Gta4 Wishlist

[Pob]

The black girlfriend from the the north-west corner of the map can get you out of jail free. The tai-chi girl who lives in San Fierro near the Golden Gate bridge can get you out of hospital free.

I liked that idea at first, but on my second playthrough I've conciously avoided those girlfriends. I really like coming out of jail and having to make do with whatever crappy gun I come across. Having a wheelbarrow full of guns and 5 billion rounds for each makes things a bit boring, I found.

[Sketch]

Why do people want limited fuel? Do you honestly think it will make the game more "fun", or simply more "complicated"?

There's a fine line somewhere between those.

[Number 28]

I dunno, I quite liked the feature in Hunter on the Amiga. You had to make strategic decisions about which vehicle to take.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

Why do people want limited fuel? Do you honestly think it will make the game more "fun", or simply more "complicated"?

There's a fine line somewhere between those.

They don't do they?

[K]

Having limited fuel's daft. For one thing, even San Andreas' map wasn't large enough to make fuel an issue- it took you ten minutes at most to drive from one edge to the other, and you never really stay in one car for longer than a few minutes anyway. To make refuelling a necessity, you'd have to run out of gas in ten minutes or less; that'd be well annoying.

As for GTA4, I'd be surprised if it wasn't set in an updated present-day Liberty City. Tokyo would be crap; a big chunk of the appeal of the other GTA games is the cultural references. The game could satirise Japanese culture, but it'd be lost on 90% of the game's audience (including me) simply because most people aren't that familiar with Japan.

[JohnC]

I mean cars that actually pull over and park on the side of the road without any warning. Ouside shops for a few minutes, things like that. It would be make the city seem more real.

I see what you mean. Although it did happen to a limited extent in San Andreas. Seemed to be just specific locations and probably easy to miss seeing it.

[Alex W.]

Taxis and buses you can actually USE, for when there are cops around or you don't feel like driving.

Trams which are more than unstoppable death machines.

[sir stiff_one]

That's been mentioned already ALEX.

[Alex W.]

I don't read every post, STIFF.

[sir stiff_one]

And there we have the exact reason why anything good on this forum is usually obscured by 7000 layers of shit.

I expect better from you too. I even summarised a bunch of the better and interesting ideas about half way through.

[Goose]

If the game is going to be as big or bigger than SA then I want some sort of sat-nav. I wasted more time trying to find places on that huge map than I did doing anything else.

And SORT OUT THE FUCKING FLYING CONTROLS!!!

I forget how many times I turned off the game in frustration over those first flying missions in SA.

[JohnC]

If the game is going to be as big or bigger than SA then I want some sort of sat-nav. I wasted more time trying to find places on that huge map than I did doing anything else.

It's piss easy to get to places if you use the marker.

[redbloodcell]

Took me bleeding ages to get the hang of flying, then one day I turned it on and it just clicked.

I just thought off another one, I want to be able to buy loads of different businesses and set up my own little criminal empire, like Vice City but loads bigger.

[Sketch]

Tokyo would be crap; a big chunk of the appeal of the other GTA games is the cultural references. The game could satirise Japanese culture, but it'd be lost on 90% of the game's audience (including me) simply because most people aren't that familiar with Japan.

I guess you didn't like Jet Set Radio then?

[Kelthink]

I guess you didn't like Jet Set Radio then?

Two things about that, though:

-Satire is one of the main points of GTA, whilst JSR has quite a few focal points, including hip-hop 'stuff'

-JSR didn't exactly have great sales, did it? One of the selling points of GTA is how much the player can relate to the things in the game (alright, I doubt many of the people playing GTA:SA could actually related to the 'gangster' culture, but probably moreso than Japan, which is still pretty alien to most of the people likely to play GTA. I think)

[Not Thread Owner]

It's piss easy to get to places if you use the marker.

Yes, but dark blue markers on a dark grey and black map does not a visible waypoint make.

[Alex W.]

Especially when the map's the size of Sweden.

[Roboplegic Wrongcock]

This is what R* should use as their main idea that way you could have a multiracial gang you could still set it in a 'American' type setting and still have a Japanese lead and you could also still have loads of gangs.

[K]

They can't set it in Japan. All the radio stations and adverts would be in Japanese.

[therearerules]

Has anyone said become the mayor (or get a lackey to become mayor) and build the city A LA Sim City and stuff?

