WebGL GTA1 demo

Niklas von Hertzen has released a WebGL GTA1. It lets you walk around the GTA1 city using a web browser (Firefox 12 or Chrome). He doesn’t plan to update it in the near future but the source code has been released, so hopefully someone improves it.

WebGL GTA

This experiment parses the game files (in their original format) and builds the maps and some of the game objects from the game through WebGL. Some very basic game mechanics and physics are implemented, but there isn’t really anything else than pedestrian movement possible in this version.

The game files used are from the original GTA game’s demo from 1997, freely available for download here. The full version is also available for free from Rockstar Games or for purchase at Steam store.

Browser support & Issues

Currently only works on Google Chrome/Firefox and requires a half decent graphics card. There are a number of graphical glitches present, such as problems with palette transparency and some slopes applied with wrong angle. This implementation parses the game files as they were used in the original games, and as such they are far from an optimal format used in this experiment, and especially the sprites and color palettes require far more computing that would be necessary with a more optimal format.

Future plans

I created this experiment just for the purpose of testing some aspects of WebGL and to see how well larger static environments perform and currently have no plans of continuing developing this any further in the near future. It currently parses most files used by the game (including maps, sprites, game objects, spawn points, missions, etc. ) but only uses a small portion of that data in its current implementation.

Homepage: experiments.hertzen.com
Try it (warning: takes a while to load and may use a lot of system resources)
Source code: github.com

GTA to be exhibited at V&A museum

It was all, like, excitement she wrote, when we saw the Edge Online headline. GTA? At the V&A? We imagined an interactive full 3D room at the new Dundee V&A HQ, but it turns out that it’ll be part of a video at the London V&A celebrating British Design from 1948-2012.

Tickets are a recession-proof £13.50 and alongside GTA, you can enjoy the iMac, trimphone, Twiggy on a scooter and Jeremy Clarkson’s skull, peeled, boiled and mounted on a stick.

Via: scottishgames.net
Source: vam.ac.uk

DMA Design now part of history

Mike Dailly (one of the original coders that worked on Lemmings and GTA1/GTA2) posted that a museum now has a DMA Design display.

So a couple of years back the old museum in Dundee closed to get a well needed refurbishment, and while shut it got in touch with Realtime Worlds and asked for everything DMA that we could get our hands on. Now the museum is open again and it has a section based on local history, and a selection of the DMA stuff has been put on display. It’s very odd seeing something that I’ve been intimately involved with appear in a museum! Particularly as (last time I checked), I’m not dead yet!

MVC interview Sam Houser

MVC have posted an interview with Sam Houser, the co-founder and Executive Producer on the GTA games.


Houser says that surviving in an environment in which large numbers of powerful people want to put you out of business for their own political or economic capital has been the biggest challenge of his career.

Full interview: mcvuk.com