Payback: Great Game, A Bit Dark?


DavidBeoulve

GP2X by EvilDragon OC's to 280-300MHz
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Duh, do game question threads go in general? Help seems to be Hardware... move if it's in the wrong spot.

I love Payback but my 10yo does better at it because, for some reason, the HDR doesn't bother her as much. I love HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) usually, and this is the first game where I haven't. I can't see in the alleyways even after I've been walking in them. I'm not quite sure how my oldest kid handles it.

Is there a file I can alter to adjust this?

Edit:
Payback Shows what the GP2X Can Do
Payback, for those of you dumb enough to have not already purchased it, shows what the GP2X can really do in the hands of someone who has lots of experience, 2 to 3 generations of the same game to work from, and gets woodies making complicated code and effects, like John Carmack. Anyone remember Optimus's ZeEngineGP2X preview?

I was playing this morning and it started to rain. I thought "Oh, yay! Rain that isn't flat animation - it moves and pans when I do. It's really 3d rain."

Then I noticed that each droplet will hit a building rooftop and make 3 particles and disappear.

COLLISION DETECTION? Damn.

There are aspects of Payback that annoy me - it's HDR makes it dark, and your car swings wildly when you switch to reverse - you have to be careful to not turn the wheel until after you are moving a direction. But for the most part, it's a great game involving everything from gunning down members of the KKK, drug runs to prison breaks.

If you haven't spent $30+5 shipping on Payback, I say "SHAME ON YOU!", the amount of shame being proportionally equal to the amount of your "give a damn" ;)

But my point remains - there is just nothing out there that can touch this game. If you love the GP2X for what it is, you should get the full game.
 
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I agree that Payback is a fantastic game and overall accomplishment. I also agree that the contrast can be too high at times, but it doesn't bother me all that much, although alleys could stand being a bit brighter. The fact that the game has a helicopter more than makes up for this though :D

Maybe Apex Designs will consider making another GP2X title, as they sure know all there is to know about the hardware and its market. Maybe they'll make new Payback mission packs or maps in due time, too.

By the way, what was the reason for not releasing a Payback PC map editor? Is it because HDR is precalculated for each map, and would take too long to save the maps?
 
Hey Alex. Yeah I almost freaked when I found their map-editor section. But then I noticed that, while the wording was suggestive "all other versions of the game can play the levels without downloading an update first" I realized it was because, as with so much of the rest of their site - nothing has been updated since before the GP2X version was made.

I was looking for their "Making Of" article of the GP2X version when I found that (still haven't found what I was looking for). It's a lot shorter than their GBA making of series.

PS
By the way, I am not the kind of parent who lets their kids play anything - Maria has a separate profile and has to keep the music off. Running over people, especially pedestrians, would normally be a big no but Payback seems so cartoony - well except for teh splatter. It's the abstraction, I think.

Anyway, I've written about the abdication of parenting before so - I'm mindful.

*David secretly replaces words with a link to his blog - lets see if Sam Fisher notices* ;)
 
Vimacs said:
well, you could up the gamma with the cpu-lcd tweaker.
Hey Vimacs! Hmm, that might work - trouble is the HDR makes things blindingly bright and hideously dark alternatively, it's just the brightness rarely applies to more than say - cars, lights, or pavement hit by sun while you're in the dark (where you can't see, even though it changes from pitch black to "strain your eyes").

Granted, the fact that most people don't have a problem with this indicates to me that ... uhh most people don't have a problem with this.

Hmmm searching for "LCD CPU" or "tweaker" in the files section isn't netting much... ah I searched for too much! "LCD" gave me this:
http://www.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,8,1000

Is that it?
 
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I gave up trying to get all gold on all the maps to unlock the two secret maps.
 
Hey, i heard that you can also put your own music as soundtrack, is that easy?
 
DTH said:
Hey, i heard that you can also put your own music as soundtrack, is that easy?
No, I tried and the program that came with it and it dosen't even start up... but the instructions how to do so are pretty clear.
 
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Dude, I'm pretty sure many people told you already that the program is command-line, so you can't just double-click on an icon to start it up. You must run it from the Command Prompt.
 
MP3's should be easy but no, I haven't done it myself. As noted in developer blogs, Payback uses a completely custom sound format system which is especially awesome for the GP2X. I think it handles everything in integral math, which is like, weird, but they do it. So you have to use the encoder, which is command-line based.
 
I've bought payback, but in the readme they say that you should download a program to save as two seperate 44.1KHz 16-bit raw sound files.

i downloaded that prog, but i don't get it, do any of you?
 
If you get the latest patch for the GP2X version, you can save anywhere and also the reverse-bug is fixed.
 
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