Summary
- Former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij revealed a fun tid-bit about how GTA 3 traffic lights originally worked.
- At one point during development, running a red light would land you a one star wanted level.
- However, this idea wasn’t popular with the team, so Vermeij removed it.
Crime is Grand Theft Auto’s whole M.O. You hijack cars, get into shootouts, break into airports, and occasionally run over pedestrians while trying to overtake some poor sap on the sidewalk. But a night in jail — or even just the hospital — washes away your murderous sins.
Escaping the police is half the fun of GTA’s no-consequences open world. But we would’ve been doing a lot more of that had former Rockstar developer Obbe Vermeij had his way. As reported by GamesRadar, he originally designed it so that running a red light in GTA 3 would get you a one-star wanted level. But this idea was quickly scrapped because it “was not popular with the team.”
During GTA 3, I gave players a one star wanted level for running red lights. This was not popular with the team. I quickly removed it.
It’s a fun idea in theory. We’ve all gotten so bored that we started following traffic laws in GTA, stopping at red lights and meandering like an NPC. But if you want to get across the map in a hurry, you’ll inevitably run red lights, which would have meant a constant one star wanted level that would only escalate as you tried again and again to escape.
Some games of that era did punish you for running red lights, however, like Driver and Mafia. But Vermeij argues that it suits Mafia more since “That game was a bit more slow paced.”
Vermeij Also Shed Light On How GTA 3 Traffic Lights Work
But what did stay in the game was the clever way traffic lights work. As Vermeij explains, “In GTA 3, traffic lights cycle through three states: North/South, East/West, Pedestrians. The traffic light’s model orientation determines its cycle, and at startup, my code sorted the cycle in the road nodes.
This is why, even if the light was knocked over, cars still obeyed the light. Map artists just placed the light, ran the game, and it all worked — no extra setup needed. Simple, but it still worked this way in [GTA 4].”
Game developers are masters of illusion, clearly, whereas video game NPCs have a strange sixth sense that allows them to read the traffic lights in the road like a really strange medium who watched one too many episodes of Top Gear.
Grand Theft Auto 3
- Released
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October 23, 2001
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood, Strong Language, Violence