Looking back: Mafia hype in the year 2000

[Muggy]

[ASM.]

[Deanna_Troi]

I may be late on this, but in my opinion, I think Mafia: TCoLH benefited better from the cut content, most of which, if not all, can be added back via modding ability, unlike Mafia II which didn't do any justice at all. Mafia 1, I can play this for the rest of my life; with Mafia II, I played it 5-6 times then I got bored.

Looking at the beta screenshots of Mafia 1, I think it looked impressive; Paulie having a brown suit looks really good on him, and Sam looking handsome with his blond hair. And the beta contained extra objects which were not shown in the final game (for better or worse).

So, in all accounts, Mr. Daniel Vavra and his team of geniuses did a great job with this game Mafia 1. It is a shame though, that 2K Games and some Mafia players alike left this game to rot in death. That is, until Steam and Good Old Games brought this game back to life once again, and for that I thank them (although I still have a legal v1.0 CD copy in my possession since I first purchased the copy back in January 2003).
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Deanna Troi/Riker - a Betazoid person who likes all chocolate and the Goddess of Empathy

[AsaSK]

I'm certain that the detail level was cut down due to engine/technology limitations. In one of the articles posted earlier, Vavra mentioned huge frame drops, ergo the city being redesigned multiple times. Peds even used to push prams and read newspapers, as can be seen in some screenshots.
If anything, this suggests IS were way ahead of the tech they had at the time. The small amount of promotional video, captured at certain areas of production, show complex lighting and far more detailed environments; now we understand that those were probably enclosed and only modeled for what was seen in said shots. A nice example of this is the 'alpha trailer', where a policeman is stabbed from behind in what looks like that alley outside central Chinatown - in the final game the alley is virtually barren, but in the vid it has all kinds of debris (including unused models left in the game like 66stnX).
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The official Mafioso Mod thread

[AMadeMan]

That's right Asa. Even after Mafia came out, many PC players probably weren't even able to play the released game at medium or high settings.

The map was so detailed with advanced lighting, highly detailed textures, models, and animations for characters, the engine at the time just couldn't handle it and would probably buckle under the weight.

The map had to be redesigned 3 times for the sake of frames and making sure no ones PC would explode.

Even though omissions were made, Mafia for the time it came out was and still is a damn impressive game with more attention to detail compared to most games today.

All these omissions can be added through mods thankfully.

[AsaSK]

[AMadeMan]

[Illusion_Insanity]

textdb_cz.def from Mafia Alpha v0.99+ (20.02.2001)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Iks1bGf9zbl196n0P8bVgz3uelSDvJc7

[ASM.]

[Illusion_Insanity]

I found this in the Hidden & Dangerous 2 files (folder "tables")

[AMadeMan]

Now if only we could find a full build of Mafia from 2000 or 2001.

[AsaSK]

[Illusion_Insanity]

Thanks

In the folder MISSIONS\mise12-garage there is a scene.bin file. If you open it through Hex, you will see the following:



Michal Bačík was the Lead Programmer of Insanity Engine (Hidden & Dangerous 1). He later left Illusion Softworks and founded Lonely Cat Games. His company released Hidden & Dangerous Deluxe with a game editor.
His name in the credits of the Mafia:



As you know, the Mafia first worked on the Insanity Engine, LS3D Engine was developed later.
I wrote him an email, but unfortunately he had nothing left.



It would be nice to find the email addresses of the LS3D engine programmers.

[Hunter]

Maybe he can explain why they ruined the character textures in H&DD