Mac game conversion studio Westlake Interactive quietly updated their Web site with news about a project in development — Max Payne.
Developed by Remedy Entertainment, Ltd. and 3D Realms, Max Payne is a hardcore 3D action game that puts players in the role of a fugitive cop-turned-federal agent fighting an underworld crime ring in New York City responsible for the murder of his own family. The game has won accolades from critics and players for its use of a technique called “Bullet Time,” which enables players to aim and shoot in slow motion. Bullet Time has been compared with the visual effects seen in the motion picture, “The Matrix.” Additionally, the game makes use of modern 3D graphics technologies like hardware transform and lighting — functionality found on Nvidia and newer ATI graphics chips.
Max Payne was, up until late yesterday, known as a secret project called “Morphine” on Westlake’s Project Status Web page. As with all of Westlake’s secret projects, Max Payne’s code-name was a clever play on words — what better medication to use when suffering “max(imum) pain” than morphine?
Max Payne is currently in early development. Westlake uses the term “early development” to describe when a programmer is still doing early work on getting the game’s code running on the Mac, and getting data files to load properly. As a result, it’s still too early to specify when Max Payne may be released for the Macintosh other than to say sometime in 2002, but game enthusiasts may take solace in the knowledge that it’s an active Westlake project, regardless.
The project is being brought to the Mac courtesy of Westlake’s newest staff addition, Cary Farrier. Farrier’s appointment at Westlake was announced this past month. It’s the latest step in a long and illustrious Mac programming career that includes programming the original DrawSprocket system library for Apple — a cornerstone of Apple’s Game Sprockets API.
The Mac version of Max Payne is the result of a collaboration announced this past Spring between Take Two Interactive Software and Infogrames, parent company of Mac game publisher MacSoft. MacSoft will publish Max Payne after the conversion is done.
In other related news, Westlake has added another entry to its Project Status Web page. The company now lists a new secret project it calls “Muse” to its roster. Details are sketchy — the company indicated that “Muse” is in early development, but it isn’t saying when the game will be released or who the publisher might be.