"Inside Rockstar North" a blog by ex Rockstar North technical director Obbe Vermeij

[Mave]

This blog is really interesting reading material!

Development of the trilogy & IV

What life was like inside Rockstar North.

insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com

Some interesting bits:

Vice City was supposed to be an expansion of GTA III:

After the release, we started on Vice City. It was RockStar New York's idea to set the game in the 80s in Miami. Originally it was supposed to be a mission pack to gta3. Only once gta3 did as well as it did and Vice City started to look sufficiently different from gta3 was the decision made to make it a standalone game. This was quite far into the project. (maybe 6 months or so)

Development of Vice City (2002)

There was a 6 weeks gap between finishing gta3 and the release. This was needed for burning the cd and distribution. In those days you could...

insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com

Why does the moon change size when you snipe it?

This went on a bit and I suggested to make the size of the moon changeable in the game. This way they could decide in their own time and let me know the conclusion. Since I was working on the sniper rifle, I made it so that the moon toggled through 3 sizes (small, medium, large) as the player sniped it.

The artists never got back to me so I just left it in. It was still there in SA.

Why does the moon change size when you snipe it?

The artists gave me a texture for the moon in III. I placed the moon in the sky, made sure it was visible at night and that it was a reasona...

insiderockstarnorth.blogspot.com