[MP2] Mona: The Assassin

[Corwin]

Mona: The Assassin is an unofficial Max Payne 2 expansion featuring 5 original, action-packed levels.

Website: http://www.monatheassassin.com

Release date: January 1st 2009

Mona Sax is a contract-killer, a job at which she excels. When a Mafia boss sends his army of mobsters after her, assaulting her hideout and forcing her to flee through the city streets, it gets personal and real nasty.

From an abandoned asylum, through the suburban streets of the Big Apple, to the Mafia social club, unleash her destructive power and make them regret to have ever messed with Mona: The Assassin.

[Minos]

I recognize this area from Fight Club =)

Looks damn good, did you do any post-processing (photoshop) on those screenshots?

[Corwin]

Nope, it's all raw, taken from the game

[-HP-]

Oh yeah, this mod owns!

[General Vivi]

This looks fantastic! nice work!

[JohnC]

I've been meaning to ask how in the hell you pulled off good looking daylight in Max Payne 2.

[insta]

Incredible work, I'll be sure to play it when it's released. It should work on the Steam version of Max Payne 2, right?

[Corwin]

I've been meaning to ask how in the hell you pulled off good looking daylight in Max Payne 2.

Very tricky stuff, that's why some of the detail meshes can't have shadows. But basically the whole skybox texture is sending light, and before sending it to the renderer, we color it with an orange dark texture because the color of the texture that emits light influences the light color aswell, and set it back as Skybox afterwards.

It should work on the Steam version of Max Payne 2, right?

I don't own the Steam version, but I suppose it does, yes. If it can run mods, it can run this one.

[-HP-]

Yeah, it's compatible with steam. I tested it

[Corwin]

We've decided to promote the mod a bit before its release, so here's a first teaser. The trailer is done but we'll wait a few more days to go public with it.

[Corwin]

Here's the trailer:

[hessi]

calling your self talented is kind of... yeah you know... out of place? let the others decide if you are talented or not. even if you are talented, you shouldn't announce it.

the trailer doesn't tell much, but it reminds me of finishing max payne 2 on my xbox

[Corwin]

calling your self talented is kind of... yeah you know... out of place? let the others decide if you are talented or not. even if you are talented, you shouldn't announce it.

Agreed. To be honest, I didn't come up with that. To be fully honest, I didn't really care. It's similar to presenting a mod by saying it'll be of high-quality, etc. Of course, the important part is if people like it or not, but if it can help convince them it is worth playing, all the better.

In our case, the game is quite old and most people don't really feel like reinstalling it just to play a mod. Call it a desperate attempt to convince them to

[KoKo5oVaR]

Wow!! i'll be sure to give it a try when it will be released, you guys are pretty courageous to do that on such an old engine ( add the singleplayer factor ). I loved maxpayne not particularly for a lot of firefights with a lot of enemies, but more because of the scenarisation of the levels. It was switching between some moments of calm where you had the time to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the level, and suddenly, really fast paced action with a lot of stuff breaking appart around you ( in maxpayne 2 i loved the part in the luxury apartments for that ). Making level design for maxpayne is quite tricky, it ask a lot of talent, I hope you guys made your mod on the same line !

[Corwin]

Alright, we finally released it! You can grab the mod at http://www.monatheassassin.com

It's far from being as polished as we envisioned, for multiple reasons but mostly because I'm the only one active left and have other, more important things to attend to.

I do believe there are nice encounters in there, that we ended up with pretty good settings, that some of the levels are impressive visually, etc. but I should warn you that there are also some lows for every highs we managed to get done. Some parts have been very roughly scripted, one of the levels' geometry was completed in a rush, some encounters are way harder than others, and some can be confusing, levels aren't very well paced (we tried to pack too much action packed in there), etc.

But in the end, it was an ambitious project, and even though we didn't quite get where we wanted, I still think it's decent and worth a try!

I learned a lot while working on this, and even though I wasn't able to apply directly to it most of the lessons it taught me (when you're done with a level, you don't really feel like starting over, even if you realize you could have done it better, so you tweak this and that and call it a day), I'm still glad I was part of it!

Happy new year!