Grand Theft Auto IV

[eDotd]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6189477...stnews;title;1

We're past the point of no return.

YES. Only a few more days now...

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Getting Closer and closer...

GTA IV Goes Gold + Lazlow Speaks on GTA IV + New Screenshots

Posted by Andy at 21:23. Category: General

<center>GTA IV Goes Gold!</center>
Yesterday saw the opening of pre-registration for the Rockstar Social Club, and despite some technical issues, the launch was mostly a success; thousands of gamers quickly swooped in to secure their Social Club membership within less than an hour of the Social Club going live. Also occuring yesterday was Take Two's annual (albeit brief) shareholders meeting, in which an announcement from Take Two confirmed that Grand Theft Auto IV has "gone gold" with production in full swing.
Today also has its fair share of GTA IV perks. Lazlow Jones -- a lead writer, radio host, and long-time fan favourite who has been responsible for much of the dialogue and content found within most Grand Theft Auto titles -- appeared on the Opie and Anthony show earlier today to discuss his role in the development of Grand Theft Auto IV. While he touches on much of what we already know, he also goes into more detail on subjects that haven't received as much blatant coverage (including the downloadable content for Xbox and Rockstar North's inevitable "one month vacation" after GTA IV's release).
Here's a summary of some of the info that Lazlow covered on the show:

• There are over 100 radio commercials in the game.
• Announcements on the subway system will randomly alert you of spontaneous police harassment, security checks and searches.
• The faux-beer brand "Piswasser" takes a jab at Budweiser, including a radio commercial sung by Anthony himself.
• GTA IV's in-game internet is ridiculously extensive, featuring spoofs of liberal and conservative news sources with coverage of your in-game antics, as well as spoofs popular blogs and websites (craigslist, for example). Irritating pop-up banner ads also make an appearance.
• Niko can hook up with a wide range of girls via dating websites.
• Injuries mean much more in GTA IV. When Niko gets shot in the leg, for example, he'll begin to bleed and limp.
• Recording sessions for dialogue and in-game audio went on for ten hours a day, five days a week. The entire process took weeks to finish.
• Rockstar employees have been working overtime and well into the weekends to complete the game.
• Between the Xbox 360 version of the game and the PS3 version, Lazlow admits that he prefers the 360 version thanks to the downloadable content; new missions, new characters, new comedy, etc.

If you want to listen to the show, a couple of clips from the Lazlow interview have been posted on YouTube (Part 1, Part 2). The full episode is also available through Audible.com for $2.50 USD. Thanks to Planet Grand Theft Auto for the heads up (and subsequently "Vanilla Shake" for sending in a synopsis of the interview). You can, as always, discuss this latest news on our forum.
To add to this influx of good news, we've also added four new(-ish) screenshots to our gallery. Don't be surprised if these images seem familiar; you may have spotted low-res versions of these images in recent print publications

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

More New Info

GTA IV Audio Q&A

Posted by Andy at 02:36. Category: General
The movies that we watch, the games that we play... they just wouldn't be the same if it wasn't for the audio. The Grand Theft Auto series is no exception; the ambiance of the city is as important to Grand Theft Auto as the Imperial March is to Star Wars. GTA IV aims to maintain this healthy balance of audio and visual, and on that note, I'm happy to say that GamesRadar has just recently posted a multi-page Audio Q&A for Grand Theft Auto IV.
The Q&A includes Matthew Smith, Craig Conner and Will Morton, all of whom are senior employees with the Rockstar North audio team. Some quotes that we found particularly interesting:

