gmt

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Everything posted by gmt

  1. gmt
    cmon pud, you know I was aiming at all the magazines that were shown the same game, but state completely different scales... GI said the map is bigger than RDR SA and IV combined then jeuxactu came with LS alone was 4-5 times the size of IV then IGN came with the whole map is 3.5 times the size of RDR and including topography even 5 times that size now IGN comes with LS is about the size of IV... I'm totally with: uhm... no.
  2. gmt
    Were you referring to this helicopter shot.. http://www.igta5.com...__fromsearch__1 Because ^this and that sky diving scene from the trailer doesn't prove that there's no city behind the VineWood sigh, they don't prove that at all. *sign the number of helicopter screenshots is too damn high... I was talking about this one from summer no not from summer... meh in the skydiving jeep scene from the trailer, we're looking down at the area on the upper right, the jeep covers the circular structure we've been speculating about being a prison or military installation. the 6 dots between that structure and the hill in the upper right corner are the sattelite dishes seen in the 2nd trailer and also visible in the skidiving jeep scene. that scene doesn't reveal what's behind the entire vinewood hills, but you can cleary see that the area immediately behind the vinewood sign is pretty barren land, comparable to the mojave. now, like I said already, it's still not revealed what's in the area behind the observatory, but my guess is that there's the same as behind the vinewood sign, desert. not saying that there's not a town or something, but if so, I guess there's nothing as dense as the Burbank area, more like Barstow, Bakersfield etc me too. one day Los Santos is so many times bigger than LC, the next day is about as big as LC... what next? the size of GTA:SA's Los Santos? EDIT again: speaking of the new helicopter screenshots, isn't that Chateau Marmont off the right top of IAA?
  3. gmt
    any idea what that inclined line on the left horizon is? love these panoramics
  4. gmt
    ^that one
  5. gmt
    I don't think there's gonna be much. the parachute scene from the trailer, compared with the vinvewood-sign-helicopter screenshot shows that right behind these hills, there's nothing but desert. we haven't seen yet what's behind the observatory towards the coast, but the above mentioned suggests that R* ommited the Burbank area and placed the Mojave right behind the vinewood hills
  6. gmt
    sure it doesn't say that explicitly, but how else would you link and with ? sounds to me like the landmass is "3.5times RDR" and the remaining "1.5times RDR" to make the "5times RDR" complete is under water. admittedly, I'm not that happy with IGNs interpretation of this, but unless we get figures directly from R* themselves, that's what we gotta stick to
  7. gmt
    I have read the articles, and none of them give a figure for underwater depth. Or any kind of size. seriously, I both named which article and quoted the passage...
  8. gmt
    Oh...mah...gawd. EDIT: Wait, Liberty City is almost as big as San Andreas? Why does SA feel so much bigger? RE-EDIT: And how do you know the size of the underwater environments? I need to get to bed; I'm starting to believe everything I read. how about you start reading the articles ( or what I wrote, I stated the source), then you would know the same... November 12th IGN article says:
  9. gmt
    tiny actually... a common figure is 8 mi² I'm wondering... do people read whats written unless there's a picture associated to the post? anyways, with these figures from the frontpage: (the first from jeuxactu, the second from IGN, with the notation that the land area is 3.5times that of RDR and the entire map, including "topography" is 5 times that of RDR) and the common statement that the map of RDR is 2.5 times the size of GTA:SA (about 14mi²), and that Liberty City is supposed to be 12mi² (6*2 miles), one can estimate a ballpark figure for the size of LS and the entire map: LS about 48mi² and the entire map 175mi², including underwater scenery
  10. gmt
    I think the radio telescopes in scene 4 are inspired by the Pioneer Deep Space Station, part of GDSCC north of Barstow. the type of antennas, location (relative to LA and their surroundings) and their "scattered" setup sort of looks like it... plus the fact that the original is a US historic landmark, which makes it a perfect thing to place in GTA. further, we see these antennas from above in the skydive scene and what vanishes below the jeep-like car is that roundish thing from the game informer screenshot with the helicopter looking at the Vinewood Sign. The six black dots are visible in both pictures with relative position to the round thing matching. This would mean that the round from the mentioned screenshot couldn't be a prison as this and the sat dishes seem to be on the same property. This also tells that scene 5 and 9 take place in this area aswell, cuz in each of those scenes, the sat dishes are visible. scene 9, you can also vaguely determine the same wind turbines between the power poles over the converter thing you can also see in scene 4, so that Bandito scene should be just slightly to the right of the highway connection. Further, comparing scene 1 with the last few frames of scene 21, Ulan Bator seems to be right, that thing should be the airport. scene 21 curves to the left towards Vincent Thomas bridge and we can see the airport between the 2 trucks and then 2 bigger complexes come to view. almost the same setup we can see in scene 1, and that tall thing should be atc tower also, what dup marked as the river mouth I don't think would be the river, as the river flows left from downtown LS if seem from the the hills (you can also see in scene 3 that this is the location of the river) Another thing I noticed is that the Michael's house is most likely right next to Sierra Towers, on it's golfcourse site (and it's also the same house in the leisure time screenshot gallery with the tennis court, but with a lot of improvements) in the scene with the black F9, you can see a taller building and a construction crane nearby, and another tall building with prominent design ressembling Sierra Towers. EDIT: the lake and the Echo Park thing can't be the same, just look at the different elevations, the lake is up in the hills, well above downtown, while the Echo Park thing is approximately the same level as downtown
