LANDLOCKED

[FelipeVinhao]

your all talking as if you have seen or basically know the map, am i missing something ?

We know it's based on south California, and we know it's connected to main land in real life.

 

What we're trying to figure out is if Rockstar will keep what they've been doing on last games and make the place an archipelago, or if they'll bring back the feeling that, although blocked, the game play field is connected to something bigger, like Red Dead Redemption, or GTA3 itself.

[nikonatorbelick]

i don't see landlocking the map working on GTA V, non only it will be weird as hell but you can already pilot jets in the game so no mountain should be a problem

 

personally i think behind the mountains there is an infinite sea, just like in pretty much every GTA before, it just doesn't make sence to change it

Edited April 27, 2012 by nikonatorbelick

[FelipeVinhao]

^ That's another point. We don't know in which level the trailer is WYSIWYG. That is, we don't know if the planes we see on it can be used by player, if dogs will appear, or if we can climb a mountain, for example.

 

If planes are there only for eye-candy, then it WILL WORK for GTA5 as it worked for GTA3. They just make a unclimbable rock at the edge of the map, and it's over.

[skrillarilla]

so what your saying is you would like it to be like prototype where as they shoot you if you enter the base? I LOVE IT FOR THE MILITARY BASES THAT THEY HAVE TO ADD!!!

[FelipeVinhao]

so what your saying is you would like it to be like prototype where as they shoot you if you enter the base? I LOVE IT FOR THE MILITARY BASES THAT THEY HAVE TO ADD!!!

Yes, somehow. Let's say they give an excuse why the player can't leave San Andreas, so when you cross the border you'll have the military attacking you. Like a "7-star" wanted level that can be only be evaded if you return to playable area, or are killed.

[skrillarilla]

so what your saying is you would like it to be like prototype where as they shoot you if you enter the base? I LOVE IT FOR THE MILITARY BASES THAT THEY HAVE TO ADD!!!

Yes, somehow. Let's say they give an excuse why the player can't leave San Andreas, so when you cross the border you'll have the military attacking you. Like a "7-star" wanted level that can be only be evaded if you return to playable area, or are killed.

perfect! just like they did for SA

[thatstupidbug]

i always feel a bit cheated when I found a landlocked OPEN WORLD game... except for the sea (it's not really a "world", there's nothing in it), i want to be able to explore every part of the land. i don't care about realism, since it's just a game...and if you show me a city i can't reach, a desert i can't pass, it makes me sad. i don't think "woah, the tunnel is blocked, this means that there's more out there", but "dam, the tunnel is blocked, this means that there's something i can't use"

[FelipeVinhao]

i always feel a bit cheated when I found a landlocked OPEN WORLD game... except for the sea (it's not really a "world", there's nothing in it), i want to be able to explore every part of the land. i don't care about realism, since it's just a game...and if you show me a city i can't reach, a desert i can't pass, it makes me sad. i don't think "woah, the tunnel is blocked, this means that there's more out there", but "dam, the tunnel is blocked, this means that there's something i can't use"

I always saw this like "you're not alone in this world". But it's a matter of opinion.

 

I know people say they don't want land blocked because this cuts the sense of freedom. But c'mon, what other game would give players more freedom than giving a whole city (not to mention a piece of state) to be explored? Most games are linear, and those that takes place in a city have thousands of blocked roads you can't reach.

[DarrinPA]

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

[Death2Drugs]

This seems to be a common conundrum in open world video games. How do you create a barrier in an open world game? There are many solutions, but they're not all practical.

 

1. The first one is the endless ocean that has been used since GTA III. This seems like an all-in-all practical solution, since it allows the player to freely travel around the map without any restriction. However, there are many problems with this. First, it's unrealistic. Sure, video games aren't real-life, but let's face it: San Andreas' map was just far too awkward. It had a really dumb-looking square shape and unnatural environmental transition. If the game were set in a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, the "endless sea" would work well. However, this is Southern California. It'll just look cheesy. Also, it makes the map feel as if it were alone. It just makes you feel as if there isn't anything else.

 

2. There's the solid barrier some have been proposing. An impassable mountain makes the map look much more realistic and gives the sense that the game's map isn't alone all by itself. GTA III and GTA: LCS had a semi-landlocked map, and normally you couldn't get past the hills near Cedar Grove, unless you used some sort of aircraft (GTA III had a Dodo that took time to fly, while LCS had a helicopter that you could get, but not under normal circumstances). However, this really restricts the player, and is generally unfair to the player, especially with aircraft likely to feature again in V. Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II, and L.A. Noire all used such barriers, but they weren't meant to be as open-world as Grand Theft Auto.

