Former programmer on GTA games has revealed why in-game trash was removed from the streets of GTA San Andreas.
Obbe Vermeij, former programmer on GTA 3, GTA: Vice City, GTA: San Andreas, and GTA IV took to Twitter/X to talk about the addition and removal of in-game trash in the series. He mentioned that the streets of GTA 3 looked too clean, so he added litter. It was represented in the form of a single rectangle that occasionally moves with the wind and can also be dragged along by passing cars. The artists created four textures for it purpose, two newspapers and two leaves.
According to Vermeij, in GTA: Vice City, there is a mission called “Dildo Dodo”, where the player drops flyers for Candy Suxx’s show. From that point onwards, one of the four litter textures is replaced with the flyer. For each “hop”, the animation consist of movement along the ground. Further, if it’s windy. the litter moves up and down along a sinus function, and more hops occur. Because line-scans were slow, it only detects the height of the ground at the landing location. He mentioned that due to this, the litter can go through the map in some cases. Not everyone on the team liked the litter implementation.
Vermeij ended up removing in-game trash from the streets of GTA: San Andreas because he eventually lost the argument with the rest of the development team. He also revealed that during the last months of Manhunt’s development, some GTA developers helped out, including him. He added the same litter code that he had implemented in GTA Vice City to Manhunt.
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is an action adventure game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It is set in the fictional state of San Andreas and focuses on Carl “CJ” Johnson, who returns home after his mother’s murder only to find that his old street gang has lost much of their territory. The game was originally released for the PS2, with subsequent ports to various other platforms.