  11. gmt
    I think - even with Aaron's statement concerning size - we've been still off. Check what IGN says about the map size:
  12. gmt
    oh fuck... I should have read the entire jeuxactu thing before posting. what I like even more than the part where it says how big LS is, that's the part where it says that the whole map is available without restrictions at the start:
  13. gmt
    that would place us somewhere in the vicinity of Los Santos being about the size of the RDR map alone, compared to what Aaron said about the size of the wole map. there's no definite numbers on RDR but the interwebz is pretty sure that it's 2.5 times SA. and SA was very roughly 2 times IV so RDR is about 4.5 times IV, give or take a few... wow
  14. gmt
    I hate trains but that's just what I thought...
  15. gmt
    And that's the problem with creating the map. not just that "memorable parts of the city" is a really personal term thus leading to uncountable "versions" of LA... just go around and ask. ok, most ppl would say the beach, a hand full of downtown skyscrapers probably not even known by name, the glitter glamor of Hollywood + it's sign and don't forget 90210 cuz there was a TV show someone has heard of, and that it's fraking big. maybe include LAX as this is how most of the visitors come to LA and it has a benefit: due to the size and the Theme Building it's easily recognizable. but from here on, everyone has an own picture of what is LA, what's fun and memorable and what is not. bad enough as this is already, these opinions can change aswell. just take this, the first time I was in LA was a weekend trip with a couple collegues. I insisted to get up to the observatory, they didn't even knew about it thus calling my nuts cuz "that's boring"... I won, we went up there, they thanked me for helping them getting one of the most impressive looks over LA. I didn't know about the Watts Towers until San Andreas, now they are just as much a part of the LA area to me as the Hollywood sign is. San Andreas' Los Santos already covered more things than most people know about LA and on the other hand is still lacking so much more that makes for LA. What it lacked most in my eyes was the insane (sub)urban sprawl. I know that the technical and design reasons behind the game forced this, but yeah, no matter how hard you try, you can't create an LA lookalike without paying tribute to it's size. This, in turn, means repetitive, boring bits. because these repetitive, boring bits are just so much a part of LA's character as Hollywood, Sta Monica or South Central. I must say tho that comparing this to LA Noire doesn't feel right imho. Not just that LA Noire focuses on the actual city of LA whereas Los Santos always was an image of the entire LA basin, but also the fact that the main reason behind LA Noire was to create an almost accurate scale replica of the 40s LA, something that makes it fun to play... IF you're interested in exploring a long gone city. of course this is boring as it lacks action and takes long times to get from a to b, but one must admit that fastpaced action was never the concept. On the other hand, being scale accurate can go quite wrong. Just think of True Crime LA. one hour from the west to the east limit, pedal to the metal, through light traffic all along the same set of repetitive houses with the only landmark suggesting it's LA being the Library Tower. that might give you an accurate feel for the size and repetitiveness, but the cancer-giving lack of detail tells you that too big is easily possible... So, long story short, it's a hard thing creating a believable image of LA, not just when it comes to which landmarks are in or out (just think of the lack of landmarks in SA's LA - probably one of the most prominent would be the Dodger's Stadium) but it also to decide how much of LA's characteristic sprawl fits in to make it believable, without being too big to cater for an action game like GTA. now with the new pictures and the interviews with Dan and Aaron - I said it already - I'm more convinced that R* does a good job in capturing the size of LA. this also allows to put in more landmarks and if they get the geography and relative positions about right (at least better than in SA which was quite freestyle here) I'll be more than happy. as for the whole map size - including interiors - that's something I got stuck at aswell. I mean, no matter how awesome the part sounds where it says that the map will be bigger than RDR, SA and IV combined, depending on how much interior we get, we can lose a hell of a lot of landmass. for example the Library Tower has 1.3 million sqft of office space while it only sits on a fraction of that area. if R* only makes the roof accessible, we don't lose any area, with all floors accessible we lose an area about big enough to place SA's Mt Chiliad on (given the tower is created scale accurate) at a certain point I thought how awesome it would be to access every room in every building in this game I now feel like I don't need more accessibility than we had in San Andreas, percentage wise. I'd rather go with a couple more blocks of single family homes sprawling about and another square mile of open land. because if LS was the size of the map of IV, with every building fully accessible, this would suck up pretty much everything left in the size estimation given in the interview. I know, the pictures don't look like this is going to happen, but I think we should always keep that in mind when estimating the map dimensions because I doubt Aaron would have mentioned the interiors in such an explicit way if there wasn't anything special, like a huge increase in accessible buildings compared to previous titles.
