{"id":25743,"date":"2015-01-20T16:26:04","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T21:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=25743"},"modified":"2015-01-21T10:19:00","modified_gmt":"2015-01-21T15:19:00","slug":"experienced-points-what-makes-the-technology-in-grand-theft-auto-v-so-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=25743","title":{"rendered":"Experienced Points: What Makes the Technology in Grand Theft Auto V So Great"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So a couple of people asked me to elaborate on why GTA V is so amazing in a technological sense. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.escapistmagazine.com\/articles\/view\/video-games\/columns\/experienced-points\/12885-Rockstar-s-Grand-Theft-Auto-V-is-a-Technological-Marvel?utm_source=latest&#038;utm_medium=index_carousel&#038;utm_campaign=all\">So I did<\/a>. This might be a little unfair, because GTA V is the only urban sandbox game to make the jump to current-gen consoles. <\/p>\n<p>Still, all of this was basically true when comparing (say) GTA IV to Saints Row The Third, so it all evens out. <\/p>\n<p>While running around the city, I ran into this bit of sidewalk, which gives a little clue as to how they cram so much detail onto mundane surfaces without blowing their texture budget:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<table width='600'  cellpadding='0' cellspacing='0' border='0' align='center'><tr><td><a href='images\/gtav_sidewalk1_small.jpg'><img src='https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/images\/gtav_sidewalk1_small.jpg' class='insetimage' width='600' alt='Click for MOAR PIXELS!' title='Click for MOAR PIXELS!'\/><\/a><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>That little pair of symmetrical cracks<span class='snote' title='1'>Hint: The character seems to be looking right at them.<\/span> in the sidewalk is a pretty interesting clue as to what they&#8217;re doing. I knew they couldn&#8217;t be doing this through brute force. It would be completely absurd to try and make these gigantic textures for sidewalks and roads. What I&#8217;m guessing we&#8217;re seeing is some base texture: Grass here, concrete 1 here, concrete 2 here, and so on. Then there&#8217;s an additional layer of &#8220;decals&#8221; to add cracks, spots, depressions, etc. Here the artist used the same decal twice, and flipped one of them?<\/p>\n<p>Also, the sidewalk seam on the right side of the screen (right above the words) looks odd. Maybe we&#8217;re supposedly seeing the grout or mortar or whatever that crud is between sidewalk tiles. But my eye is telling me that&#8217;s really two decals that are overlapping when they probably shouldn&#8217;t be. <\/p>\n<p>Anyway. You could achieve this a lot of different ways. The point is that the sidewalks blend two layers of information together to make a whole that is greater than the sum of their parts. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HhyyUiYQolA&#038;t=3m55s\">I described a similar concept in my FUEL video<\/a>, only this time it&#8217;s being used for texture data instead of topography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So a couple of people asked me to elaborate on why GTA V is so amazing in a technological sense. So I did. This might be a little unfair, because GTA V is the only urban sandbox game to make the jump to current-gen consoles. Still, all of this was basically true when comparing (say) [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-25743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-column","tag-gta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25743\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}