[MP1] The Real World - Matrix Total Conversion

[Maddieman]

theHunted - that's a great suggestion, I'll definitely give it a shot. As you've guessed, the only reason there isn't anything there is to make the jump easier for the player.

Satan - I might be wrong on this, but I think I did the lighting -- it's one of the few Maxed things I'm not so bad at. But it was done so long ago that I'd need to double check. EDIT: Checked, and yes, light-tubes are a man's best friend.

HalloweenIV, the thread is called 'I know kung fu' because it was originally started over a year ago to announce the release of the TRW 'Kung Fu demo' -- I didn't see the point in starting a new thread just for updates, etc.

[Sayantan]

Originally Posted by Maddieman

EDIT: Checked, and yes, light-tubes are a man's best friend.

Reminds me of my 'dummy light fetish' during the MP1 days.

[Maddieman]

Latest screenshot update! (and probably the last for a short while)

Remember, you can vote for The level you'd like to see next™ over at the TRW project page: http://maxpayne.levels4you.com/cdc/trw_matrix/

It's early days, but voting trends seem quite random from poll to poll. The Teahouse level was the runner up last time, and I was sure it would win this time around; however, the Roof level has the majority vote so far.

It's like Eurovision 2007 all over again.

[HalloweenIV]

Great work, as always........

[andersenthemuss]

Cant put a finger on that:P

I voted for the tea house
Seraph is my favorite person in the matrix so i would really love to see more of him:P

[shebz7]

good job guys keep it up
If wished atari guys had brains and employed you guys while making their shit matrix games

Best of luck and plz release it soon i know that'll be ur reaction

[Jami3]

It looks so amazing, it just kind of captures the whole look of the Matrix films, love the lighting and the dark green atmosphere, just makes it so authentic, I hope it's finished soon because this mod looks unbelieveable.

Did you still plan on having flying in the final release? Personally the amazing Kung-Fu (loved the demo) and cool looking levels are enough for me. Good luck guys.

[Maddieman]

Jami3, I don't think we've ever given flying any serious consideration. I mean, I'd love to get it working, but I've tried a few mock-up prototypes, and nothing really works well. And by 'well', I mean as good as something like Mario 64 -- where you can start flying from a running jump, fly for as long as you want, then land and continue as before. Unfortunately, I don't think we could do flying properly without compromising your other moves.

The closest we've got is a sort of anti-grav/double-jump, which is more along the lines of 'falling with style'.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

[Akari]

Unless you change the 2-handed animations to floating ones, since MP1 allows you to set the characters height above the axis.

[Maddieman]

Yeah that would probably work, as would making a 'flying fighting' style, but we're getting into feature creep territory here. There are no levels to make proper use of it... unless we did a 'superman 64'-style level where you fly through hoops and 'solve my maze'.

On another note, some new screenshots.

Full gallery: http://mods.moddb.com/970/the-real-world/image-gallery/

[HalloweenIV]

Very Nice Work........

[Zom-B]

Stop tempting me.. it makes the wait even harder.

Nah just kidding, looking very nice! Do you fight more than just Seraph in the Teahouse? Looks like there's some kind of commando dead behind Trinity.. it'll probably give the level more of a lifetime instead of being over after one fight

[Sayantan]

Top-Notch.

[Maddieman]

Focus group time!

Through playtesting the question of difficulty has come up. Often games that are too hard become frustrating quickly, while at the same time, games that are too easy lead to boredom.

So I'd like to know your thoughts on the anticipated difficulty of TRW, and the difficulty of games in general. E.g. What fights/levels you expect to be difficult, what you expect to be easy; also what games you found too tough, easy, just right, etc.

Some people found Katana too hard in places (especially the last fight), while others enjoyed the challenge & reply factor -- what do you think? What could have been done to make it easier? Would a proper training/tutorial level have helped ease players into the combat? Or should some of the enemies / combat encounters been made easier?

Let me know what you think!

