Development of San Andreas (2003-2004) | Hacker News Reader

Development of San Andreas (2003-2004)

insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com

49 pointsPhilpax19 comments

I always found that just firing up GTA-SA and driving around aimlessly listening to the radio was a very relaxing experience, therapeutic even. That little 'yacht' town just across the bridge to the NE of San Francisco was always a nice spot.

I wonder how many others feel the same way.

I really loved to drive a bus around the map, listening to K-DST.

I did too, and I still love to put on its soundtrack when driving actual SF–LV–LA

There really were some good songs in there

One Step Forward is amazing

Heeey good lookin, Whaaaat you got cookin

The most amusing strip of road I remember was a highway that went through the "country" areas. Random vehicle types changed depending on the area, so sometimes the game would spawn a tractor ahead of 70mph traffic and immediately cause a huge AI car pileup in front of you.

It had to be something they saw in testing, but left in purposely because it never stopped being hilarious.

Yeah I think that happened near the oil patch west of 'Vegas'

I feel the same about GTA V. When I'm driving, and the sunset comes, and the song "Pure Shores" starts to play, I really start to get shivers. Somehow with this game they captured some of the vibe of California, and related movies (HEAT, Point Break).

SA:MP roleplay trucking was cool (though it earned pretty little).

Aaaall my ex's live in Texas...

> Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist.

Still up on archive.org though [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20231122202759/https://insideroc...

It was taken down because the Rockstar executives didn't want him talking about a 20 yr old game[0]. How very disappointing and droll.

[0]: https://insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com/2023/11/sorry-you-m...

I mirrored the entire blog at 16:49 PST today because I totally predicted something like this would happen. Get it here: https://archive.org/details/insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com

Fuck Rockstar/Take2 for constantly punishing their most loyal fans. Get the DMCAed reverse-engineered GTA3/VC here too: https://git.robbyzambito.me/mirror/re3.git/log/

Thanks for the good work! I saved all the pages to PDF after reading the article, just in case -- was going to do the same thing as you!

I agree here: fuck Rockstar Games for this; I was so hyped for the Behind the Scenes of IV in particular. It could have shared, new undiscovered details and information. Cloning that Git repo now.

(P.S. This may be the vodka talking, but I believe I've found a few articles in your dump that I can't see on the archived page. Thank you so much for preserving this info.)

FFS... "ruin the mystique" or just show that management didn't care about work / life balance and burned out their staff like every other games company of the time.

I'm curious. How fast did WebArchive archived it or did someone did it in nick of time? The article was taken down in less than 24-hours.

idk what do they have to be upset about - It’s a few anecdotes from developing the game and not naming anyone. Sounds like it’s more about not sharing anything at all.

"For most of the time development was manageable. Certainly less stressful than Vice City. To finish it off a good stretch of crunch was required. The company got a chef to provide a good meal for those working late. That really helped."

So it wasn't manageable at all. Trading in your time for food isn't worth it. Been there, done that. Work life balance is more important.

I think it's more of an employee maintenance thing than a perk or to make them feel better about working there.

It's like how I see workplace coffee machines: ah yes, the employer is providing free performance enhancing drugs.

I really really hope the GTA SA VR port for the meta quest (announced by Zuck in 2021) will still happen. But I guess not, since its announcement there has not been a single word :'(

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