THREE CITIES? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe a chupacabra. Only the Magic 8-ball knows! - Page 7

Ville,

It is much more cost effective to get a bunch of rookie programmers to do "color by numbers" programming then it does to hire a few creative guys to come up with a map that has real purpose. If you look closely at GTA San Andreas, all areas of the map were created with a specific mission or side quest in mind.

What may seem like meaningly countryside to you is actually a giant race course or the perfect setting for a diverse mission setup. Building out an efficient giant map is way more expensive then hiring a bunch of 23 year old programmers to copy and paste a ton of empty buidings.

For example, creating the San Andreas map was no easy task. They had a couple hundred different concepts for missions, races, and vehicles in mind, and then they had to weave them all into a setting that was diverse and resembled California. The creative process was so thorough in the final product, that I can imagine that they went through dozens of versions of each city and countryside. Months if not years of planning, implementing, and then scrapping ideas all together because they weren't perfect.

Contrast that with GTA IV which was basically: Here is your map layout. Get the cheapest programmers to color the buildings to spec, and jam 100 drive here, shoot him missions into it. Done.

He's also being incredibly offensive to anyone that actually does this stuff or trained to do this stuff, myself included. It's harder to do what GTA IV did visually than it was to do what they did in San Andreas. You say;

quote Igotfired

Contrast that with GTA IV which was basically: Here is your map layout. Get the cheapest programmers to color the buildings to spec, and jam 100 drive here, shoot him missions into it. Done.

You couldn't be further from the truth. I could even bore you to death with the technical know how that goes into creating a single building in GTA IV or any photo realistic game. Actually you know what I will..

Let's start with a small building.

Yes you are right in that we use meshes which are basically primative shapes that slightly resemble buildings, they are then placed around a scene in a way that works. Though that's not where it ends which is something you believe it does. Once the building is in the correct place you have to then decide whether it is enterable if no you can get on doing external extruding of the mesh (3D detailing to you) which makes it straight away look more building like.

If the answer is yes to entering the building you then have to hollow out sections of the interior. This will become your rabbit hole, the second you open the door it refences code that renders the interior of that building, it's not all one seamless construction as it looks on screen. It's actually two constructions the exterior model and a game space saved to disc somewhere. Now that's just one building and I haven't even touched on making it look realistic.

To do this it's a team effort a team of 20-30 photographers go out and take photo's of thousands of buildings, these buildings form the base of the texture used. Once we have that it's a case of taking that data and creating something high res to apply to it.. That sounds simple and it is, but it's what you have to do afterwards that is complicated. You have to make it a light based image so the reflection engine sees it, you have to give it true HDR based qualities so shadows cast on it realistically and lighting doesn't wash out the detail.

I could go on and on but those steps for just one building takes about 2-3 weeks of work. With a team of 120 working on that you can get about 40 buildings done a month Its certainly not easy. I studied this for years and I can tell you now I've applied to several games developers in the UK and I always get beaten by somebody better. Now if they were hiring the cheapest programmers and designers I'd probably be working for Rockstar Games right now, but they don't they go for the best of the best.

By the way just to contrast.. San Andreas used the same techniques up to the point where the textures are done. That game uses pastel colours deferred in a way to make them look like they have depth. It would have been far easier to make San Andreas which is why it was so big. It actually wouldn't surprise me if San Andreas started out as just Los Santos and after finishing the map in a month or two realised they could get a State done.



PS. This is the last time I'm gonna get baited by this guy. I just wanted to say my piece before leaving this guy to practically troll the forums.

Wow, I feel sorry for anyone working at Rockstar or even any game developer that happens to come across your ridiculously cretinous posts, you're basically saying none of them have any talent and are purely making games for money.

quote Igotfired

No structure, no definite rules for you as a gamer. It was made to cater to the ADHD generation.

I always thought that GTA games had a structure, whether it be through the storyline, which I know Rockstar take great pride in, or the structure of the city. Even you yourself said that the San Andreas map was structured to cater for side missions and story progression, yet now you're saying that GTA is all about zero structure.

'The ADHD generation', is that the moron generation like yourself that label yourself as having 'ADHD' because your damaged brain can't be bothered to look past 'haha, rocket launcher, it make bang bang!!!'?

Also, I don't mind people stating that they don't like the game. But the way you're talking about things as if they're fact, and you know something the rest of us don't. If you hate this game so much, why are you posting here?

GTA was never about structure. It was about giving the gamer all of the tools they need to be creative and make their own fun. Most games follow a linear pattern. Go here, do this, etc. GTA contends there are no rules, and freedom is the ultimate fun in gaming. Give the player outrageous possibilities and a big playground and pretty much anything can happen.

IV felt as if they were trying to dictate to the gamer what should be done. They eliminated side missions, vehicles, and outrageous physics in order to provide something that "looks real".

Here we are eight years later and despite having a significant upgrade in hardware capabilities, the GTA franchise still can't match the scope of a game that was created 8 years prior.

The V trailer looks pretty but we still know nothing about the actual gameplay. The reason for this is that there is nothing to the actual gameplay. They again have focused their efforts on making a pretty game that has zero fun moments. If there was anything fun to do in the game then it would have been shown in the trailer.

Master, I cannot believe back in the day that trailer got me excited for the game. It looks so shit now looking back..

We should have a Map prediction thread, show our terrible Paint Skills off.

I have an ideas what i think it will look like but would be easier to describe in a shit picture than a paragraph.

quote Master

The thing that gave me this idea was the plane at the end of the trailer. It's specifically shown flying over the Vinewood sign into Los Santos. The Hollywood sign faces south, as did the original Vinewood sign, so I'd say V's sign also faces south. If you didn't know, San Francisco is up north. If the plane is coming from the north, it's coming from San Fierro.

Yeah but if you flew over the Vinewood sign in San Andreas, you'd be coming from Las Venturas (or toward Las Venturas, depending which way you were flying over the sign). If i remember right, there were a few mansions behind the Vinewood sign, then a sliver of countryside, before the river seperated Los Santos from Las Venturas Obviously i doubt they will keep V's map exactly the same as San Andreas' (Mount Chilliad and forests/countryside to the West/South-West of Los Santos etc)

quote ChiroVette

quote Igotfired

The trailer is all I need to know about V. Tall buildings, people that walk realistically, nice looking scenery, and zero focus on anything fun and different that you can do in the game.

The next trailer is going to go into further detail about how "real" the game looks and how great the voice acting is. Sorry, this is exactly what happened with IV.

Somebody convinced the Rockstar Board that making a visually impressive game is way more important than actually making it fun to play. My guess is that it's cheaper to hire programmers to make something that looks good than it is to pay people to come up with something creative.

This game WILL SUCK AS BAD AS IV.

<Sigh> To you, in your opinion, and probably mine as well, but can we PLEASE, for the love of everything holy, be clear about that? Why do so many people that have the same taste as me believe that GTA IV sucks because it is not our kind of game?

Newsflash: A great/terrible game is in the eye of the beholder.

I think it kind of goes without saying that it's his opinion.

Anyways Igotfired, don't be so hasty to rule out the three cities. As others said, Los Santos was the only city featured in the first San Andreas trailer, so I'm still going to hope they have more cities.