[Sayantan]

*remembers the end fight of 7S:Crossfire*

[theHunted]

A while ago you were asking for help on this little document about good gameplay scripting. Back then I assembled a small list of pitfalls and dos/donts for myself. I never really got to finish it which is why i havent replied to that thread in the first place. But to come back to topic i feel this could be the place to post some of the rubbish i made up.

[Starting in front of enemies]
This is one of the most common scripting mistakes and it comes in all kinds of flavours. At the start of a new level or after a cutscene the player is placed in front or in the middle of a bunch of hungry enemies with no chance for taking cover or escaping at least 2 or 3 bullet hits. Playing the scene for the first time the player often ends up dying. After 3 or 4 times of reloading he might be able to escape but will most definately be left with a slight feeling of frustration and hate towards the mission scripters. In order to avoid this negative experience the player should always start in a safe place. For level starts there should be no hostile activity until the player has moved a reasonable distance or time. In case of a cutscene with a subsequent combat, the player should be placed behind a reasonable place of cover, like a big pillar, or behind the corner of a room. It is also preferred that the player is not directly attacked until he starts to make a move. Enemies should start shooting at the
cover but should not be able to hit the player unless he moves out of cover or after a reasonable amount of time has been passed. Finding a proper sort of cover for the player to be placed behind extremely important but can also be very hard at times. If, even after hours of thinking, you simply cannot come up with a reasonable type of cover there's one last resort. If you really have to place the player in front of a bunch of enemies, at least script them in a way that they don't start attacking unless the player has fired a round first or made a dodging move away from the enemies.

[Adjusting the difficulty]
Balancing the difficulty level is one of the toughest yet most important points in gameplay scripting. It's an extremely thin line balancing between too low and too high difficulty. It's also extremely hard to estimate for a scripter who is working 24/7 on a level how difficult the level is for a casual player. The best thing you can do is get yourself an unbiased friend and watch him while he is playing a particular scene for the first time. Note that he should roughly match the target audience. That means he should've played games of a similar or same genre before.
When in doubt about the balancing I would advice you to try to be on the easy difficulty side rather than on the high difficulty. People complaining about an easy difficulty in level 2 of 7 is still better than people ending up frustrated and quitting.

[Sufficient pickup items]
Make sufficient use of ammo and health pickups throughout the level. There's hardly something more frustrating than having to fight 4 heavy weight guards with just 5 rounds left in your pistol. When in doubt, rather place too many items than too few. People complaining about the low difficulty is way better than people ending up frustrated by the tough difficulty.

Additional remark by Aavenr (professional Level-designer at DICE):
"Hey! I read through your post quickly. I defintively agree with all points except one: I think it's not so much as having sufficient pickup items, but more like having as many pick up items as you need for the desired gameplay experience. I think it's valid to place too few ammo/guns if you want to build tension, make the game slower-paced, force the player to think more, etc. However, the level should be able to be completed even in the the worst possible scenario within that setup (say, if you waste the little bullets you got and finding yourself a knife, you should still be able to beat it, even though it will be harder) and the player should receive hints as to what tactics will benefit him in that case (eg. crouching and coming up from behind the enemies), etc."


And here's some more headlines I wrote down but never got to write a proper summnary.
- hard to see enemies. e.g. sniper from 2 km away sniping at you with no chance of killing him.
- too many enemies; running out of ammo -> very frustrating.
- no enemies suddenly standing next to you and shooting a full load of shotgun ammo in your face.
not funny but frustrating!!!
- not too many enemies with uber guns. mix 2-3 enemies with poor guns with ~1 enemy with good gun.

[theHunted]

Feel free to discuss the correctness of these points and if you feel like one of them is wrong. In that case they should be removed. Most of it is my own personal experience. Some of the mistakes I even made myself.
Either way those are the points i noted concerning difficulty of a game/mod. There's some more points about general gameplay mistakes I have. Feel free to drop me note in case you wanna see them. Unfortunately most of them are just one-liners that I never got to write properly.

[Jami3]

Very well considered and written piece by theHunted I think he's on the money with what he's saying.

