Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Level Design Q&A

Aside from the ability to cause random acts of violence, one of Grand Theft Auto III's most appealing features was the living, breathing metropolis of Liberty City. It wasn't exactly vibrant, but the grimy streets of Liberty City were certainly teeming with life. If you stood on a corner for a minute, you'd notice taxis zipping by, ambulances rushing to the hospital, fire trucks racing toward a nearby blaze, people getting mugged, and delivery trucks making their daily stops. With the forthcoming release of Vice City, the designers at Rockstar North are upping the ante by making the gameworld seem even much more realistic. Aaron Garbut, the company's art director, indulges us with the details.

GameSpot: Is Vice City broken up into multiple sections like the cities in the previous games?

Vice City will be twice as large as Liberty City from GTAIII.

Aaron Garbut: The play area in Vice City is almost twice as big as Liberty City, at over 4.25 million square meters. We've packed it a lot more densely with huge amounts of detail and variety. The map is spread over the mainland, three smaller islands, and the large island of Ocean Beach. We based the map quite closely on the real Miami, but as always didn't stick so close to the real world that gameplay suffered. When we design the levels we build things for fun. If that means we move roads about, change the height of land, or alter the landscape completely, then we do it. There's nothing worse in a game than sacrificing gameplay for realism. If the game mechanics and gameworld are consistent, then they don't have to be realistic. Generally speaking, real cities are not designed for tearing around at 150 miles an hour, and they are very, very rarely built to squeeze as many ramps and stunts into as tight an area as possible.

GS: Did you do any on-location studies of any areas to help with the design of Vice City? If so, where did you go, and how helpful was it?

While many parts of Vice City are clean and upscale, others are distinctly run-down.

AG: After the near-death experience that was the development of Grand Theft Auto III, the entire team flew out to Miami to recover and soak in the atmosphere of the area. While the rest of the team sunbathed or propped up the News Bar, the ever-industrious art team headed out onto the baking hot Miami streets armed with digital cameras. We split up and covered every area we were interested in using for Vice City. The animation team armed with digital camcorders spent time examining exactly how women in bikinis and roller skates moved, and the city modelers braved both the seediest, scariest parts of Miami and got kicked out of all the best places. By the time we returned to sunny Scotland, we'd amassed countless hours of video and close to 10,000 digital photos. When scouting locations, we tried to get a cross-section of shots--a good few were wide angle to remind us how the place fit together, and the rest were details to aid in modeling and texture usage. The guys in the New York office also sorted out some professional location scouts from the film industry for us who provided us with some really excellent locations for any areas we hadn't managed to get enough detail on. I can't imagine capturing the feel of a city without all this resource material, never mind actually spending time in the place. Sending the entire team rather than a few leads allows everyone to understand what it is they are trying to make. We couldn't have done it any other way.

GS: How many different types of buildings will there be?

AG: Every building is entirely individual, each with far, far more detail than in Grand Theft Auto III. There are 60 or so interiors. Some, like the mall, have additional interiors within them, so I suppose you could say even our interiors have interiors. The entire city is so much more accessible than in Grand Theft Auto III. The buildings are generally lower, so there are far more rooftops to explore. There are far more back alleys, jumps, and hidden areas. And generally speaking, the areas are far more distinct but fit together more cohesively than Liberty City did. I think you'll be hard-pressed to find much repetition in the game.