Ghent Theft Auto

Ghent Theft Auto, commonly abbreviated to GhTA, is a video game modification that aims to present the city of Ghent, Belgium inside a GTA-esque game. To achieve this goal, the RAGE-engine is used, also used by the popular game Grand Theft Auto IV, developed by Rockstar Games.
The modification doesn't primarily revolve on adding specific gameplay, but rather on bringing existing gameplay to Ghent. The user will be required to have the original PC-release of Grand Theft Auto IV or Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City in order to run. The developers will never distribute copyrighted content and the intention is to release the modification for free.
History
Ghent Theft Auto was born when the project leader, Lucas Selfslagh, was playing San Andreas during his childhood. As many GTA-players before him, he wondered how the game would be like if the gameplay was set in his hometown, with recognizable cars and habitants. Years went on, and when Lucas found himself struggling in Architecture School, he came to idea of using a Grand Theft Auto-game to visualise one of his designs. As soon as he succeeded in making small adjustments, he decided to go through with the development of Ghent Theft Auto.
Within the first month, the project got picked up by the national media and soon it was featured in a host of magazines and newspapers, starred on national television shows as :nl:Café Corsari and :nl:Scheire en de schepping and is featured regularly on blogs and gaming websites. At one point, Ghent Theft Auto was reaching 70,000 people a week, solely on Facebook.
Team
The team is devised of a group of volunteers with each their different roles.Some people provided mentoring or resources, others are more involved in a day to day basis. Some of the notable contributions consist of: recordings of police and ambulance sirens, artwork for loading screens, web hosting, 2d drawings, 3d models of Ghent props...
Because of the huge amount of work that goes into the project, it has been decided to build a web application that will enable anybody to contribute to the 3D-modelling aspect of the project. Users will be able to download 3D models and further refine them using Sketchup, a free 3D platform. Once finished, the user re-uploads them to the database, where data such as the author is logged. This way, contributors can influence and participate in the development of the mod and be properly credited both inside and outside the game.
Tools & workflow
During development, the team uses Trimble Sketchup, 3D Studio Max, Autocad, and Adobe Photoshop to a great extent.
The pipeline can be represented as following:
* extracting crude blocks from .dwg data
* applying photo textures, cleaned and prepared with Photoshop
* further refining the models, using Sketchup
* when models are complete, they are imported into 3DS Max
* in 3DS Max, the models are triangulated, smoothed, etc.
* using 3rd party scripts commonly available on the web, the models are prepared for the RAGE-engine
The parameters of the GTA world were ′converted′ to Sketchup, giving the team precise control over the location, scale and orientation of models natively in Sketchup.
Release
The first release of the mod is scheduled for 2013. A closed beta will be released in the summer of 2013. The team has decided not to reveal how to apply for this beta for the time being.
Reference list

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See Also

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