GTA is basically all 3D. The only thing they dont do is rotation.

The coordinates have to be in 3D as there are height elements, the buildigns are all texture mapped and the scaling shows that they are done the same way any item in 3D is texture mapped.

You could do this simpler with a non-3D engine but it wouldnt give the same feeling as when buildings and such that stuck up off the ground became bigger, the perspective of them wouldnt change.

-Geoff

So you would suggest the use of Direct3D?

If you're comfortable with it. Either D3D or GL will work just fine.

-Nick

One thing i've notice about 3d engines which maybe their only weakness vs 2d engines is that they suck for sprite animation. Like changing textures on the fly is very slow, since most cards transform the raw images into special formats optimal for their rendering hardware. Its no where near as fast as a 2d engine when it comes to sprite animation, i feel. So if your going 3d it looks like your going to have to go all the way, as sprites moving at 2fps wont look too pretty against a 3d world moving at 30fps 8^). Well it does depend upon their size, though still slow when alot of them are changing at once. Has that been the experience of anyone else?

-ddn

How do you make GTA like worlds, they are somewhat "3D", is there a tutorial/example on this? Any help would be appreciated..

drago

The most likely reason for this is that they arent designed to be good at changing images

Basically, the idea with 3D is that you have textures that are static and then you change the way they are mapped by manipulating the polys they are mapped too...

Its just a paradigm thing

-Geoff