A former developer at Rockstar North, the studio behind the hugely popular Grand Theft Auto franchise, has revealed the reasons why planes sometimes fly in GTA San Andreas would just randomly crash near the player. He also gave some insight into why a certain NPC in the game took a photo and then ran off a cliff to his death.
Late last year, former Rockstar North developer Obbe Vermeij published some fascinating blogs chronicling the development of Past GTA games and the original Manhunt. These articles are full of interesting insights and details about the creation of these video games. But Vermeij later deleted the posts voluntarily. Since then, he’s been posting similar details about how games are liked on Twitter GTA San Andreas And Vice City have been developed, and his latest posts expose two fan-favorite myths.
Why planes randomly appear near you and crash
First, on April 2, Vermeij published a long but informative post on Twitter explaining why planes are arriving San Andreas will seemingly fall from the sky for no reason, crash, and then explode near the player. If you played San Andreas Long enough, you’ve probably come across this at least a few times. It is also known to cause problems Speedruns.
According to Vermeij’s postThe developers wanted small planes to fly past the player at regular intervals. He created a code that looks for obstacles in a plane’s path before it appears. However, to save time, he only scanned a small section in front of a part of the aircraft. This means that sometimes tall, thin objects are missed and planes fly into these trees or utility poles and crash. And because the game tries to spawn these planes near the player, you are always near these random crashes.
Vermeij further explained that these generated “flyby” aircraft would sometimes lose some altitude if generated at the wrong speed. There were also some issues with map transfer in buildings and other large models. Sometimes the plane was created before a large mountain or tower had appeared, meaning the plane was created with a “doomed trajectory.”
“I was aware of the crashes and briefly considered removing the flybys altogether,” Vermeij added.
Luckily, he didn’t, and these strange planes have led to plenty of hilarious moments in speedruns, Let’s Plays, and random sessions San Andreas. I know that a plane carrying a dirt bike once picked me up while I was trying to jump off a large mountain in the game’s desert. Damn plane!
After he posted the statement, prominently GTA Modder and Coder Silent explained further that these planes crash more often than they should due to a collision detection error, something Vermeij didn’t know about as confirmed on Twitter.
And no, your lucky status has nothing to do with plane crashes near you. Vermeij confirmed. This is just an internet myth.
Why this NPC in San Andreas jump off this cliff
After publishing the explanation why planes are flying in GTA San Andreas Because crashes occur so often and why they happen near the player, many fans came forward with additional questions about the game. GTA San Andreas is, after all, full of strange myths and urban legends.
One that caught my attention was someone asking about a certain NPC in San Andreas who sometimes walks on a cliff near the ocean, takes a photo, and then runs out into the water (and to his death). If you search online, you’ll find old videos of people documenting this creepy NPC, usually with spooky music playing in the background.
So what’s going on here? Well, it turns out that the developers in GTA San Andreas used things known as “attractors” – in-game items such as an ATM or a chair that NPCs went to once they completed a scripted activity or action.
What’s probably happening here is that the NPC takes a photo and after completing this “action” looks for a nearby attractor or a path to an attractor and heads in that direction. Vermeij suggested that for this suicidal NPC, the nearest attractor may be across the water, leading to this creepy behavior.
In another post Vermeij confirmed The Fan theory that the ghost cars that comes in San Andreas are the result of cars appearing on steep hills and then rolling down the slope, creating the illusion of a self-driving but empty car.
Oh, and one more thing GTA Urban legend while you’re here. When asked if Bigfoot was real, Vermeij said nothe primacy is not there GTA San Andreas. But he has confirmed that he exists in the real world. Good to know!
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