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Max Payne 3 will show more realistic AI reactions after making tweaks to the Euphoria engine, the game’s art director has said.
Rob Nelson explained that a lot of work had been put into the Natural Motion physics engine to add extra detail and realism from its previous titles Grand Theft Auto IV and Red Dead Redemption.
“As far as Euphoria, it’s basically a set of behaviours that you can tune, and so it’s really how much effort you put into that. With Max, we put a lot of effort into the different aspects of Euphoria and how we use it,” Nelson told GameSpot.
“So there’s the hit reacts for the enemies, we sort of evolve that and make those feel more connected. I think we had a good jump from GTA4 to Red Dead, and you’re going to see another good jump from Red Dead to Max, where you want individual shots to react properly you want people to fall realistically.”
He added that the engine provides a set of behaviours that can be tuned, with the developer putting in a lot of work into the different aspects of Euphoria.
"We’re also doing something new with Max where we’re doing physics-animation hybrids, like when he shoot-dodges; that’s physics and an animation pose library running together," he said.
"You need to be able to control where he’s pointing but at the same time he needs to behave realistically depending on his environment. He has to feel aware of his surroundings. So that was a big challenge and something we spent a lot of time tuning."
Max Payne 3 is due for release in March 2012 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
