Grand Theft Auto III - By Rockstar Games (Releasing Dec/15)

Taken from kotaku's impressions. This is gonna be AWESOME!!!

 

San Andreas was my favorite GTA. I hope that it isn't just a port and actually has some improvements, because to be honest the graphics in the original GTAIII should be able to run on a ipad 1. ...

 

Dang looks like my iPod Touch 4 can't run this. Guess I'll stick to getting this on my non-iOS phone and tablet

 

There's still a matter of having a large enough target audience to pay for the investment needed to produce a graphically intensive game that can push the latest gen devices. The installed base for the original iPad is probably larger than that of the 4 different Android tablets Rockstar is supporting combined. Similarly, iPhone 4 and 4th gen Touch installed base probably eclipses that of the combined 5 different Android smartphones they support. Certainly Apple A4 devices outnumber Apple A5 devices and likely will continue to do so for some time given the iPhone 4 and 4th gen Touch are still selling. Making the game scalable enough so that it can target the Apple A4 in order to more than double your potential customer base seems like a wise move. It would justify a larger initial development budget which could be disproportionately be invested in cutting edge graphics. In other words, use the large number of previous gen customers to pay for latest gen development. Apple's closed ecosystem makes this easy too since there is less fragmentation compared to Android. Just support 1 additional SoC (Apple A4) in 3 devices and you get a much larger installed base.

 

well never played on of gamelofts gangstar games but the newest one looks

pretty ok from what the trailer shows

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiqqB6fmKJE

which probably still runs (with lower details) on 3gs and upwards..


of course fillrate is limited on A4 devices due to the old gpu and the high res screen but they could optimize for slower devices with less details

the biggest point from a consumer pov is that devs require the newest device to run a 10 year old game which looks alot worser than other games.. and i bet alot of people will drag infinity blades next gen optic
into the spotlight and cry a river why one works even on a 3gs and the other one who looks like ass compared a 10 year old game..

then there will be infinity blade 2 with optimized A5 gfx which optically probably blow away everything else.. and old stuff like gta3 will look even more aged and again questionable hardware requirements will cook up.. "why oh why"

not supporting a4 devices will be especialy troublesome for all the kids and teenies running around with ipod touches who did not get a hardware treatment this year (yet?!)


so would customers still enjoy gta3 with reduced details on their A4 devices.. i think yes.. do they really care about tech details behind the scene.. i don't think so..

at the end a mobile gta is nothing new i mean how old is GTA LCS? 5 years? older? running on the psp

really want to see how faar they pushed gta3 opticaly if they demand the A5 in comparsion to competitors.. and honestly i would rather see a new gta created for iOS / mobile pushing the hardware to the max instead of an port
who also runs on android devices who are half as fast as the new iOS gen.

 

i would still like to see more devs actualy scaling a bit with their 3d stuff.. buying every year a new iphone and ipad to play 99cents games sound expensive.. especialy compare to consoles and other gaming platforms

so you buy an 4s now, in 6 month the ipad 3 comes out with even bigger badder power and devs drop support for "legacy" devices.. hmm .. sounds like a dangerous gamble..

the current fast paced hardware cylces of mobile devices remind me more of the pc market where a new gfx card generation was released yearly as well as games to harness the power.. (till the current gen consoles came out and slowed down thoose cycles due to multiplatform developement)

 

That's probably the stupidest thing I've read from a developer on this site. I'd expect you to have A bit more respect toward your potential buyers.

Anyhow, I agree with most of your post. I think GTA3 can run on my device with appropriate optimizations to save memory usage etc. But the flip side, it might run poorly if the game happens to be too large or if the development team didn't think it necessary to reduce the quality of their title to run on less capable devices. What a massive fail it would look like if 4 of every 5 reviews said "this game sucks, don't buy!" or "they stole my money, false adertising! Stay away!!"

I would be pissed and Rockstar would be given a bad rep for claiming to support older devices. Look at what happened to Madfinger for supporting 3GS. The notorious front page review was a result of that.

So in a way, I respect Rockstar for stepping their game up and for visiting the AppStore to begin with.

 

i don't see any disrespect in my sentence.. the target audience for the ipt are kids and teenies who else would have owned a DS, PSP whatever is avaible at the time in that price range (200$).. combined with the very low software cost the ipt is very appealing to kids and teenies as a gaming platform..

and no new ipt hardware also means actualy less money for apple and devs who opt for A5 exclusives.
folks are surely not rushing out to replace their black ipt4 with a white one

whats stupid about that? the term kids and teenies?

well you will have thoose problem anyway because as faar as i know you can't limit sales to A5 gen devices only.. so there will be tons of non A5 owners who will buy the game without reading seperate requirement just to see a black screen on startup and a crash (probably) back to the home screen..
and end up writing bad reviews and feel scammed for their probably 5-10$

in the end no matter what you do, bad feedback will happen, boring game, too expensive, only a5, too big filesize, can't beat hookers for money (german version) etc.

