GTA Map Comparisons

[J-B]

 

Are you two serious? Play San Andreas on a server where all of the interiors are accessible.

 

http://weedarr.wikidot.com/interior

 

Remove the "cookie-cutter interiors" (as you call them) from the list and San Andreas still has more unique interiors than GTA:IV (with or without DLC).

 

Alas, all of that is irrelevant. The point that I had tried to make with my previous post was that San Andreas didn't even need unique interiors to make it feel like it was less "lacking"; it completely made up for them with the shear size of the map and variation in landscape.

 

The major difference between the two is the fact that GTA:IV's interiors are mostly enterable from the main map (where as most of San Andreas' interiors are held within different virtual worlds and require loading).

 

That Is why I had said that GTA:IV's city was lacking; not only did it have a very low level of interaction/enterable buildings, but it also had nothing to fall back on once you've seen all there is to see in the city (unlike San Andreas with its massive and completely explorable areas outside of the major towns/cities).

 

That was the main issue with SA's interiors that made them lack luster , them being part of a different world behind a loading screen made them almost pointless for non mission gameplay. Can't use them for them for cop hold outs or rampages. SA had a decent amount of cool areas to explore in the countryside. The desert areas defiantly felt more well done than the forested area that's for sure to me. And you say SA had areas to explore outside of the city and it did , but you're acting like there was nothing to explore in LC. One of the reasons I enjoyed LC so much is that there were a decent amount of areas to explore nicely tucked into the city itself. I'm not trying insult SA's map , it was spectacular for it's day and still is in many ways. If anything I'm complementing Rockstar for making a concrete jungle just as enjoyable to explore as a countryside/desert. To me at least. Anyway I'm sure V will have both an enjoyable city and countryside with lots of character and explorable areas. IV and RDR should stand as examples that Rockstar can make both very well.

[Magic_Al]

 

That's an interesting way to do that , but I'm not sure I trust the game's ability to measure distance. I've played multiplayer and have been killed at point blank range but the game would I killed at 3yrds when the person was about in melee range. Nowhere near ten feet. That's why I tried to find similarly sized paths rather to scale them to each other. But your conclusion is probably right since the only facts I have is "these roads look very similar in size" and you have actual measurements rather than guesstimating it.

On MP its different due to connection issues and whatnot

Right, if there's lag, the distance between you and other players could have errors. I'm in single-player, measuring the distance travelled by the player from one location to another. We know the map is accurate because the player marker always moves accurately with the player in the world. To catch mistakes in movement I repeated each measurement three times. I did measurements in two different locations, using different units of measurement.

 

From all this repetition the results of converting map pixels to feet are within a tenth of a foot of being the same. That does leave a substantial margin of error because there are millions of pixels on the map and not being more precise causes area measurements of the entire map to be off by up to a square mile or so. But it's accurate enough to prove RDR's boundaries are a smaller area than GTA SA or L.A. Noire, and about twice the land area of GTA IV.

 

EDIT: My map scale is temptingly close to one pixel = one square meter. That would be very elegant and it would be a logical for Rockstar to have built it that way, but I can't measure precisely enough to confirm it. With antialiasing in the render of the map, the train platform could be between 41 and 43 pixels in height. To match my measurement and a 1px=1m^2 scale it would have to be no more than 41 pixels and it seems to be more. So 1px=1m^2 is possible but not certain.

Edited December 2, 2011 by Magic_Al