• "Stand in the street and you’ll hear three different radio stations at any one time coming from passing vehicles, all sounding appropriately tinny or boomy, depending on the type of vehicle and whether its doors are open, its windows broken, etc."
• "It was our aim that you could place the player in a random position on the map, shut your eyes and listen, and be able to tell where you are, and what time of day it is, and I think we’ve achieved that pretty well."
• "For multiplayer, we balance [the sound of gunfire] so that guns only really sound dangerously beefy when they’re at a distance you can be hit from, so it’s intuitive what’s threatening and what’s someone else’s private war."
• "It’s difficult to quantify how many speaking parts there are, but at our last count there were over 740 unique voices in the game. There are over 80,000 individual lines of dialogue, more than 7000 of which are Niko’s lines. If you were to listen to each line back to back, it would take over 29 hours. Also, these figures don’t take the radio, TV, and mo-capped cut-scene dialogue into consideration."
• "We also decided to make the pedestrian dialogue more realistic in GTA4. As an example, peds in previous games would walk around and randomly chat to themselves if they weren’t doing much else. In real life, people (generally!) don’t go around talking to themselves, so we dropped this behavior from GTA4. However, we realized that the random chat of old GTA games was a good way for the player to pick-up on what sort of personality a ped has, so we created the cell-phone conversations in GTA4 as one realistic way of portraying personality."

The Q&A also includes a handful of new screenshots (which should be enough to satisfy those of you who don't like to read). As always, you can talk about this latest bit of GTA IV info on our forums.
Related Link: GTA IV Audio Q&A at GamesRadar

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Q&A on GTA Audio:

Answered by:
Matthew Smith, Craig Conner and Will Morton, three senior members of the Rockstar North Audio team.

What effect did the shift to more powerful hardware have on in-game audio?
MS: Perhaps the biggest change was the amount of environmental effects we can apply, by using Digital Signal Processing that was too expensive last-gen. For example, every sound in the game has its own filter, so it can appear muffled, and a unique amount and size of reverb - so a car horn coming from a tunnel 100m away sounds very different to a car horn right next to the player, instead of just being quieter as it might have been previously.
It also let us scale up the complexity and amount of sounds that play at any one time, letting us flesh out a world as varied and detailed as GTA IV – at times we’re playing thousands of individual sounds simultaneously. Stand in the street and you’ll hear three different radio stations at any one time coming from passing vehicles, all sounding appropriately tinny or boomy, depending on the type of vehicle and whether its doors are open, its windows broken, etc.

The ambient sound in GTA IV is one of the key features in making it seem like a believable place. Do you use a generic city sound, or is the background thrum made up of individual sounds from individual, identifiable sources? i.e. if I hear a police siren does that mean there is a police car in the next street, or is it just generic city noises?
MS: Most of the time what you hear is really happening - what’s so great about GTA IV from an audio team’s perspective is that you hardly ever need to fake anything – the world’s so rich and so busy, that if you make individual things sound right, the whole ambience pretty much just appears by itself. But we do also have a system of ambient sources to make the more distant city feel alive - what makes the two fit together so well is that they use exactly the same sounds, with exactly the same environmental effects, so it’s very hard to tell which is which. The ambient effects change dramatically based on your location in the city, the time of day, and so on – so it’s very dynamic, and obviously not just a pre-canned loop of ‘city ambience’. It was our aim that you could place the player in a random position on the map, shut your eyes and listen, and be able to tell where you are, and what time of day it is, and I think we’ve achieved that pretty well.

Do you know how many individual sound effect files are in GTA IV?
MS: We have around four-and-a-half thousand individual sfx in the game, which are combined into around 19 thousand different combinations. That’s ignoring the insane amount of dialogue, cutscenes and radio content. Rain sounds alone take up around a third of the entire audio budget for San Andreas!



