Max Payne 2?

[He@t!]

WHat engine does Max payne 2 use?

 

[He@t!]

And Is it close to the HL2 engine?

 

[Faravid]

It uses its own engine developed by Remedy, most likely modified engine from Max Payne, it has nothing to do with HL2 except that both use Havok 2, though HL2 has highly modified version of it, both are DirectX 9 engines though, though HL2 has support for older versions as well.

 

[dawdler]

The Max Payne 2 engine is NOT DX9. Its using a DX9 runtime so it demands DX9, but not a single piece of the graphics is DX9, its all DX8, although quite advanced use of it. Its actually one of the best game engines I have seen.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Fun fact: Max Payne 2 runs better on my rig than MP1. Also it's the only game I can run smoothly with AA on and high res and high details on my GeForce MX ^^; VERY nice engine, although the physics aren't very well utilized in-game, more just for show than anything. Although the ragdoll is VERY fun

 

[Faravid]

Originally posted by dawdler
The Max Payne 2 engine is NOT DX9. Its using a DX9 runtime so it demands DX9, but not a single piece of the graphics is DX9, its all DX8, although quite advanced use of it. Its actually one of the best game engines I have seen.

Ah, well DX9 is more than graphics, anyways MP1 was DX8 engine so I guess they didn't want to change it much.

 

[Faravid]

Originally posted by Bad^Hat
Fun fact: Max Payne 2 runs better on my rig than MP1. Also it's the only game I can run smoothly with AA on and high res and high details on my GeForce MX ^^; VERY nice engine, although the physics aren't very well utilized in-game, more just for show than anything. Although the ragdoll is VERY fun

Yeah it's damn good engine, I can run it with everything turned up too with my half-broken computer (I've got GF4 Ti4200, XP2200+ etc..).

 

[dawdler]

Originally posted by Faravid
Ah, well DX9 is more than graphics, anyways MP1 was DX8 engine so I guess they didn't want to change it much.

Of course its more than just graphics, but how many ways are there to do 1+1=2?
(actually two normal ways and the Nvidia way, but that's beside the point)

It is very good indeed. Its like a Ferrari compared to the tricycle Halo is. And Halo is technically more advanced. You can play at 1600x1200 with 6xFSAA/16xAF on top computers, that's about as perfect as you can get
Too bad it has that pixel shader FSAA problem. Though my guess is that its due to lazy coders, not a technical limitation.

 

[[Matt]]

Originally posted by dawdler
The Max Payne 2 engine is NOT DX9. Its using a DX9 runtime so it demands DX9, but not a single piece of the graphics is DX9, its all DX8

Then why cant my ti4600 do the mirror effects? :x ;(

 

[dawdler]

Because it just cant do mirror effects?
Doubt that would have anything to do with DX9 anyway...

Just read the readme:

"Mirrors are supported only by GeForceFX cards. Even then, we recommend keeping them disabled on GeForceFX 5200 for performance reasons."

Although that is obviously incorrect, they are supported on ATI cards too. Although I cant speak for older cards, so it still proves nothing concerning DX8/9.

 

[Faravid]

You don't need any fancy stuff for mirrors, remember Deus Ex, it had mirrors and I think I ran it on TNT 1, or then it was GF2 MX.

 

[[Matt]]

So it DOES use a DX9 graphical shader effect.... :E

 

[Faravid]

Originally posted by |MaTT|
So it DOES use a DX9 graphical shader effect.... :E

DX9... Works on both nVidia and ATI... with only slight optimizations/changes usually done in DX9 for different boards, it's a standard.

 

[He@t!]

Coo... Thnx for the info fellas. I was just playin the Max Payne 2 demo and i gotta say it was pretty nice visually u can move around boxes,trashcans,bottles,chairs break apart ladders and mops and stuff..And it runs very nice on my 2.2 gf4 ti4600.

Thats why i thought it used the same engine as HL2 due to the fact u can mess around with some stuff and has ragdoll effects.

So HL2 will be more graphically and physics better by 50%? more or less?



BTW-Quake 3 had mirror effect too :cheese:

 

[[Matt]]

Originally posted by Faravid
DX9... Works on both nVidia and ATI... with only slight optimizations/changes usually done in DX9 for different boards, it's a standard.