Oh, and GTA: Disneyworld. I'm pitching it again.

[Jumble Jumble]

I think it's about time pedestrians were constructed by mix-and-match; i.e., a head component, a torso component, and a legs component all picked from individual bins. Would give a hell of a lot more variety to the peds without necessarily taking up too much memory. Also I'd be happy with simple colour-shaded (instead of textured) clothes if it meant we could have more colours. A red t-shirt coupld become any colour of t-shirt by changing one value, rather than having to load individual textures for every colour.

[Sketch]

I doubt many of the people playing GTA:SA could actually related to the 'gangster' culture, but probably moreso than Japan.

Actually, now that I think about it, I see what you're saying. I disliked the gangster culture in SA tremendously. I couldn't relate to, or understand it. At all. Ruined several sections of the game for me. Can't emphasise that enough. I really disliked it a great deal.

I'm guessing that making the setting too "far out" would pose the same problem for other people.

In which case, sadly a European based one is also out. The American kids just wouldn't get it (in fact, there was a whole localisation topic in this at some point).

Still, if we're sticking with Americana, it'd be quite interesting to see a GTA based around biker culture and biker gangs.

EDIT:

And suddenly it hits me. Most "gangs" sit side by side: Mafia, triads, the hood, bikers, etc. Even in SA you brushed shoulders with the mafia at one point. What if, for scale and sheer ambition, they crafted a GTA world, where you had to pick your own section of the underworld to play as, and the stories and missions of each of them intertwined throughout the narrative. It'd be expensive, and self-indulgent to make, but not impossible.

It would also mean that no one would feel alienated, and it would encourage multiple play throughs. Maybe each selected character would take up around 20 hours to complete. Making for a combined total of around 100 hours of gameplay. Short for those who just want to play their favourite side, longer for those wanting to go the distance.

[Eats hoops and leaves]

That would be horrible. What I love about SA is that even though it's a complex system, the actual gameplay is really simple. It leaves a lot of scope for doing your own thing, once you understand how it works.

I don't want an adventure game, which is what you're suggesting.

[Alex W.]

A red t-shirt coupld become any colour of t-shirt by changing one value, rather than having to load individual textures for every colour.

They could just do palette swapping on the textures, couldn't they? Even better.

Then you could switch on colour cycling and go into "disco mode".

[Roboplegic Wrongcock]

In terms of repeating character models could R* use something like the pro evo soccer create a character mode. I was playing around with it the other night trying to create my self. Maybe they could use something like that I mean the possibilities are endless for NPC's and no two would look the same.

But then I think about the logistics wouldn’t the game need to know the character textures how would it work? Could the game randomize it?

[Alex W.]

They could just stretch textures to fit differently proportioned models.

[Jumble Jumble]

I'm not sure textures have "palettes" these days, in the technical sense of the word anyway. I wouldn't be surprised to learn I was wrong, but I'm guessing that in textures these days each pixel (compression aside) is stored as an RGB value.

[Guest]

In terms of repeating character models could R* use something like the pro evo soccer create a character mode. I was playing around with it the other night trying to create my self. Maybe they could use something like that I mean the possibilities are endless for NPC's and no two would look the same.

But then I think about the logistics wouldn’t the game need to know the character textures how would it work? Could the game randomize it?

The problem with all these ideas, in a GTA game at least (and, in my mind football games for which they've always greatly suffered for) is the animation.

You can't have someone with a big arse and small shoulders animated like someone with a big arse and big shoulders. Well, you can, but you lose a life like feeling IMO.

Plus men/women walk differently. Then shoes make a difference. Height. Weight. General build. Etc.

Without the animation I feel you lose a lot, no matter how many "different" people look.

What, of course, helps is a system like Spore, where animations are generated on the fly - something that I'd hoped football games might, at least, go towards (even if you just tweak animations for heights/weights/etc).

[Alex W.]

GTA's done fine with god-awful animation anyway, though. As long as the NPCs look more varied, they could continue to look terrible IMO.

[Guest]

GTA's done fine with god-awful animation anyway, though. As long as the NPCs look more varied, they could continue to look terrible IMO.

Personally I wouldn't want to make a next gen game with animation that "will do" and "continue to look terrible".

What's the point? We want to see nice little touches don't we? We want the world more "Alive" don't we? Why settle.

Why not roll back Solid Snake to his NES days