{"id":954205,"date":"2026-05-12T06:06:19","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/954205\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T06:06:19","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T06:06:19","slug":"how-rockstar-squeezed-a-whole-city-into-your-ps2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/954205\/","title":{"rendered":"How Rockstar Squeezed a Whole City into Your PS2"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"How<\/a><\/p>\n

If you weren\u2019t there at the time, it\u2019s really difficult to put into words just how impressive GTA 3<\/a> was on the PS2.<\/p>\n

Sure, there\u2019d been open world games before \u2013 Shenmue<\/a> pre-dated it by a couple of years in Japan \u2013 but nothing on the scale of Liberty City, a living breathing sandbox where you could do anything and go anywhere.<\/p>\n

But how the heck did Rockstar squeeze the world into the PS2\u2019s 32MB RAM? This video digs into the dev\u2019s wizardry.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While many of you may already be familiar with the concepts explained by the Game Maker\u2019s Tool Kit<\/a> here, we thought it was worth sharing just because of how brilliantly assembled it is.<\/p>\n

Mark Brown does an excellent job taking quite complicated ideas and demonstrating them in a way that\u2019s really easy to digest.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll let him do the explaining, but effectively the dev divided Liberty City into a series of squares, pulling in the assets required once you get close to them. This allows it to constantly repopulate the RAM with whatever information it needs, flushing the information once you get further away.<\/p>\n

The video delves into all kinds of common headaches, like pop-in and texture streaming. It also explains how Rockstar overcame the comparatively slow read speed of the PS2\u2019s DVD drive.<\/p>\n

A lot of these techniques are still used today, of course, albeit in much more complicated fashion. But this video will not only help you understand how open world games work, but also the kind of magic the developer was able to achieve on the PS2.<\/p>\n

In the end, GTA 3 and its superior successors Vice City<\/a> and San Andreas<\/a> would go on to become two of the best-selling PS2 games of all time.<\/p>\n

And Rockstar\u2019s continued to push the envelope ever since, most recently with Red Dead Redemption 2<\/a> \u2013 and presumably with the upcoming GTA 6<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n

Were you blown away by GTA 3 when it first released? Did you already understand all of the concepts explained in this video? Let us know below.<\/p>\n

[source youtube.com<\/a>]<\/p>\n

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Related Games<\/dt>\n
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\"Sammy<\/p>\n

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He\u2019s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you weren\u2019t there at the time, it\u2019s really difficult to put into words just how impressive GTA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[2404,60522,2974,2403,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-954205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-grand-theft-auto","9":"tag-gta","10":"tag-ps2","11":"tag-rockstar-games","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116560107375952876","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=954205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}