T w e n t y S i d e d

Part 2 of 4.

I was right that the game was doing something really screwy at load time. I searched around and found that if you add -disable3dpreloads to the command line like so:

…the game will stop stalling on the loading screen. The load times went from two minutes to about eight seconds.

Max Payne always had horrendous load times. I wonder if this “feature” was the problem all along? Would this have sped things up in 2001? I no longer have a machine of that vintage so I can’t test.

On Sunday I plowed through the whole game using cheats, just taking in the story and trying to get a feel for the writing style. (Since I needed to mimic it for this series.) I wish I’d done so before I began the series. Part 1 was written in present tense. I could have sworn the game was written in present tense. But it wasn’t. Hopefully the shift isn’t too off-putting. It will probably be more noticeable to people doing an archive binge than to people who are just reading them as they come out.

I will say this series is really fun to work on.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

In this week’s column, I suggest five games that I think make the “Games as Art” case fairly well. (Assuming, as Yahtzee points out, that both sides are even working with the same definition of “art”.) My list is actually, “Five arty games that could be approached by a newcomer.”

And this leads to the main reason that this debate is boring to me. An Ebert says games aren’t art. A gamer offers up some examples as I have. Then the Ebert will dismiss them. The Gamer will protest. Eventually they realize they are talking about two different things when they say “art”. And then the rest of the debate is an attempt to define art, which is a fool’s errand.

Art or not, it’s a pretty fun way to spend the time.

I should play some more Max Payne this weekend.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

This comic ties in with the “Games as Art” debate that’s been simmering for the last couple of weeks. My weekly column will cover this as well. So those of you who have been waiting for my take on it will finally get your wish. I had to install Max Payne to make the comic, so that was pretty cool. I maintain that while the in-game cutscene scripting might look a little stiff today, the game is still obviously a product of the golden age of PC gaming. While the tools they had at the time were crude and their budgets were far lower than what we have today, I think they used their resources better.

I will say that there is something wrong with Max Payne under the hood. The load times should not be this long on a nine year old game. Loading a level takes a full minute? That’s… harsh. Somehow, I don’t think the load times have gotten better with age. I’d love to know how that’s possible.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.