For example, we've now got a lossless compression system for an animation, which has allowed us to have a greater variety of cars and pedestrians at once. We've compressed and optimized across the board, both by hand in the creation of the art and in the code itself. This has been a tough technical challenge - but once cracked it was incredibly liberating for the team. Vice City is so much bigger it required a whole new streaming system to be developed, one which will cope with any size of world you care to throw at it.
A big part of the whole Grand Theft Auto experience is the ability to seamlessly stream in these vast cities without needing to halt the game to load in some data. This has freed up the CPU to do other things, and allowed us to push the graphics processor even harder, bringing the Vice City vibe to life with these incredible views stretching off into the horizon. Among a raft of tweaks and tune-ups, we've come up with new ways for the CPU and the graphics processor to talk to each other. YES NO IGN: How is this different from the system used in Liberty City Stories? Hall: A lot went into making this possible - we're very proud of what was achieved with Liberty City Stories, but that engine just couldn't cope with these demands.