  16. gmt
    I ran out of popcorn. so... anything new about the map? treefitty? anyone?
  17. gmt
    I can only access the provided screenshots of the article pages (you know, that imgur gallery) and at least here, there's only one more helicopter screenshot from the harbor. interesting one I might add, as it shows a structure pretty similar to the Encounter Restaurant aka LAX Theme Buidling (lefthand side under the bridge, some arch-like structure I'd bet my ass on that it's the mentioned building) anyways, I still feel like the city is small. I gotta admit, the new set of pictures correct my previous impression of smallness of Los Santos, looks bigger than it did initially, but still it feels small to me. Almost every scenic view of the city allows to see from one end to the other (the oil derrick scene gives us a view as far as the marina, the new dam picture allows us to see Ocean Towers). of course it's hard to judge the real size from these pictures, especially since almost the entire south LS area wasn't shown yet, and what Dan and Aaron said not about the map, but only about LS, makes me hope I'm utterly wrong here, nevertheless I have this impression. Also, I feel like we've seen much more area of the backdrop than we saw of LS. Oh well, each and every new information wave makes me feel it's bigger... maybe until the game is released, I'm convinced that LS is not as small as it looks anyways, I tried to put my finger down on some more buildings shown. I'm totally not sure about the dam. It's architecture is reminiscent of Pacoima Dam north of Burbank, as the prominent power pole in the middle of it is something I haven't seen on any other dam around LA, but the location relative to LS suggests another dam I'm yet to find. Then, in the helicopter shot Dup linked above, at the far end just slightly left-down of the observatory, there seems to be a big structure in the hills (at least it looks like a single, big building). given how close it looks to the coast, I guess this could be the Getty The building under the helicopter blades here is tricky. location suggests Greek Theater, but the design doesn't match. nor can I find something with such a design built at the base of a mountain In the Vinwood sign picture, this structure covered by the helicopter blades, reminds me of a prison with the round shape and walls and towers. There's many prisons north of LA in the deserts but none of them matches the exact shape of this building, altho many have a somewhat round/oval layout. Didn't try military installations yet.
  18. gmt
    I don't think it's St. Basil, looks more like something with windows and balconies to me, still nice work there. idk I feel Los Santos gonna be pretty small, looking at all the pictures we have seen so far. Still missing the southern part and the airport, but I doubt it'll change my impression. I hope they make up for this with the backdrop. the few pics seen so far look very promissing. I wouldn't mind if the ratio between city and backdrop would be the same as it was in San Andreas around LS, about half the map city, half the map landscape, maybe with a little bias towards landscape.