*shrug*

devs should imho try not to fragment the market even further.. and try to stick to the way apple shift out older products by stopping to support them (like iOS 5 only for 3gs up, and previously no iOS4 for first gen iphone, and only limited for i3G)

 

Reading all the pissed off comments due to the fact that it only runs on the A5 has been hilarious. For months after the iPhone 4 was released people did nothing but bitch over every game that didn't have retina support and now that one game is unsupported by the 4 everyone goes apeshit. 99% of apps for at least the next two years will continue to support A4 devices, it's not like this one exception makes the hardware obsolete. It's a 10 year old title most people already played to death, it's not like you'll be missing out on some great new thing

 

With all do respect to Madfinger, I think the problems with the 3GS was more an issue of lack of optimization on their part rather than the 3GS fundamentally not being powerful enough. Using generic game engines like Unity and UE3 has been helpful in making it easier for developers to make graphically intensive games, but it doesn't necessarily yield the most performant games since the engines aren't going to be optimized for each specific game on each device. For example, Unity themselves are claiming that their upcoming Unity Engine 3.5 will see a 60% increase in performance because they did a ton of general optimization work. Further performance could be found if developers modified/optimized the engine for their specific game and requirements.

Now I don't expect small developers to have the time or expertise to rewrite or tweak the game engine code. The standard license for UDK doesn't even provide the engine code for you to tweak, so games developed on UDK are definitely leaving performance on the table. However, I do expect big game developers, with their larger development teams and access to full engine licenses, which does give engine source code, to make the effort in tweaking more performance from the engine enabling more effects for the high end devices and better performance and support for low-end devices. So in the case of Rockstar and GTA III, if it can't be done, then it can't be done. However, you'd think it's in the realm of possibility to support Apple A4 devices given the game is 10 years old, so I hope they make every effort rather than just getting it to work on the Apple A5, calling it a day, and marketing A5 only as a feature.

And to give an idea of what's possible on older devices, just look at RAGE. It stands up very well on old 1st and 2nd gen devices, although that's not my specific point here. What I'm interested is that even on 3rd and 4th gen devices which are OpenGL 2.0 capable, RAGE is still using an engine based on the old Doom Resurrection engine and only using OpenGL 1.1. RAGE is able to achieve it's graphical quality without even using OpenGL 2.0 shaders. Now I don't expect every developer to be a coding genius like John Carmack, able to squeeze every last bit of performance out of a device, but it does mean that there is still untapped potential even in older devices like the iPhone 3GS. For example, Carmack hasn't even started using OpenGL 2.0 on the iPhone 3GS yet.

That is one way of looking at it. The other way is, what is it about this 10 year old game that makes it too advanced for the Apple A4? Is the Apple A4 fundamentally too slow or that the game isn't well optimized and is leaving performance on the table?

Personally, I'd rather that Rockstar have celebrated the 10th anniversary of GTA III by releasing a full HD remake for console, PC, and Mac and develop a new, made for mobile GTA title for iOS. I'm curious if Rockstar has tweaked the save system or mission structure to better fit the pick up and play nature of smartphones. Porting Liberty City Stories or Vice City Stories would be a better fit in that regard.

 

I see you missed my point and went far off topic there.

RAGE is on rails. GTA is open world. I'm no expert but...

 

It's true I was more using your post as a prompt than necessarily addressing it directly. I do agree that if a game developer claims support for a device, they better support it well, devoting the necessary effort to scale the graphics of the game and optimize for the device. Otherwise, don't support it, since it'll only generate disappointed customers and bad press.

I was mainly pointing out that John Carmack achieved a lot on 3rd and 4th gen devices even though he artificially constrained himself by using the older Doom Resurrection engine and sticking to OpenGL ES 1.1. There's the potential there to balance the extra performance still available on say 4th gen devices and the reduced quality graphics of GTA III vs RAGE to offset the move from an on rails game to open world, and make things work.

 

Was reading through the comments posted on the official announcement on the rockstar website. Obviously, a lot of people were asking if/why gta iii will or will not be compatible with iPhone 4, iPod touch, etc. the rockstar rep answered with the vague, "we are planning to add support for more devices. This is the list as of today". A4 devices might still be supported (more likely, though that the planned devices will be newer android phones). The rep says to check back to see updates on compatibility.

Interesting though, if the A4 devices simply couldn't handle what rockstar was trying to do with the game, why wouldn't the rep tell them straight that it has been tested and failed? Makes me think that they are still working on optimizing it on older devices (if at all possible). Also, as someone said before, rockstar stated that they will not be developing for ios due to the lack of huge profits. If they still have that mentality, why in the world would they specify this game for a limited percentage of iOS users? Yes, millions of iPad 2's have been sold and millions of 4s' preordered, but how many of these owners are actually interested in shelling out premium app prices for this game? Most people I see that own iPads and iphones are individuals who could care less about gaming. Hell, most people I know with an iOS device don't even know what gta Chinatown wars is.

 

i think their will be a hd and non hd version

ps

could they just change the viewing distance, eg. in cid zombies they is low, medium, high, A4 will probs have low while A5 will have high

 

Gta Chinatown Wars,being the only game I played for a while in iOS,I will surely like this.But I would not buy an iPhone 4s for this or for any reason at all,it is too much expensive.

 

Lets hope for A4 support

 

I don't know why or even how some people are being so naive about this.

Do people really expect the EXACT same GTA3? You're wrong. If you think that, how come San Andreas and Vice City aren't on the iPod?

"its a 10yr old game so why dont the devs just port it to the iphone 3gs? Fuuuuuuuuu, it shuld only take 10mins. Cmonn, if da ps2 can play it, it obviously means a completely different OS should be able to play it. I hate this company nowzzz ):"

Do you know how silly and funny this sounds? It's actually quite embarassing and humiliating for the general human race.

You people obviously aren't viewing this from a developer's perspective.

 

I don't get iPhones, I'm an iPod touch person

So it's frustrating at the moment I cant buy an updated iPod touch, just an iPhone if I want to play these