DEAD!? news

What's up, people.

I popped by the other day and saw those two comments about the mod being dead. And then all the other, older ones, asking if it was still alive.

To be honest, I can't blame anyone for calling this a dead mod. It hurts, but it's not untrue. The last update was a full year ago, for chrissakes! Anything new at this point would probably be akin to electrifying a corpse. I know what it's like not getting updates for such a looong time for something you were quite looking forward to. But I digress.

There's two primary reasons for all this:

1. I'm too scatterbrained

It's nearly impossible for me to just sit down for longer periods of time and see things through to the end, even if they're fun personal projects, like this one. I can't even finish games, for crying out loud.
Now that's sad.

I did release a bunch of versions for Ammo (and actually had another one going, albeit it now sits on my hard drive gathering dust), but that was simply due to how easy and fast it was to add in new tweaks and such. On Max Payne 2 alone, I've at least 14 projects which either never got finished or are still "in development" (I like to fool myself). Some of them small, some bigger. This mod would've required a nutty amount of new animations to work even halfway properly. Which brings me to...

2. The concept of the FPS mod itself

It's flawed to hell. It really is! I know I said quite a while back that I knew that "it can be done" or something along those lines, but really, I had never even tried before that point. Truth is, after attempting a few different ways of achieving the ultimate saucy FPS view, I came to a realization- this is a third person game. Gasp!

As a third person game, Max Payne is built entirety around that idea. It's meant as a game where your character will always be onscreen, versus your character pretty much being a camera with a gun. And perhaps a pair of legs, which aren't even a guarantee.

In a game like this one, your character has all of these really crazy, full-body animations with lots of movement. Run! Jump! Shootdodge! Roll-dodge! These don't mesh well at all with first person. All you get is a lot of annoying clipping. I did try to work around that by making animations stiffer and more limited, but lo and behold! Now it all looks like garbage!

Many things were tried, but in the end I found it'd simply never actually be any good. Max Payne is designed around third person, period.

What now!?

Well, not much of anything. Will this mod ever be completed as-is, Max Payne with an FPS camera? Most likely, the answer to that question is simply 'no'. Does that suck? Yes, it does. But to be fair, it would've been a sucky mod even if completed. Like I told a good friend yesterday:

It really would have been terrible. On the other hand, "some other game on the Max Payne engine" in first person wouldn't necessarily suck if you built the entire thing around that.

I do have a concept in mind. It's less ambitious and more doable. That said, I DON'T (and I repeat: DON'T) want to give anyone any unnecessary false hopes. Will this new thing get a release? Maybe, maybe not. Will it be Max Payne 1 or 2? Maybe 1, maybe 2. Will it come out 2019 or 2090? Who knows! Don't hold your breath. I'll only put out updates if and when I've got something to show, and most likely these will be posted to my personal profile and not to a mod.

What about that other new project you mentioned in your last update?

Oh, I won't pretend to have forgotten about that (or Ammo 2, which never got off the ground besides some minor, insignificant changes, by the way).

That last secret project... actually made a hell of a lot of progress. Now it's stuck. Stuck where? Well, almost all of the major gameplay systems are done. It just has no levels and is missing a lot of character animations. I suck at making levels. And also get bored of making them, and making animations. It's not a good combo. Are you good at making levels? Send me a message. Know someone who might be interested in making levels? Send them my way. Those are the only two major things the mod still needs, really. Levels and animations. The rest is pretty much handled already.

I've thought of making a post asking for help with that, but I don't know if there's enough interest for it or even enough people remaining in the Max Payne community. Still, I just might if that interest somehow shows up.

As a closing comment on this disaster, the one thing I'll never do is disappear completely (unless I die, I guess). And I mean that! I may not update my mods and may even abandon them (oops), but I'll always stick around (I know- who wants that?). I'll always read and reply to any and all messages I get.

I know this is really not what any of you wanted to read. Sorry about that. Still, I'd rather be honest and tell it like it is than simply vanish, which sucks even harder.