In terms of difficulty for TRW in particular, I would suggest that because of the nature of the modification a high difficulty level would be best suited to the type of gamer playing the mod. I, for example will play through the same parts again and again, regardless of difficulty. Because the action sequences in the mod are very much short scenes from the films I would probably play them over and over.

I found Katana really difficult but I managed to get to the end of the game without giving up. My only qualm with Katana was that the weaker enemies that the player has to fight loads of should have been weaker and more disposable, this way the player feels a larger gap in the enemy's ability and status when they have just totally owned a merc and go on to fight a big boss.

For enemies in TRW there should be too types of difficulty. Firstly, weaker enemies made difficult due to there numbers. For example, a large group of SWAT. Secondly, stronger enemies that are difficult because of their ability and health points. For example, agents or seraph.

As much as you want the game to be challenging don't forget that there are some characters in the Matrix world that would just get there arses kicked, such as the police. Making some of the enemies really easy to kill is not always a bad thing and I think this was partly missing in Katana, enemies that make you feel like the one, enemies that you can kick the shit out of but not feel like they were so bad that the game was scripted to make them really easy.

One thing I particularly liked when playing the Kung-Fu demo was the difficulty and the learning curve. When Morpheus and Trinity first spawn I found myself struggling to take them on, but as I grasped the Kung-fu system and there weaknesses I soon found myself able to beat them but still enjoy and good fight. Bear in mind that people playing the mod will play through it again and again.

Anyway hope some of the helps you when your tweaking the difficulty.

[HalloweenIV]

In my DAWN OF THE DEAD mod there's an early level that starts with a cutscene of a cop shooting a gas canister through a rooftop door, another cutscene follows after this one where you see the bad guy's come piling out of the door firing their guns at the cops after being forced out by the gas.

Now obviously in a situation like this you couldn't have the bad guys pile out of the door & then just stand around doing nothing untill the player gains control of the game, as it would just look stupid.

However, although this level is one of the shortest, this situation also makes it one of the hardest as your thrown strait into the action with several bad guys already shooting at you when you gain the control of the game after the cutscene ends ( although you are made invulnerable untill you have gained control ).

I have put the player behind some cover because of this senario, but you still have a big chance of getting hit even with the cover as the cover is not all that great.

As a result of all this, theres a 80% chance that your get killed only seconds after gaining control of this level, which makes it very hard to complete if you don't know the secret to playing & winning this level, & that secret is to switch the game into slow motion as soon as you gain control.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that even if theres games out their that have level's that seem impossible to complete, there's always a way, because if there wasn't then modders woudn't have been able to test the level out for themselves would they?

I myself enjoy games that are very hard to complete as I think you then get more game play for your money. For instance I just completed a game called New World Order, it's not the greatest game in the world, but the combat was pretty intence, & as a result of this I had this game on my P.C for about a year as I couldn't get past one particular level ( & yes I did get fedup with trying to complete it ), but now & agian I would return to the game & try again, & the feeling I got when I finally did manage to complete this difficult game was even more gratifying because of this expieriance, & of course you can also play other games in between going back & trying to complete one that your stuck on.

Another reason I preffer having to go back time & time agian to try & complete more difficult games is that I'd rather do this then spend £40 or £50 0n a game that I can manage to complete in a hour or two, as that just makes me feel like I've been ripped off.........

[theHunted]

just a quick note: I made an important addition to my earlier posting. Please feel free to re-read the [Sufficient pickup items] part in case you havent read about the additional comment by aavenr.

[Jami3]

All this feedback is good, it means that the TRW team can create the best possible mod experience. Especially when these comments come from someone like aavenr who now makes games for a living. I can only see this mod being amazing.

[Maddieman]

^Well, there's a difference between knowing the path, and walking it.
Theory is one thing, putting into practise is a whole different ball game.

Anyway, wow, thanks for your detailed comments everyone. I didn't expect such a large response so soon.

TheHunted, thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I think I agree with nearly all of your points.