 

3. You can always use "redirecting". This means that after the player goes after a certain distance outside the main map, the player is redirected back to the main map. True Crime: Streets of L.A. and True Crime: New York used this. This isn't a good solution though, because it prevents true freedom in a map, and is unrealistic.

 

4. The only solution I see to such problems is the "endless terrain". We could have endless grassland to the north, endless desert to the east, and endless sea to the west. This follows the terrain of real-life Southern California, and feels much more realistic, preserves true freedom, and makes the map feel as if it were part of the mainland United States. This is 100% practical and has been used in a few games before and videos on YouTube show this. The only problems I see are how "dull" this endless terrain might be. I think a practical solution would be to simulate objects to appear alongside the endless terrain, so it won't be dull.

 

I really hope R* uses number 4, and if they decide to use an island again, I hope they make it one giant island rather than 3 and put tall mountains at the edges to make the map feel as if it weren't an island.

[whittle13]

they should do what they did in packman

[esparado87]

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

Same could been said by never ending water...

"If you take a boat over west for 2 hours, then south for 1 hour,you'll find a island bla bla bla"

 

so no, neverending land would not be a problem.

[esparado87]

 

This seems to be a common conundrum in open world video games. How do you create a barrier in an open world game? There are many solutions, but they're not all practical.

 

1. The first one is the endless ocean that has been used since GTA III. This seems like an all-in-all practical solution, since it allows the player to freely travel around the map without any restriction. However, there are many problems with this. First, it's unrealistic. Sure, video games aren't real-life, but let's face it: San Andreas' map was just far too awkward. It had a really dumb-looking square shape and unnatural environmental transition. If the game were set in a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, the "endless sea" would work well. However, this is Southern California. It'll just look cheesy. Also, it makes the map feel as if it were alone. It just makes you feel as if there isn't anything else.

 

2. There's the solid barrier some have been proposing. An impassable mountain makes the map look much more realistic and gives the sense that the game's map isn't alone all by itself. GTA III and GTA: LCS had a semi-landlocked map, and normally you couldn't get past the hills near Cedar Grove, unless you used some sort of aircraft (GTA III had a Dodo that took time to fly, while LCS had a helicopter that you could get, but not under normal circumstances). However, this really restricts the player, and is generally unfair to the player, especially with aircraft likely to feature again in V. Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II, and L.A. Noire all used such barriers, but they weren't meant to be as open-world as Grand Theft Auto.

 

3. You can always use "redirecting". This means that after the player goes after a certain distance outside the main map, the player is redirected back to the main map. True Crime: Streets of L.A. and True Crime: New York used this. This isn't a good solution though, because it prevents true freedom in a map, and is unrealistic.

 

4. The only solution I see to such problems is the "endless terrain". We could have endless grassland to the north, endless desert to the east, and endless sea to the west. This follows the terrain of real-life Southern California, and feels much more realistic, preserves true freedom, and makes the map feel as if it were part of the mainland United States. This is 100% practical and has been used in a few games before and videos on YouTube show this. The only problems I see are how "dull" this endless terrain might be. I think a practical solution would be to simulate objects to appear alongside the endless terrain, so it won't be dull.

 

I really hope R* uses number 4, and if they decide to use an island again, I hope they make it one giant island rather than 3 and put tall mountains at the edges to make the map feel as if it weren't an island.

The endless sea and terrain soloution is a good one, you don't see people complain about the water being boring in other games do you?

Deserts are usually lifeless so it should't been a problem, would be nice to see sanddunes, a rock cliff or two and some cactus now and then, but other then that, no.

 

And the people who says that they don't want "dead" spaces can go and f*ck a rusty iron-fork, san andreas was great that way, and if people want to be in a livly place, then be in a livly place like a city.

[JoyDivision]

how would planes and helicopter's work with a forest landlock, would your plane bounce of an invisible wall and make you crash, or just an invisible wall you crash into, or an automatic turn around?

[azali10]

This seems to be a common conundrum in open world video games. How do you create a barrier in an open world game? There are many solutions, but they're not all practical.

