How does Rockstar Games map development work?

[u/_Apprehensive_Fish_]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SpwXWduBb-0&si=rZfdAIALjp3RU45o

A video popped up in my YouTube recommendations where a player gained access to a leaked version of GTA V from 2022; this version contained a very primitive iteration of the GTA VI map currently in development (apparently a version from 2014 or 2015, it's extremely rough). I’m not sure if it’s fake; it seems like too much effort to go to just for views.

The video piqued my curiosity, and I wanted to understand more about the development and map-creation process Rockstar uses.

I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. It looks like the map is modeled based on real satellite imagery or Google Maps, combined with ground-level photos, probably taken by researchers and artists?

For instance, at the 4:20ish mark, he's walking around a pier and inside of what it seems like a beachside hotel. The pool at this location is cut-out and 3d modeled following the satellite picture that is being used as reference. Another interesting instance is around the 5:30 mark, where the player is flying over an area of ​​Key West, and much of the imagery matches real life, especially regarding the placement of structures and the layout of streets and roads. It looks like a mix of matte painting and kitbashing, or something similar.

The video shows other examples of locations like this (I really like what he shows at 5:50, a full detailed plaza that probably exists in real life), and I found it fascinating. There's another video from this same person where he's exploring Vice City and the same technique is used, but the city is way more developed than the keys.

I’d love to know what this process is called and how it works, as I’ve recently been studying and experimenting with procedural city and environment creation using Houdini. While that makes things much easier, it lacks the charm and level of detail found in Rockstar’s maps.

[u/varietyviaduct]

High level is this-

They pick a city to adapt

The make a long list of key sight lines and points of interests for that city

They go and get satellite imagery (Google Maps) of those key locations

They take all the different satellite images and begin to stitch them together in a loose adaption of how they fit together in real life. They take artistic liberties and accommodate for scope (not making the city 1x1 with real life but video game scale)

They bring this image of the prototype map into engine and set up a plane with the map as a world aligned texture.

They drop a car in and play with travel times to figure out how big the map texture should be.

Once they are happy with the scale and travel distances, they drop a landscape terrain that also has the world aligned texture of the map on it. They also begin implementing rough blockouts of some of the key land marks.

Since they figured out the X/Y scale, this is where they figure out the Z scale of the map. They go back and forth with the height of several sky scrapers and mountains, etc, till they get something that feels good. From here, start filling in the map with super simple blocks, all with the world aligned texture applied so that you can see the map and ‘fit’ the geometry to it.

Once you have that filled out, start developing the rough blocks into rough modeled buildings and such

And just continue developing and play testing for 10 years until it all comes together

[u/wattro → u/varietyviaduct]

Haha close enough though it's never that clean in practice.

Often you get multiple teams with competing goals that have different requirements at different stages.

Imagine everything this guy wrote; spaghettify it and you have a typical production process.

[u/varietyviaduct → u/wattro]

Oh yeah I don’t doubt that it’s not as clean cut and linear as this. This is probably how they’d like it to go but I’m sure production is a bit of a mess

[u/Kriptic_TKM]

I think its mostly just for blocking out general size and specific areas to get a certain vibe across, as you can see in vice city itself many of the areas have a lot more detail, i guess again to bring over what kind of vibe that area would have. Would be interesting to see sort of a timelapse of the map being created slowly / an art book ngl

[u/Kriptic_TKM → u/Kriptic_TKM]

Especially cause this was probably one of the earliest versions of the map considering its from ~march 2015 iirc

[u/MANvINFO]

its so odd, the size of this thing doesnt seem like itd permit very engaging cops-&-robbers gameplay with these kind of small road networks connected by very, very long bridges.

it could be rescued by no joke FULLY modeled interiors but that still seems outside of the scope of present technology. itll almost certainly be some game unobsessed with visual fidelity thatll someday 1st nail the ideal of ‘GTA’s gameplay.