I remember hearing distant gunfire and the noises subtly changing as I got closer to the battle. How do you create the effect of distance on each sound?
MS: Gunfire is a good example of how complex videogame audio has become; a single gunshot typically consists of around 10 individual components, whose volume and placement we control independently with distance, to create a bright, wide, punchy sound up-close, and a more reverberant, muffled sound at a distance. For multiplayer, we balance this so that guns only really sound dangerously beefy when they’re at a distance you can be hit from, so it’s intuitive what’s threatening and what’s someone else’s private war.
How does the team work with the written script? Do changes and edits happen throughout the development process?
WM: Changes can happen all the time, particularly with the pedestrian dialogue. In the case of the peds, each character is given a back-story, his or her behaviors are sorted out, and then using this information a script is written. This can be anything from 20 lines of dialogue (for peds who are used only in very specific situations) up to 300 lines. An average ped will have about 200 lines of dialogue. While the script is being written, actors are cast and studio time is booked.
As we are dealing with hundreds of voices at a time when it comes to the peds, the recordings are done in three or four large sessions, rather than a couple here and a couple there. It’s quite amazing to witness it from start to finish – we’ll have three studios booked for a week and will usually record about 100 peds in that time. Most peds take about an hour to record, so at any one time there are three new actors arriving at the studio and three others leaving. Franceska, the producer of the VO sessions in NY, will be running between the three studios making sure everything runs smoothly, ferrying the talent in (and out) on time, and waving her magic wand at anything else that needs attention. Each studio will have a director from Rockstar Games to take care of getting the right character and performance from the actors, plus Craig and I from the audio team at Rockstar North are on hand to ensure that everything recorded is exactly what is required for the game. As manic as it is, everything runs like clockwork and not a second is wasted.
Most changes will be made to the script during recording. Lines may change for many reasons, because they are too long or they are too funny for a serious situation, but sometimes lines change simply because an actor performs them differently. We always get multiple takes of lines, and the directors work hard to give us more choice when it comes to putting the best takes in the game.
Once the peds are recorded, the best takes of each line are selected and the lines edited, mastered, and implemented into the game. As there are so many peds in the game, we have to start recording them months before the game is complete. Sometimes new features will be put into the game which will mean that peds who have already been recorded need more speech to deal with them. The peds continue to grow and evolve until the game is finished.

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Page 2:

How many speaking parts are there in the game? How much dialogue?
WM: It’s difficult to quantify how many speaking parts there are, but at our last count there were over 740 unique voices in the game. There are over 80,000 individual lines of dialogue, more than 7000 of which are Niko’s lines. If you were to listen to each line back to back, it would take over 29 hours. Also, these figures don’t take the radio, TV, and mo-capped cut-scene dialogue into consideration.

What’s different about the pedestrians in GTA 4 compared to previous games?
WM: The pedestrian AI is much more complex in GTA4 than it has been in previous games, and we have to create dialogue to cope with this - peds now do a lot more than they could do previously, and can react in more ways to what happens in the game.
We also decided to make the pedestrian dialogue more realistic in GTA4. As an example, peds in previous games would walk around and randomly chat to themselves if they weren’t doing much else. In real life, people (generally!) don’t go around talking to themselves, so we dropped this behavior from GTA4. However, we realized that the random chat of old GTA games was a good way for the player to pick-up on what sort of personality a ped has, so we created the cell-phone conversations in GTA4 as one realistic way of portraying personality.


The GTA series has a reputation for having incredible soundtracks that really set the mood for the whole game. How do you decide what tracks to put in?
CC: Sam Houser had a clear vision for the music on GTA IV. It was very important to present a soundtrack that displayed a contemporary, fresh sound that reflects Liberty City, its residents, cultures, fashions and locations. It was decided early on that contemporary Hip Hop, Dance Rock and Russian music should take up a lot of the airwaves.

Ivan Pavlovich and Andi Hanley (The Soundtrack supervisors) are two guys who know the NY music scene inside and out. They sourced the music for IV by searching for some of the hottest new sounds around - and found them. Together with Sam and I, we listened to tons of different styles of music until we found a vibe that would work for each station. It was a very long process, but at the same time very exciting and simple, a track either works in the game or it doesn't, it either fits the vibe of its station, or it doesn't. When we have a few good tracks that fit together, it creates a strong vibe and we build a station from that.

As well as an abundance of new and exclusive tracks, a lot of care went in to finding classic sounds of NYC. We've touched on classic music from the likes of CBGB's, Studio 54, Hip Hop, jazz and afro beat just to name a few...

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Page 3

What’s new about the radio stations and how they are assembled?
CC: The DJS have far more AI than previous titles. They know what time of day it is, what the weather is like and what’s going on in LC. They've even done their research on their playlists, some of their own tracks appears on them. In fact all the DJS are either famous singers or musicians (or both.) They have plenty to say about their chosen genre of music as they've lived it, loved it, or are living it.