 

1. The first one is the endless ocean that has been used since GTA III. This seems like an all-in-all practical solution, since it allows the player to freely travel around the map without any restriction. However, there are many problems with this. First, it's unrealistic. Sure, video games aren't real-life, but let's face it: San Andreas' map was just far too awkward. It had a really dumb-looking square shape and unnatural environmental transition. If the game were set in a tropical island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, the "endless sea" would work well. However, this is Southern California. It'll just look cheesy. Also, it makes the map feel as if it were alone. It just makes you feel as if there isn't anything else.

 

2. There's the solid barrier some have been proposing. An impassable mountain makes the map look much more realistic and gives the sense that the game's map isn't alone all by itself. GTA III and GTA: LCS had a semi-landlocked map, and normally you couldn't get past the hills near Cedar Grove, unless you used some sort of aircraft (GTA III had a Dodo that took time to fly, while LCS had a helicopter that you could get, but not under normal circumstances). However, this really restricts the player, and is generally unfair to the player, especially with aircraft likely to feature again in V. Red Dead Redemption, Mafia II, and L.A. Noire all used such barriers, but they weren't meant to be as open-world as Grand Theft Auto.

 

3. You can always use "redirecting". This means that after the player goes after a certain distance outside the main map, the player is redirected back to the main map. True Crime: Streets of L.A. and True Crime: New York used this. This isn't a good solution though, because it prevents true freedom in a map, and is unrealistic.

 

4. The only solution I see to such problems is the "endless terrain". We could have endless grassland to the north, endless desert to the east, and endless sea to the west. This follows the terrain of real-life Southern California, and feels much more realistic, preserves true freedom, and makes the map feel as if it were part of the mainland United States. This is 100% practical and has been used in a few games before and videos on YouTube show this. The only problems I see are how "dull" this endless terrain might be. I think a practical solution would be to simulate objects to appear alongside the endless terrain, so it won't be dull.

 

I really hope R* uses number 4, and if they decide to use an island again, I hope they make it one giant island rather than 3 and put tall mountains at the edges to make the map feel as if it weren't an island.

How about after a certain distance from the boundry a voice comes on on the radio (maybe army/FBI/CIA/etc) and says "turn back or you will be shot down", if you don't stop you get blown up. At least you could work it into the story some how.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

how would planes and helicopter's work with a forest landlock, would your plane bounce of an invisible wall and make you crash, or just an invisible wall you crash into, or an automatic turn around?

Most likely a turn around. I don't really care if we see an invisible wall. I rarely thought of it in GTAVC.

[DarrinPA]

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

Same could been said by never ending water...

"If you take a boat over west for 2 hours, then south for 1 hour,you'll find a island bla bla bla"

 

But GTA has never really suffered from that. We know it's water and nothing else. The idea of never-ending land with cars and planes just seems like a it's going to cause a headache.

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

Same could been said by never ending water...

"If you take a boat over west for 2 hours, then south for 1 hour,you'll find a island bla bla bla"

 

But GTA has never really suffered from that. We know it's water and nothing else. The idea of never-ending land with cars and planes just seems like a it's going to cause a headache.

Highly unlikely that R* would to use an endless forest or desert this gen. Even an unrealistically flat deserts w/o vegetation and a repeated pattern of forest trees would be difficult to pull off and graphically intensive.

[esparado87]

 

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

Same could been said by never ending water...

"If you take a boat over west for 2 hours, then south for 1 hour,you'll find a island bla bla bla"

 

But GTA has never really suffered from that. We know it's water and nothing else. The idea of never-ending land with cars and planes just seems like a it's going to cause a headache.

Same sh*t...and btw why would anyone go crazy direction from a random guy without proof?

(a picture is not a good enogh proof this days (photoshop), video would be nice).

 

And in the end, if a person is stupid enough too actually go those crazy directions without any good proof, then he/she really derserves too be punished.

Edited April 28, 2012 by esparado87

[esparado87]

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

Same could been said by never ending water...

"If you take a boat over west for 2 hours, then south for 1 hour,you'll find a island bla bla bla"

 

But GTA has never really suffered from that. We know it's water and nothing else. The idea of never-ending land with cars and planes just seems like a it's going to cause a headache.

Highly unlikely that R* would to use an endless forest or desert this gen. Even an unrealistically flat deserts w/o vegetation and a repeated pattern of forest trees would be difficult to pull off and graphically intensive.

A endless flat desert is harder to pull of then endless water that is actually moving all the time (ocaenwaves)?

