Obbe Vermeil, former developer from Rockstar Games, continues to share secrets from the development of the classic GTA trilogy. This time he https://twitter.com/ObbeVermeij/status/1783484201171321148/photo/1 about the creation of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto III, which was an incredible technical challenge for the PlayStation 2 at the time.
Rockstar couldn’t fit loading a city map into the PS2’s memory. Developer Adam Fowler tried to place the model and scenery files that sit next to each other in Liberty City as close together on the DVD as possible. However, even this did not save the situation: the roads might not be loaded, and the buildings remained with low detail.
As a result, the developers resorted to a clever trick. They decided to slow down the player’s speed. This was achieved thanks to the correct design of roads in Liberty City, as well as the creation of traffic resistance in some areas of the map. It slows down traffic by only 5%, but this was enough to effectively load the city.
Streaming data was used for transport models, pedestrians and even music, but it was the world map that presented the biggest problem. Also because of this, players could not fly behind helicopters and planes, with the exception of Dodo. Some of these tricks were later used in subsequent installments. For example, some of the roads in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas also do not allow you to accelerate at full speed.
Obbe noted that loading problems are exacerbated when using old DVDs and time-worn PlayStation 2 models. However, already in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, the developers learned to better compress models and textures and used more thoughtful code.
Vermeil previously told other interesting facts. For example, he revealed the secret of a bug with mirrors in GTA: SA. Obbe also talked about the silence of the main character of GTA 3.
Tags: developer GTA spoke technical difficulties creating Liberty City