In particular, I definitely agree that some kind of preparation time is almost always essential before a big fight. If you look at the Max Payne levels in detail, the player is almost always warned in some way before a significant combat encounter; usually with some kind of 'cue' (either with dialogue/audio "The best movie ending ever?...", or a cutscene). It gives them a chance to prepare -- quicksave, stock up on ammo & health, plus it gives them an indication of the size of the opposition faced. Ambushes can be exciting & challenging to overcome, but the odds still have to be firmly on the player's side.

The other key point is that it's almost a cardinal sin in game design if you force the player to die/fail in order to learn how to solve a puzzle or challenge. E.g. It takes you 3 lives to figure out where that damn sniper is. Or that taking a particular route always results in death. This sort of goes hand-in-hand with the above points, but 1-hit-kills are generally frowned upon - especially if they can't be avoided.

Regarding the point on pickups, I think I agree with both you and Aav. If you're trying to create a John Woo / Matrix power fantasy, I think an abundance of health and ammo pickups is appropriate (so the player can overkill enemies without risk). However, if you're going for a more tactical / stealth type of level (emphasis on accuracy and caution), you can reinforce the point with less pickups. The key of course is getting the point across to the player. Playing through MP1 again recently, I realised just how conservative you have to be with Bullet-Time. A well timed shootdodge can mean the difference between life and death, and doing a " John Woo" pretty-much results in an empty Bullet-Time bar for the rest of the level. Remedy changed this for MP2.

Anyway, I'd love to hear further points on this topic, as Corwin and I are still thinking about going ahead with the gameplay project. (We're setting up a wiki for it.)

---

As for TRW, there are a number of specific issues I should mention.

Gun fu?

First is the switch between guns and kung fu. Anyone who's played Kung Fu 3 will know that it's actually quite tough to play through the Max Payne levels because most enemies simply gun you down before you get into range. The same is true for Katana -- sometimes it's not obvious when you should use guns and when you should use the Katana. Generally speaking, trying to kick someone while they unload a full clip into you isn't fun.

We've tried to minimise this by speeding up the time it takes to switch between guns and kung fu, including a special mode that lets you use both. But at the moment, I think the best solution to this is by giving the player the best cues possible as to what they're up against, and try to even the odds.

Kung fu Boss fights

Jami3, I think you're absolutely right about the strength of the weaker enemies in Katana -- they were too tough (originally they were even harder). In comparison, the bonus levels feature much weaker enemies (in terms of hit points) which can be diced up effortlessly. The strategy we've gone for with TRW is pretty much what you've described -- there are 'weak' enemies which can be knocked down with 1-3 hits (the white uniform guys in the demo), and 'bosses', which require an entirely different tactic to beat.

The problem is balancing. On the one hand, I know there will be hardcore players that will pick up the system quickly, play the levels again and again, and strive to get the best out of it. And on the other hand, I know there's a casual audience that will pick it up, play the first 3 levels, get their asses handed to them, and will say "I waited 4 years for this!?" and be extremely let down.

Games like Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry 3 interest me, because on the one hand, they're rock hard and practically exclude casual players; but at the same time, that kind of difficulty really rewards skill and mastery of the elite few.

At this point I'm inclined to go with TheHunted's advice and err on the side of caution, and make the base game easier (then add options to scale it up). Seems like a good rule of thumb to make it a notch easier than you think it is. That, and conducting playtesting experiments to see if I can narrow the difficulty gap a little.

The other options I'm considering:

-A tutorial level that goes into some detail about how to get the most out of the game (rather than just: here's an enemy, try to hit him... good work!). So casual players would be able to practise moves in a safe environment, and advanced players would be able to practise advanced techniques.

-Adjusting difficulty / Skill assessment level

Path of Neo has this nice level at the start of the game which starts out really easy, and gets progressively harder. When you die, it tells you roughly how good you are, and unlocks appropriate difficulty modes.

Devil May Cry, on the other hand, starts on normal difficulty, but if you die 3 times in a row, gives you the option to revert to easy mode. God of War and a number of other games do this too.

Max Payne, of course, has a system which adjusts the difficulty after each level, based on the number of times killed and how fast you finish the level.

