solution that pushes any appendages inwards when they hit the walls, but without making the character commit seppuku with his rifle butt? Giving the characters a higher Z-buffer bias so that they're overdrawn even when they clip (handy for seeing enemies through walls)? Remember that 3rd person games need solutions quite different from 1st person ones. Also remember that while Metal Gear Solid 2 gracefully avoids these problems most of the time, it's a top-downer and 1st person, not a 3rd person.

[Guest]

Actually, I regularly use the sniper rifle withought zooming, Just walk into a room in slow motion and you can take out 5 people before the first one finishes falling.

[The Baskinator]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by SkavenRMD:
The arms not pointing up or down while shootdodging is not a glitch. It's just one of those "not worth the *ing trouble" cases. <hr></blockquote>


Amen to that. images/icons/grin.gif

[maciam]

I posted a thread titled "walking on air" where you could walk up to the subway platform and actually be staning on nothing. No bigie though. Actually it creates a kind of lets say, uniqness. Waht really cool is when the sub hits you and drags ya hundreds of feet before the game realizes you dead and spins ya all over the place. Big deal on the glitches. If the gameplay stunk and the graphics were bad we wouldnt notice because we wouldnt be playing, right? go vote for the game in the "best third person shooter ever" post

[MuffinMan]

Skaven,

Cheers for the long post. images/icons/smile.gif Don't get me wrong though, I'm not knocking the game at all for those little 'glitches' as I fully understand that there are certain trade-offs you have to make for playability.

As an aside, I found what I believe to be the coolest 'secret' I've ever seen in a game about an hour ago... the TV show one. I ROFL at that one. images/icons/grin.gif I've yet to take a look at a walkthrough, so I don't know how many secrets there are or what I still may have missed.

[Guest]

Look, it's from that song,
Do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man,
The muffin man,
etc...

Geez, how can you not know that? images/icons/grin.gif

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>And for what it's worth: Thanks to Z-buffers we now have clipping instead of freakily overlapping polygons. Be happy. <hr></blockquote>

/me remembers the good old days...

[Joker]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Crim:
When the jacket flapped over in many instances, I could see that Max did not have any kind of 'butt' - that is, his behind was just an extension of legs. Do the forward jump with rmb and you'll see that his behind is composed of two 'cones'.<hr></blockquote>

One has to wonder how closely you were looking (or, more accurately, why)... images/icons/tongue.gif

[Crim]

C'mon..I also complain that Lara Croft's butt is completely unrealistic..its just a sphere attached to two long gourad shaded-cylinder chains. But then, it was 4 years ago. And in Max Payne, I mostly do the forward dive with rmb in firefights and in that dive, you get to see his coned butt no matter how hard you try to look otherwise. Now with all this super technology, cant we make a right butt for the lead character ?

[The Baskinator]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Crim:
C'mon..I also complain that Lara Croft's butt is completely unrealistic..its just a sphere attached to two long gourad shaded-cylinder chains. But then, it was 4 years ago. And in Max Payne, I mostly do the forward dive with rmb in firefights and in that dive, you get to see his coned butt no matter how hard you try to look otherwise. Now with all this super technology, cant we make a right butt for the lead character ?<hr></blockquote>

I liked his butt. images/icons/grin.gif

[SkavenRMD]

Well, perhaps in the future technology will allow the implementation of much more realistic butts in computer games. Actually there should be a separate ButtMark benchmark released by MadOnion, which measures how good your PC is at rendering butts.

[The Baskinator]

/me laughs hysterically images/icons/grin.gif

[Joker]

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Well, perhaps in the future technology will allow the implementation of much more realistic butts in computer games. Actually there should be a separate ButtMark benchmark released by MadOnion, which measures how good your PC is at rendering butts.<hr></blockquote>

I can imagine that now...

"Tomb Raider X requires 5470 ButtMarks to guarantee smooth posterior rendering."

