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Creating and Playing a Simple Custom Level in Max Payne

This page was originally written and published in 2002, and is still here online in 2024 for anyone making Max Payne levels and comes across this link. This tutorial was listed on the official Max Payne Tutorials web site, which was (and is) pretty damned awesome. Enjoy!

This tutorial will attempt to help out in getting your custom Max Payne level playable in the game in the shortest time possible. It assumes a general knowledge of file editing, Windows Explorer, and Winzip usage. It is not intended to help you through the steps of creating the level itself, as there are already quite a few of those type of tutorials available on the web. The tutorial was written in response to the questions that seem to arise over the proper use of the Max-FX Rasmaker tool and the compilation of custom levels.

Getting ready:

Follow these steps carefully in order to properly set up this tutorial for use.

Make a folder called “Development” on your hard drive. If you have more than one drive, choose the one with the most free space. J

Download this file: max-payne-tutorial-file and unzip it into the “Development” folder you’ve just created. Be sure you have “Use folder names” selected in Winzip.

You should now have a folder in your Development directory called “Tutorial”. This folder contains everything you need to play your own Max Payne level except for the level itself.

If you haven’t already, install the Max-FX tools from the Max Payne CD. When it’s finished, go into the folder you installed them to and look for a folder named RASMAKER. Select the two files in this directory and hit [CNTRL-C]. Then go to your new Tutorial folder and hit [CNTRL-V]. This will copy the needed RASMAKER tool and its DLL file into the Tutorial directory.

Also inside the Tutorial folder, you should see a file named COMPILE.BAT. Right click on this file and choose “Edit” from the menu. It should now open up in Notepad. Look on the second line where it says “G:\Max Payne\” and change it to the path where you have Max Payne installed on your system. Once it’s changed, save the file over the old one, and we should be good to go.

Making the level:

You’ll now need to create your level in MaxEd. This tutorial will not attempt to guide you through this process, but there are three things you need to do when creating it to make it work with this tutorial method.

Name your main room “StartRoom”. This is the room the player will start in when your level loads.

Name your player start jump point “Player_Start”. Don’t forget the underscore in the middle.

Export the level to Development\Tutorial\Data\Database\Levels\MyMod\ and name it level. The .ldb extension will be automatically added when you export the level.

Compiling the data:

Go into your Tutorial folder and look for the file named COMPILE.BAT. You should have already set this file up according to the instructions under “Getting Ready”.

Double-click the COMPILE.BAT file to run the packing process. This will compile your level into the .mpm format that Max Payne uses.

Playing your level:

The compiling process should have already copied your level into the main Max Payne folder (if you set up the BAT file correctly) so all you need to do now is start up Max Payne and choose “My_Level” in the list at the bottom of the startup menu screen. When you hit Play and Max Payne loads up, choose “My_Level” in the main menu and away you go.

Congratulations, you’ve just successfully made a playable level for Max Payne. J

More info:

You may now want to start playing around with the levels.txt and menu.txt files inside the Data directory to get an idea of what things can be edited to personalize your mod. This is a great way to learn about the file structures and various methods of file control Max Payne uses. We’ve also created a special loading screen just for this tutorial that will show when you load your level. You can find it in the Data\Database\Levels\MyMod\ folder. Feel free to replace it with your own image if you desire.

The files used for this tutorial do not represent the entire spectrum of options available for modifying Max Payne. They have been cut down to provide the minimum amount of data needed to get a custom level up and running. Please see one of the many great Max Payne sites on the Internet to learn more about different ways to modify the game.

Thanks, have fun, and don’t take any bullets in the stomach.

Jak Fearon

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Max Payne and the Max Payne logo are trademarks of Remedy Entertainment Ltd. and 3D Realms Entertainment. MAX-FX Technology is a registered trademark of Remedy Entertainment Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. (c) 2001 Remedy Entertainment Ltd.