Was San Andreas limited by the DVD disc size?

[muh linucs]

If I've understood correctly, the PS2 NTSC release is around 4,5 GB in size when DVD-5 can hold 4,7 GB. Rockstar may have avoided DVD-9 due to disc reading issues with some PS2 models.

 

The texture quality was greatly degraded from Vice City clearly for this reason. Can signs of some unfinished content be found on the disc and has R* or the developers clarified the situation in interviews?

[gts.]

Not unfinished as model, textures, etc files wise but probably in the executable there is unfinished stuff that gone unused by final release, I'm including textures, models, etc as well. Also, the game isn't really 4.5GB, if you remove those gta3.img checks (better known as dummies) because those are repeated files, and each one is a check for the game's executable to avoid modified image files, the game is around 3GB or 3.5GB at least.

[Ash_735]

On 5/3/2020 at 8:37 AM, muh linucs said:

The texture quality was greatly degraded from Vice City clearly for this reason.

There's actually a massive batch of textures in San Andreas that are better quality than those found in Vice City PS2, they used a different trick in this version by having a much shorter draw distance but loading in higher quality assets, as with most things Rockstar during that generation it was time, they had to get the game out by a certain date and that's why many places outside of Los Santos were left in a rushed manner, for example the colour filters are much more dynamic in Los Santos than they are anywhere else on the map which just uses various shades of grey instead.

[Lioshenka]

On 5/3/2020 at 8:37 AM, muh linucs said:

The texture quality was greatly degraded from Vice City

Are we talking about the same VC? I played it last year, the texture quality is astonishingly bad.

[𝓦𝓸𝓵𝓯]

Yes there would be 2 dvds unfortunately they had to put it on a 4.5, 4.7 dvd.