What a great day that will be for butt-mongers everywhere... images/icons/tongue.gif

[Guest]

Cosnidering the original point of this topic was "They actually rendered gun barrels!",
If they actually make a Buttmarking program, I predict a similar thread about a different kind of "barrel". images/icons/tongue.gif

[Homoludens]

Originally posted by SkavenRMD:
Well, perhaps in the future technology will allow the implementation of much more realistic butts in computer games. Actually there should be a separate ButtMark benchmark released by MadOnion, which measures how good your PC is at rendering butts.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Okay, Skaven, that is Action Game Quote Of The Year!! http://www.plauder-smilies.de/rotfl.gif http://www.plauder-smilies.de/happy/bigok.gif

Crim, ya gotta admit, the man haz it in spadez!

[Crim]

Actually, Remedy should create a whole new technology - ButtFX, so that the butts are actually sacks of blood so when you fire a shot at them, the blood comes out in a crimson fountain..wouldnt it be cool ?

[The Baskinator]

Originally posted by Crim:
Actually, Remedy should create a whole new technology - ButtFX, so that the butts are actually sacks of blood so when you fire a shot at them, the blood comes out in a crimson fountain..wouldnt it be cool ?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

*laughs* If you're into that sort of thing, I bet it would be a hoot. images/icons/grin.gif

[Homoludens]

What do we call the this new game with ButtFX? Max Butt?

I propose that the first game featuring ButtFX should come with a free whoopie cushion.

[Joker]

Originally posted by Homoludens:
What do we call the this new game with ButtFX?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Butt Payne.

[Homoludens]

I hope it supports TrueForm! Then we'll really get gorgeously round, ripe, and sensuously rendered butts.

[The Baskinator]

Originally posted by Homoludens:
I hope it supports TrueForm! Then we'll really get gorgeously round, ripe, and sensuously rendered butts.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Oh my...

Max Payne plus "gorgeously round, ripe, and sensuously rendered butt"

*slowly turns a deep shade of red and starts giggling uncontrollably.* images/icons/grin.gif

[Crim]

Originally posted by Homoludens:
I hope it supports TrueForm! Then we'll really get gorgeously round, ripe, and sensuously rendered butts. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">


Easy, tiger...

[Homoludens]

You tell that to Bask, she's the one hyperventilating over Max. images/icons/tongue.gif

[Gatinater]

He holds his guns like a G.I JOE.... HAHAHAHAHAHA. Their's a lot of brilliant design in that game. In terms of geometry and detail. Most of the textures look real! The scenerios are dull. I don't why anybody would say RTCWs graphics are better. The models are better but the level design isn't.

[ 12-27-2001: Message edited by: Gatinater ]

[The Baskinator]

Originally posted by Homoludens:
You tell that to Bask, she's the one hyperventilating over Max. images/icons/tongue.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Damn straight. The man's hot. images/icons/grin.gif

[Homoludens]

Just don't be kissing your 'puter screen, Bask. Death by pleasure is one thing, death by electrocution is another. images/icons/wink.gif

[Guest]

Originally posted by The Baskinator:
...
*slowly turns a deep shade of red and starts giggling uncontrollably.* images/icons/grin.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

This sounds like that scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory when that girl turned into a blueberry. You aren't turning into some sort of berry are you?

[The Baskinator]

"You're turning violet, Violet!"

Nope, I'm not a blueberry, more like a raspberry...and I don't kiss my monitor (that would get it all smudged up!), I wait until I print out pictures of him and then I kiss those. You don't want to know how many of them I keep in my wallet. images/icons/grin.gif

[Guest]

Reminds me, I always ask people if they have any pictures of themselves in their wallets. They often answer "no" which is usually wrong. Think about it. Heck, try it on someone.

[Joker]

Originally posted by Qender:
Reminds me, I always ask people if they have any pictures of themselves in their wallets. They often answer "no" which is usually wrong. Think about it. Heck, try it on someone.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

Everyone usually does. Identification usually requires some form of photograph.

(Damn, I is so bloody smart!) images/icons/grin.gif