I know about DX and its slight different implementations on both PCB makers cards. Im mentioning that you can only see the mirrors on DX9 boards so that i can tell dawdler that it DOES use a dx9 effect even if it only uses it 4-5 times throughout the game... :E

 

[dawdler]

Originally posted by |MaTT|
So it DOES use a DX9 graphical shader effect.... :E

But are you sure its a DX9 shader? Both new ATI and Nvidia cards have other things that the older card doesnt have, that aint part of the DX spec. I'm still not so sure... As said, mirrors arent anything fancy. They are however blurred in the mirrors (using shaders), same as shadows. Maybe they just cant handle a mirrored scene with a shader? Remember what it noted, the FX5200 is to slow to handle it, meaning you need at least an FX5600. Would the Ti run it faster? Probably not, and thus: disabled

Btw:

Q: Max Payne 2 is a DX8.1 game although it requires the DX9 runtime (why is that, btw?). Was DX9 (hardware and API) made known to your Remedy partners when concept for this game started? If yes, why go with DX8.1? Too far down the development path already? Didn't envisage the quick take-up of DX9 hardware?

A: The project started as a content-only project, and we didn’t originally plan on taking the technology nearly as far as we took it in the end. Max2 requires the DX9 runtime, since it would be almost double effort doing the quality assurance on both DX8.1 and DX9.

There you have the answer!!! G4Ti is NOT DX8.1, only DX8!!! All new 9.0 cards however are backward compatibly to 8.1.

 

[Xtasy0]

Originally posted by |MaTT|
I know about DX and its slight different implementations on both PCB makers cards. Im mentioning that you can only see the mirrors on DX9 boards so that i can tell dawdler that it DOES use a dx9 effect even if it only uses it 4-5 times throughout the game... :E

but it Doesn't use DX9.

Max Payne 2 is a DX8.1 game although it requires the DX9 runtime (why is that, btw?). Was DX9 (hardware and API) made known to your Remedy partners when concept for this game started? If yes, why go with DX8.1? Too far down the development path already? Didn't envisage the quick take-up of DX9 hardware?

The project started as a content-only project, and we didn’t originally plan on taking the technology nearly as far as we took it in the end. Max2 requires the DX9 runtime, since it would be almost double effort doing the quality assurance on both DX8.1 and DX9.

The reason why we did not move over to using DX9 API calls was that we had a well-tested DirectX8 engine (Max Payne 1, 3DMark2001) that we could trust to run with pretty much everything (You can run Max2 on a Voodoo5 5500 if you want).

Changing to DX9 APIs would again have introduced a lot of QA and testing work, and as it wasn’t essential for the game nor would have increased its quality or graphical looks, it wasn’t done.

from http://www.beyond3d.com/interviews/maxpayne2/

 

[Arno]

I wonder what the visual difference is between this DX8 mirror and a standard Quake3-style mirror. It seems like just a mirrored view with a shader in front of it.

 

[dawdler]

Lol Xtasy0
You posted that while I added the same in my edit

 

[MrD]

Probably has something more to do with the pixel shader versions (there is 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, 2.0 and possibly 2.1 - don't ask me where 1.3 went), of which DX 8.1 supports 1.4 i think but older GeForces do not. I'm not sure on the specifics but its something along those lines.

 

[Faravid]

Originally posted by He@t!
Coo... Thnx for the info fellas. I was just playin the Max Payne 2 demo and i gotta say it was pretty nice visually u can move around boxes,trashcans,bottles,chairs break apart ladders and mops and stuff..And it runs very nice on my 2.2 gf4 ti4600.

Thats why i thought it used the same engine as HL2 due to the fact u can mess around with some stuff and has ragdoll effects.

So HL2 will be more graphically and physics better by 50%? more or less?

BTW-Quake 3 had mirror effect too :cheese:

Graphically yes, both engines allow shaders, dunno does Max Payne 2 allow home cooked shaders though, HL2 is more advanced in many parts, especially with characters, face muscles etc...
Physically yes, Max Payne 2 has only simple usage of Havok, items got no weight either (atleast it seems like it, too easy to drop a box compared to a bottle), etc... Physics in Max Payne 2 are very simple.

Anyways I wouldn't compare the graphics much, both games look nice and pretty much the same in their own styles.

Of course Q3 has mirrors, it uses shaders alot.

 

[MrD]

ps. Duke Nukem 3D had mirrors!

 

[Brian Damage]

There are two ways to do mirrors that I know of. In brief:

The "Fakie" way, where they actually use a duplicate room behind the mirror, complete with a movement-mimicking player model.

The realistic way, where they use environment mapping or a camera attatched to the mirror to take a snapshot of the surrounding environment (complete with player model, if there is one), flip it, and attatch it as a texture to the mirror.

 

[Arno]

Duke Nukem 3D used the faked methode of having a duplicate room at the opposite side of the mirror.

In Quake3 the whole scene is rendered from the mirror's point of view and pasted into the mirror surface using the stencil buffer. The shaders in Quake3 have nothing to do with the PixelShaders used in MP2, though.