All of these are fine, except that none really work for TRW, since the enemy 'toughness' isn't determined by their hitpoints, but programmed in MaxED (Katana was the same). This would require either a fixed difficulty, or doing something really complicated to tell Maxed that the player has chosen ‘easy’ mode.

Anyway thanks for the feedback so far, I'd love to hear more thoughts on the topic. Also, Ninja Gaiden, I've never played it -- is it really so hard?

---

HalloweenIV, I'd have to play it to be sure, but it sounds like you might be pushing your luck with the scenario you described. There's a fine line between difficulty and fairness; and extreme difficulty can often lead to frustration and then boredom.

As a rule of thumb, I'd give the player at least 0.5-1 second to respond, or have a standoff situation where no one opens fire until the player shoots (use a big projectile trigger). Like TheHunted said, giving the enemy weak weapons can also be a good solution - i.e. Berettas. Another solution might be to give two ways to win -- an easy way (shoot an explosive barrel that kills everyone), or a hard way (take them out properly), so you get the best of both worlds. Playing and analysing similar scenes from Max Payne and other games is also a good way to get inspiration.

As for regular scripting, I'm working on a checklist of scripting rules of thumb, dos and don'ts, etc. It's still WIP, but if anyone's interested, let me know and I'll send it your way. It's not a tutorial and it doesn't go into the same detail as TheHunted's post -- it's more like bullet points of advice.

This is a good article on the subject of difficulty and fairness:
http://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_ma...d_concept.html

I also recommend this book, for those interested in games design, and how fun directly relates to learning and difficulty:
http://www.theoryoffun.com/


-

[Jami3]

An in-depth tutorial would be a good idea as players would be able to go to and from the tutorial when they feel they need to learn something specific for when they are stuck on one of the levels.

For example, they start a level where they fight through some cops and onto a boss, the player shoots the cops and moves onto the boss, finding that there weapons are useless. So they go to the tutorial, and there's a part where the player is given tips on how to fight these stronger enemies, this might be instructing them on how to fight bosses using kung-fu. They then use this on the boss with the new techniques they've learned. As long as the tutorial is fun and has lots of information about all the various different aspects of the mod people will come back to it.

My suggestion would be to have the tutorial split into several separate levels like training programmes from the first film. One might be evasion, another advanced gunplay, boss fights or advanced kung-fu. Making these training programmes would let you create something truly original because you wouldn't be constrained to specific scenes in the films, because training programmes that simulate the Matrix can be anything. For example, for gunplay you could have a big gun fight in a bar or restaraunt, and then for kung-fu the dojo from the demo or a mountain temple or whatever.

PS I'd happily playtest this tutorial level for you

(OK that was shameless!)

[HalloweenIV]

Originally Posted by Maddieman

HalloweenIV, I'd have to play it to be sure, but it sounds like you might be pushing your luck with the scenario you described. There's a fine line between difficulty and fairness; and extreme difficulty can often lead to frustration and then boredom.

As a rule of thumb, I'd give the player at least 0.5-1 second to respond, or have a standoff situation where no one opens fire until the player shoots (use a big projectile trigger).

The whole point of the cutscene at the begining of this level is to show that it's the villains instigate the gun battle, after all it would be strange if the police did so, as you seem to be suggesting above.

There is of course still a few seconds for the player to get his bearings once the controls are given over to him, as even if you are getting hit while being shot at it still takes a while for you health to run right down, so if you use this valuable time to switch into slow motion mode you will find that this level is then reasonably easy to beat.

However, this level is far from being boring as your thrown right into the middle of a raging rooftop gun battle with villians shooting at you from both sides, so its very adrenalin packed & fast paced, giving you no time to get bored, & the only way that I can see a player getting bored of this level is if he tries to achieve it while playing it at normal speed as this is very hard to do ( but not impossible ), but he might get bored & frustrated by the amount of times he has to play the level to beat it at this speed, but he might also get lucky first time around, who knows, but then again i've already given out the secret to achieving this level haven't I ?