  19. gmt
    In the trailer, you can clearly see how the "pest control" guys kick in a door of a jewelry store... given the location, my first guess was DeKoch Diamonds, but if the thing on the window is the store logo, it doesn't match DeKoch
  20. gmt
    yeah trailers were all a mix of cutscenes and actual gameplay... I remember a lot of talks about that scene with the 180° turn of an infernus, whether it's gameplay or cutszene, and somewhere down the line R* confirmed that this is actual gameplay footage even R*'s cutscenes are usually in-game... they don't do fancy cinematography like say, the uncharted series does for cutscenes... they keep it all grounded within the game... so everything you see, is from the game itself... you're right. it's just too obvious that the cutscenes in gta come entirely from the game engine and are not cgi or fancy polished engine output as in other games. but still the cutscenes are not gameplay footage as in someone plays and records it with whatever tool they use, they're rather a predefined set of actions and camera angles. the list of locations in gta4 suggests they're not even prerendered vidoes but produced "on demand", still they don't show something that would happen when you play the game. the bugstar van scene, for instance, is more likely to be a cutscene than recorded gameplay. and in the trailers, R* combined both of them. ...that's where I wanted to go with that post.
  21. gmt
    yeah trailers were all a mix of cutscenes and actual gameplay... I remember a lot of talks about that scene with the 180° turn of an infernus, whether it's gameplay or cutszene, and somewhere down the line R* confirmed that this is actual gameplay footage
  22. gmt
    not a certain type of vehicle, bt I'd like to see more unique vehicles or at least unique paintjob and/or setup. maybe as a gift from someone or left-over from missions...
  23. gmt
    slower time progression would be a nice catch. after playing sleeping dogs which felt like it's a rainy night for 80% of the game I'd really appreciate a longer day-night cycle. also, seasons would be cool, but since LA's climate doesn't really give us as defined seasons as other areas would do. winter is just colder and brings more rain, but still to warm for snow usually (at least in the city), so simulating it via weather wouldn't work so good. simulating seasons would mainly work via changing the entire city from summer-mode to winter-mode aka christmas with all the decorations. another nice catch would be to make the missions consider the current time aswell. Like you gotta do a break in and this turns out to be much easier at night than at day, but instead of just making the mission available at night only or to give us a "come back between 8pm and 4am to start the mission", the mission just starts at the time you walk into the marker, no matter if day or night, and you have to see how you get it done. go in guns blazing or linger around an plan your approach till nightfall, then hit it... (on a sidenote: in general, I would like to see more variety in finishing a mission, previous GTAs were pretty narrow in terms of that)
  24. gmt
    besides civillian airports not having restricted airspace as compared to a real restricted airspace like established for military operation, it wouldn't make any sense since service units like cops, firefighters and of course medics always have priority over regular air traffic, so they would in fact just penetrate an airport's airspace. further, some badass mafia killer commando hunting our protagonist down in a helicopter wouldn't give a fuck about airspace restrictions. they're in for the killing but respect airspace structure? srsly? You obviously don't know about police procedure in L.A ( and this is probably similar to other Western Major Cities aswell ). Firstly they must seek clearance from the Air Traffic Controller, before going into an Airport's restricted airspace ( and it IS restricted, civilian or not ). Most of the time this will be denied because of the many Commercial Planes landing and taking off, especially at LAX ( one of the busiest Airports in the world ). If they were as reckless as you are implying, I'm sure the Mid-Air Collision Rate would skyrocket ( if you would forgive the pun ). And if you still say they would completely shutdown the entire airports departure and arrival cycle, just so the police can chase one crazy person leading them on a high speed chase, you sir are crazy. I mean srsly? maybe I was a bit unclear as to what I wanted to say with my aneurysm-giving airspace reasoning, but since I'm holding a valid PPL and am in training for ATPL I guess I'm more or less familiar with my side of the atc procedures. Of course this doesn't include the actual LAX (or any other airport) procedures for criminals entering the airport, especially apron side, to avoid cops chasing him down by helicopters, but to me this scenario is to some sort an emergency and definitely compromises the safe conduct of flight at the airport. And all the groundbased units chasing the criminal down make it even worse so... maybe atc denies police helicopters to continue the chase (like I said, my atc knowledge is limited to the flight-side; maybe atc staff could answer this better) but I have a really hard time imagining atc would just go on with the regular stuff. straying around the apron without proper paperwork already causes an avalanche of security measures taken, go figure what happens if the person is armed and 3stars+ dangerous...
  25. gmt
    besides civillian airports not having restricted airspace as compared to a real restricted airspace like established for military operation, it wouldn't make any sense since service units like cops, firefighters and of course medics always have priority over regular air traffic, so they would in fact just penetrate an airport's airspace. further, some badass mafia killer commando hunting our protagonist down in a helicopter wouldn't give a fuck about airspace restrictions. they're in for the killing but respect airspace structure? srsly?