New GMTK - How Rockstar fit an entire city into PlayStation 2 memory
Hi everyone!
I've finally finished the next video for GMTK. It was supposed to be a quick one... but ended up being one of my more ambitious projects!
It's about Grand Theft Auto 3, and the technical innovations that let Rockstar fit an entire open world city in the tiny memory pool of the PS2. An impressive feat that would go on to power every open world game released since.
As you might notice - I'm on camera a lot more than usual in this video. This was partly - as I explained in my last Mark's Month update - a reaction to AI generated videos (TL;DR - it's really easy to generate an AI video if you're just doing a voice over the top of footage. So if I want to prove I'm human, I should be on camera more often).
But as I started doing it, I realised it was really fun. A way to add more of my personality and character to GMTK videos.
This will be a learning process for me, so any feedback welcome - and I look forward to refining this in future videos.
Thanks for your support and patience, as always.
Mark
How Rockstar fit an entire city into PlayStation 2 memory (YouTube)
Comments (6)
This was fascinating! And I think a great demonstration of how your development work can inform future videos. Hazarding a guess, I think pre-Mind over Magnet Mark would have understood the technical aspects of memory limitations, but I don't think that Mark would have modified the source code of GTA 3 to dislocate the camera from the memory load-ins. And those were really the highlights of the video! I loved seeing things spawn in and out as the character avatar moved around the world. It took me back to Turok and the ridiculous amount of fog that devs used to hide pop-in for that game. I love "disembodied voice over images" YouTube but the live elements felt like I was getting a peek into your studio, which was fun. I think it was well incorporated.
This video made me subscribe here (HI!) And it was amazing It makes me happy to learn new things, and the techniques used before and why we still in the year of the Space Ship Earth 2026, still have some transition sections on games that are not first party. NAmely PS5. I was talking with some friends this, the other day. Why is that Sony's studios push the limit of the PS5 Drive (Ghost of Yotei, Spiderman 2, God of War Ragnarok, Horizon, Ratchet and Clank) But no one else seems to either care or do it? I undertstand, for instance, in pragmata, they could have but didnt. And Resident Evil 8 (Havent played 9 yet) Doesnt have that loading screens and it really just goes. I do wonder what kind of decision making process goes into adding these to a game on multiplatform or just leave the engine as is and deal with a short 2s load screen (like Pragmata)
Loved this deepdive!! Also the camera grab and placement onto another tripod was 🤌
I really enjoyed the face cam! (is that the right term?) Whatever the reason, making your videos more personal is never a bad thing!
What a great video. Between the newly added on-camera sections to the executable rebuild to show the streaming, it's a huge step up. Really wonderful to see.
Interesting thoughts about AI. But isn't it tilting at windmills? The "hold up three fingers" deepfake detection test was popular for a time, but seems to be not failsafe anymore. Pandora's box has been opened.