That being said I have not set out to make this T.C mod easy to achive as, as I said in my previous post I can't stand games like that, so this T.C will be achivable, but not easy.

Each level will have just enough guns & ammo in them to enable the player to sucessfully achieve the level but the player will have to use them wisely as once you run out of ammo in this mod your a dead man as the 2 melee weapons that are avalible to you in this mod are only used to knock zombies over so that you can gain some extra time to run off & find some more ammo or another gun to finish the job off properly as, as you know the only way to kill a zombie in the movie ( as in this mod ), is to shoot them in the head to destroy their brain, & just hitting them just won't do, so that being said, I'd advise anyone that's not up to a challenge to steer well clear of my mod once it's released......

[Maddieman]

Well, like I said, every combat situation is unique to it's level. It's very much an art, not a science -- there's no one correct way of doing things. And yes, making the kind of game you want to play is probably the most important factor.

Anyway, like TheHunted said, I'd definitely encourage modders to get their friends to playtest the hell out of their mod (especially if you're introducing new gameplay to the Max Payne formula). We skipped that step with Katana because it was running late, and we missed a few obvious opportunities to make it more enjoyable.

My suggestion would be to have the tutorial split into several separate levels like training programmes from the first film. One might be evasion, another advanced gunplay, boss fights or advanced kung-fu. Making these training programmes would let you create something truly original because you wouldn't be constrained to specific scenes in the films, because training programmes that simulate the Matrix can be anything. For example, for gunplay you could have a big gun fight in a bar or restaraunt, and then for kung-fu the dojo from the demo or a mountain temple or whatever.

This is pretty much the route I'm exploring, and it was done pretty well in Path of Neo (each training program is based on a famous action film, like Enter the Dragon). The only problem is that making levels is extremely time consuming, especially at this stage.

[Jami3]

So progress-wise what is left to be made for the mod?

levels, models etc.

Been playing the Kung-Fu all day, still learning new stuff, such a good system.

[Maddieman]

The main levels left to do are the lobby and roof. They were made ages ago, but the gameplay scripting has to be re-done. Then I have to swing around and wrap up the other levels.

[Jami3]

Cool, sounds like it's progressing well, are you the only active member left on the team now?

[Maddieman]

More or less.

Our team consisted mostly of artists, and they left when the key level geometry and characters were finished (back in 2004). Ken and I reworked the kung fu for a year or two, and now that's finished, I'm just wrapping up the level scripting / gameplay.

That's pretty much how Katana was for the last 6-9 months - once StratonAce finished the levels and scripting, I moved in and polished the hell out of it.

If there were more scripters out there, I'd gladly call out for help; although at stage I don't think it would help much, since the TRW enemies need to be programmed in a certain way to get the kung fu working properly.

[Maddieman]

Here's a new trailer I made the other day, showing footage from the Lobby, Subway, and Streets levels. Hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reO8XAyywyU

Before anyone asks, the rainbow coloured HUD thing is a placeholder. I'm just using it for testing, because it's easier to see how much damage the enemies are inflicting per hit.

[Zom-B]

I saw it on my subscribed YouTube list thing, it's awesome. Didn't pay attention to the rainbow HUD message at first though.. :P

The Streets look really nice, as do all the other levels. Looking forward to it.

[theHunted]

Loving the part with the bullet-dodge and the subway train going by in slow-mo. The food market on the street looks neat also. Good work Baddieman

[Jami3]

loving the person becoming the agent in the marketplace level. Looking really great. Is the part where Neo shoots the cops at the lobby scanner an in-game move or part of a cut scene?

[Maddieman]

Thanks for the comments, although Zeph is really the wiz behind the streets level (and feel free to blame him for the 2d fruit and veg textures :P).

Is the part where Neo shoots the cops at the lobby scanner an in-game move or part of a cut scene?

That part is a cutscene -- I've been experimenting with various Equilibrium style moves and shootdodges, and while they make great screenshots; tbh, none of them work very well without a proper 'lock-on' targeting system. I'll be including those shootdodges in the customise mode, but they're quite experimental.