[Triple Vacuum Seal]

I hope it's never ending water. If it's never-ending forest or desert; we are going to get A LOT of false claims of finding cities, towns, cars, bigfoot, ect... if you go three hours this way, then go that way, jump three times, walk a few hours on foot that way, ect...... the trolling is going to be insane here on the Gtaforums board.

Same could been said by never ending water...

"If you take a boat over west for 2 hours, then south for 1 hour,you'll find a island bla bla bla"

 

But GTA has never really suffered from that. We know it's water and nothing else. The idea of never-ending land with cars and planes just seems like a it's going to cause a headache.

Highly unlikely that R* would to use an endless forest or desert this gen. Even an unrealistically flat deserts w/o vegetation and a repeated pattern of forest trees would be difficult to pull off and graphically intensive.

A endless flat desert is harder to pull of then endless water that is actually moving all the time (ocaenwaves)?

good point, it would be equally hard. The endless coast line with the desert I suppose could work too.

[Gtaghost22]

I like this idea, and i think there is a big possiblity that GTA V will be half-landlocked like you said which could work very well this time considering the game is set in southern-calfornia

[GoonOnFire]

Gta IV was not land locked.

[skrillarilla]

Gta IV was not land locked.

o one said it was -______- read. comprehesio= 000.000

[whittle13]

Gta IV was not land locked.

o one said it was -______- read. comprehesio= 000.000

Spelling = -00000.00

[meson1]

I thought it would be a good idea to copy one of my old posts here that discusses technically (albeit high level) how endless terrain might possibly be achieved.

 

 

Endless land would be procedurally generated unlike the main playing area.

 

The main playing area would be done in the traditional way that we are used to; i.e. data stored on the disk that describes every square inch of the map, what shape it is and what it looks like.

 

Procedurally generated land means that the program generates the map data dynamically based on some kind of algorithm. There are probably a few established methods for doing this. I'm no expert in this field, but the possibilities that occur to me are:

 

 

• Pseudo-random: Using a pseudo random algorithm incorporating co-ordinates as seeds to generate vectors for the landscape and for the placement of rocks, vegetation and so forth. Specify rules for texture placement and use additional code to keep any impossible topography in check.

   

• Fractal: Using a special class of recursive formulae to dynamically generate the map data. This is similar to the pseudo random technique above except that it's the fractal formula that generates the data instead of a pseudo random algorithm. Choosing the right fractal formula can result in quite a natural appearance.

   

• Pre-rendered "Tiles": Hand design a limited number of large tiles of landscape and associated texture data. These would be large, e.g. half a mile to a mile along each side. These would not be flat; they would contain their own internal topography (little hills, gulleys, etc). Each edge of each tile is designed to match up with the adjacent tile. These can then be placed outside the main part of the map mathematically. Eventually you would realise that the landscape repeats, but this would be of limited importance outside the main playing area.

The important part of however this is done is to ensure that any given point in the generated landscape is always the same. Special rules can be incorporated so that certain locations can receive any necessary attention. e.g. to put an endless road along a certain parallel or to manage what the landscape does when it reaches the coastline.

 

Also all of the above techniques could be combined. For instance, a fractal formula could be used to control the large scale roll of the land (i.e. hills and valleys, but nothing too spectacular) and the shape of the coast. On to this land, the 1 sq mile hand designed tiles are mapped. Then a pseudo random algorithm places trees, rocks and vegetation.

 

Of course all this is my own amateur speculation. I'm sure there are people out there that have done this kind of thing before and know what works better than myself.

All this said, I reckon GTA:V will still be an island in an endless sea because its simpler solution. I'd love them to do something different though.

[gtamodguy]

I want R* to make more than one mountain. Or at least make a waterfall or something so that I can attempt stunts off of it. If I do somehow end up dying way out in these regenerated lands, shall I be transported to a local hospital with the screen being black or will there be some cutscenes between when you die and you appear at the hospital. I want a cutscene between that so that it looks more realistic. Imagine a plane or helicopter landing to pick you up because you are so far away from the city. That would be fun. Oh Yeah, and R*, add some search lights in the city so that if you are in the mountain it looks like NFS Carbon's canyon races.

[btbwuh]

I don't really care tbh

[DeadWorld]

I don't really care tbh

Same. As Long the game works and it's brilliant, who really cares about it being landlocked.

[skrillarilla]

Gta IV was not land locked.

o one said it was -______- read. comprehesio= 000.000

Spelling = -00000.00

not my fault my n button was jammed lol