MAX-FX (also stylized as MaxFX) is a proprietary game engine developed by the Finnish video game studio Remedy Entertainment. Development began in 1997, and the engine made its commercial debut with the release of the third-person shooter Max Payne in 2001. MAX-FX served as Remedy's internal engine throughout the early 2000s before being succeeded by the Northlight engine.
Remedy Entertainment began developing MAX-FX in 1997 during the early production of Max Payne. Initial reports in 1998 indicated that Remedy intended to license the engine and its toolchain externally.[1] The engine was designed as a hardware-only renderer optimized for DirectX 6-class GPU s.
In 2000, Remedy revealed additional technical features, including radiosity lighting, a portal-based visibility system, skeletal animation, and volumetric particle effects.[2] Licensing plans were later postponed so the studio could focus on completing Max Payne. After the game's release in 2001, MAX-FX tools were made publicly available to support modding.
Version history
MAX-FX 1.0
The original engine, used for Max Payne (2001), featured:
Hardware-only 3D rendering with DirectX 6
Radiosity lighting for realistic illumination
Skeletal animation for characters
Portal-based visibility system for optimized performance
MAX-FX was eventually replaced by Remedy's in-house Northlight engine, first used in Quantum Break (2016) and later in Control (2019) and Alan Wake II (2023).
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