Speaking of which, I added a couple of new 'quick n' dirty' shootddoges to the game -- a cartwheel (for the rifle), and two others (one shown in the video) based on some of the kung fu flips you can do. Ken made these as dodges, but it turns out they work well as shootdodges too. For development speed, they don't interpolate like regular shootdodges, but still good IMO.

Loving the part with the bullet-dodge and the subway train going by in slow-mo.

Yeah thanks -- I'm probably abusing that move now, but the timing of the train couldn't have been better.

Thanks for the comments.

EDIT: High quality version of the trailer if anyone wants it: Yoink! (50MB download, MPEG-2 format (*.mpg)).

[Jami3]

I'm so fired up for this mod now, the unreleased trailer 3 really gets me in the mood love the music in that trailer. Even though the shorter trailer 3 that was released is better edited and shot. Like a short sweet teaser.

[zephyrin_xirdal]

Originally Posted by Maddieman

Thanks for the comments, although Zeph is really the wiz behind the streets level (and feel free to blame him for the 2d fruit and veg textures :P).

*faints* Sir, I am honoured for having been allowed to contribute my li'l something to your fulminant project! I just checked my files on the HDD ... can it be right that I sent the streets .lvl to you back in December of 2003, Maddie? Plus, I remember that back then I furnished you with something unfinished. *looks down ashamed* So you have put a considerable amount of work into it ... The bottom line: I really am honoured, and I am serious here, that my little bits'n'pieces of architecture have made it into The Real World.

Btw, here are some MaxEd screenshots of the TRW-streets from back in Ye Ole Times :-)

[Maddieman]

You're too modest Zeph.

Considering it's size, it was a good level to work with -- the path is straightfoward and hits ALL of the major shots in that scene of the film. It was really fortunate you could spare the time to build it -- the mod will be much better for it I'm sure.

Nice to see the 'old' screenshots again (I've got the original file on a CD somewhere). Besides AI scripting & lighting, I don't remember making *that* many changes to it (only 17 new versions ), but you're right, a long time has passed since you sent it.

I've posted quite a few screens of the current version of the level on the Moddb gallery (pages 5-10).

[HalloweenIV]

Thoughs are some very interesting early screenies Zeph, & it's always nice to see how things have progressed within a mod, this is some great work by you both.....

[Zom-B]

Perhaps you could do some kind of developers commentary on how the mod came together, not part of the mod itself of course, that's probably a bit advanced for MaxED, but as videos or something similar. Just to give budding mappers an idea of how you made some of the amazing set peices such as the subway with moving train and the transforming agents.

I still use Max Payne to mod, now that I finally understand how to use Milkshape etc, even though I am extremely late into the modding scene to say the least, but something like The Real World can definately show that old game engines and mods still have a certain charm, not to mention often a lot more fun than the "Official" Matrix games.. ahem.

[Maddieman]

Yeah, I did think about doing a TR:Anniversary style commentary (there are buttons hidden in the rooms which trigger the commentary for that room/level) for either TRW or some kind of Katana 'special edition' (with Straton), but I don't have a Microphone or the voice for it. (I did a short one for Katana for university, and it was painful). Still, there are a couple of good stories to be told, which I guess some people might find interesting. (all two of you )

If I can figure out a way to enable it in-game, without compromising the immersion of the levels (Phone booths maybe? Hidden buttons, etc?), I'll give it more thought and maybe buy a mic (you have been warned!). From listening to most of these things though, they're always MUCH more interesting if there are a minimum of two people, so you can have a discussion -- that means finding someone else who's brave enough to do it, who has enough free time.

But I'll say upfront that I didn't construct many of the levels -- Froz and Jani (Suprakarma) were the lead mappers, and we had many contributers (Zeph, TheHunted, Ildu, Kendo, Ken_Y, to name a few). Of course, I still ended up doing a lot of MaxED work, but the only levels I built from scratch were the Burly Brawl, Freeway, and several training/bonus/prototype levels.