I recall in some interview that Rockstar never wants to show footage of the development process or have any "behind the scenes". Even video interviews at their office is rare (I know of only one). Their reason for it is that it would ruin the "magic" when you play the game.
Especially back in the day, you'd pop in the DVD in the PS2, and you'd get to see Liberty/Vice city or San Andreas quickly (— no install required).
You rarely see an interview of a producer/developer as well.
Honestly, for their current "modern" games, it is understandable. But almost 20 year old games? Come on.
What a weird position for them to take. I've A) never felt BTS stuff ruined "the magic" of a game, and B) found Rockstar's games all that "magical" (well, other than RDR). I mean, prior to GTA4, their games were a clunky mess.
GTA IV's tech was quite ahead of its time (2008), with the integration of Euphoria (which had to be integrated in-house by NaturalMotion engineers inside Rockstar's studio @ Edinburgh).
The other comment correctly pointed out that NaturalMotion was acquired by Zynga, who in turn got acquired by Take-Two (parent of Rockstar Games).. So who knows, perhaps we'll still see an updated version in the sixth major instalment of the franchise.
Euphoria was used for a subset of animations, for the most part traditional mocapped animations (and a lot of them) were used to drive character movements. I don’t know if motion matching was used on GTA4 but it was on other Rockstar games at the time and subsequently.
Characters blended to the hand written, custom, euphoria behaviors in certain situations… it handled falls, stumbles, deaths, etc. Generally it replaced ragdoll physics but wasn’t used during most character movement behaviors.
I can't wait until major frameworks (such as Spring in version 6.1) support virtual threads. Reactive programming (e.g., Webflux) would become a niche (unless your use case truly requires streaming with a high number of TPS).
I have tremendous admiration for all teachers, especially computer science teachers who (presumably) could make more money working as engineers in the industry, but instead choose to educate others and help them chase their dreams. You are an inspiration and thank you!
Nice post – I'd like to echo those words. The (Assistant/Associate) Professors, lecturers and researchers @ research institutes I have seen could easily move to the industry and make plenty of money (whilst facing less politics and get more funding/time for their research), yet their love for teaching and inspiring students is admirably greater.