Weasel News brings news to a whole new level. The broadcasts offer plenty of info on LC with up to date interactive bulletins of what is happening throughout the story.

The majority of the stations play dynamically, kind of like a massive Jukebox selecting tracks randomly, it works similar to SA radio, but with a larger number of tracks, DJ speech, commercials, idents, weather and news reports. In addition to the dynamic stations, Ivan tracked down some of the hottest DJ acts in NY to create exclusive mixes for certain stations.

As some tracks are pretty obscure and were very hard to find, the player doesn't have to do any leg work surfing for these tracks, simply tag the songs you like in your mobile phone using ZiT (GTA IV’s brand new feature ) preview the song via Amazon and buy it if you wish. It’s that easy.

Do any artists approach you hoping to be included?
CC: Yes, lots of artists (signed and unsigned) approach Rockstar Games for inclusion in the soundtracks. All material is listened to and taken on board if it fits the vibe of the current game.

What is your favorite radio station in the game?
CC: It has to be Vladivostok. This station has some of the most bizarre and fantastic Russian tracks I've ever heard. It really sets the mood for Niko and Roman and the first section of the game.

Apr 18, 2008

[bkfount]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

goddamnit...

i want this now

[gta95]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

I'm freezing myself inside a tube until this game comes out. I can't wait anymore!!!!

[Hoos]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

I'm freezing myself inside a tube until this game comes out. I can't wait anymore!!!!

I'm with you there brother

If I don't have a brain aneurism before the 29th it will be a miracle!!!

Contemplating making a run to my "early release" Walmart tomorrow or Sunday morning. I thought I read on here that Walmart will stock there shelves for the new add week after midnight on Saturday (Sunday morning), can anyone conform that???

With The Show 08, I found it at my Walmart on a Sunday morning, but they didn't have it on the shelf that Sat. afternoon. Might just wait until real early this Sunday morning then.

I know that next weekend may actually be more realistic to score a early release, but you never know

[Flawless]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Audio of Jim Norton playing GTA IV.

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[Cubfan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

I'm with you there brother

If I don't have a brain aneurism before the 29th it will be a miracle!!!

Contemplating making a run to my "early release" Walmart tomorrow or Sunday morning. I thought I read on here that Walmart will stock there shelves for the new add week after midnight on Saturday (Sunday morning), can anyone conform that???

With The Show 08, I found it at my Walmart on a Sunday morning, but they didn't have it on the shelf that Sat. afternoon. Might just wait until real early this Sunday morning then.

I know that next weekend may actually be more realistic to score a early release, but you never know

Even if Wal-Mart puts GTA4 on the shelf its not going to be in their system so you won't be able to buy it.

[Flawless]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

"It’s difficult to quantify how many speaking parts there are, but at our last count there were over 740 unique voices in the game. There are over 80,000 individual lines of dialogue, more than 7000 of which are Niko’s lines. If you were to listen to each line back to back, it would take over 29 hours. Also, these figures don’t take the radio, TV, and mo-capped cut-scene dialogue into consideration."

That's quite impressive. Some brilliant minds and compression techniques to get this amount of dialogue on top of all the other content to fit on a DVD.

[Holic]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

Even if Wal-Mart puts GTA4 on the shelf its not going to be in their system so you won't be able to buy it.

It all depends. I bought The Show 08 3-4 days early and it was in there system. The lady grabbed it, rang it up, all with no problem. I do think GTA IV will be alot harder to score, than some ol' baseball game.

[Cubfan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

My local Wal-Mart surprisingly is normaly up on release dates. So if i happen to see it im sure im going go get "doesn't come out untill the 29" I just want to strangle the guy because it was put in the case in the first place.

[ProfessaPackMan]

Re: Let's talk about... Grand Theft Auto 4

One of the dudes I grew up with works at Circuit City and told me they usually get them in a week before release and said he would get me with a copy of GTA. Unfortunately I have to pay him some compensation as it is a huge risk he is taking.

But come Monday or Tuesday, I will be cruising the streets of Broker and Dukes