Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

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crotchetyoldgamer
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Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by crotchetyoldgamer »

I was curious if GTA3 could be ported to the Dreamcast I think it can but it would be a hard and very long process.
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by cube_b3 »

Brings back memories.

Remember that fake GTA for DC website?
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by crotchetyoldgamer »

No I didn't even know there was a fake GTA3 DC website.
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by cube_b3 »

http://web.archive.org/web/200410192240 ... reedc.html

As for your question, I think a team of professional devs can easily port GTA on DC.

Crazy Taxi is a good example of an open world game that looks quite better than GTA3 in my opinion, and moves at a faster pace.
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by crotchetyoldgamer »

Thanks for finding the website. But I have to agree with you on crazy taxi it was a big open world game with some good graphics. So I don't see why GTA3 couldn't be ported to the dreamcast heres a link talking about GTA3 in the early stages and near the end of the article it briefly talks why GTA3 couldn't be on the dreamcast http://www.unseen64.net/2008/04/15/gta- ... emos-beta/. But I think it's a lie GTA3 could be ported to the dreamcast I had a idea on how to do it get the pc version of the game and tweak the files so they could run on the dreamcast but I know it as simple as that theres more work that goes into it.
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by BlueCrab »

You can't port a game without the source code. Since GTA3 isn't an open-source game, there'll never be a port.
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by Multimedia Mike »

BlueCrab wrote:You can't port a game without the source code. Since GTA3 isn't an open-source game, there'll never be a port.
Eh, never say never. :grin: Many games have been ported forward without the benefit of being open source-- I'm sure you're aware of ScummVM and FreeSCI, for example. (Meanwhile, some games get open sourced but never ported because of the complexity of their code.)

If I were to broadly speculate on such a task, I would suspect that it would largely consist of implementing a new engine that could process all of the original game assets. I would be surprised if there wasn't already a vibrant (well, perhaps stagnant, given the game's age) modding community that would have lots of information about the game's data formats. Studying the newer GTA3 ports for iOS and Android could provide further clues (comparing assets to other versions).

I'm not necessarily volunteering for the task. However, I did just finish playing my first open world crime game-- Mafia II. Being the programming nerd I am, I couldn't stop constantly theorizing about how various features in the game were implemented.
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by BlueCrab »

That, of course, really wouldn't be a port, so to speak. :wink:

ScummVM and FreeSCI aren't really ports either -- they're just effectively emulating the runtime environment for the game's scripts. Much like rlvm does for games based on the RealLive engine (of course, I may well be the only one around here that's ever heard of that one).

So, I stand by my original statement that it can't be ported so to speak. If someone would reimplement the whole engine, that's of course a different story (and would be pretty impressive, in my opinion). :)
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Re: Curious if GTA3 could be ported to Dreamcast

Post by Multimedia Mike »

BlueCrab wrote:So, I stand by my original statement that it can't be ported so to speak. If someone would reimplement the whole engine, that's of course a different story (and would be pretty impressive, in my opinion). :)
Well stated. By that definition, I concur-- no source, no port. We can always dream about a full engine re-implementation (indeed, I have a lengthy list of much simpler games where I would like to attempt this).
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