iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Photo:Rockstar North, Calton Square, Edinburgh, 2010-ish. This area was level design. The programmers are just visible in the distance on the right (that’s where I sat before I left). Art was behind the photographer. QA and Audio were in a separate wing. The wall art is from when we moved in, 2004

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

That would be the first time I played the missions in order and experienced the story. There would be missions I hadn't seen before.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Especially towards the end, a lot of the job is fixing an endless stream of bugs. Fun fact: We used to have ‘pencils down’ 2 weeks before going gold. Then we'd all play through the game to find the last bugs.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Working on gta3, Vice, SA and gta4 was more like a regular job than people imagine. Most of us worked headphones on in our own area - art, code, music - for 8 hours a day. We had very few meetings. Only a small number of people made the big decisions about gameplay and story.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

My youngest is 2 inch taller than me and works out. Carrying him is a thing of the distant past. Yeah, getting old sucks. My eyebrow hair is now so long it touches my eye balls. That was never a problem.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Also; Even if the leaker has a copy of the game running on a devkit, there is no way to run it on a retail ps5. The devkits have more memory. During development the game would not fit in the memory of a retail unit. It also can't feasibly be distributed.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

It was a nightmare for management (R*NewYork) but didn’t affect us (R*North) much. The current leaks are far less consequential than HC was. It looks like gta6 will be phenomenal and sell for the next 15 years or so. The leaks are just a tiny blip.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

90% of future players don’t spend their time on the internet looking for video snippets. They don’t have the time and don’t want spoilers. I imagine the teams are a little annoyed about it but not more than that. I was there during Hot Coffee.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Calm down everybody. The leaks are a nothing burger. As a marketing strategy R* is trying to keep the game under wraps longer than other publishers. All that has happened is that some footage has escaped. Slightly ahead of the Netflix thing next week.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Yeah. They emailed yesterday. Still a bit special. the beebs. Is that a fresh kid stick to your head or an old profile picture?

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Every drop of water in my new game is simulated. I made a video about how it works. (Interesting for gamedevs & simulation fans) www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_I9...

youtube.com

I Simulated Every Drop of Water in My Game

YouTube video by Obbe Vermeij

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

This is my very first 'developer plays' video for Plentiful. Apparently that's how you market games these days. It has "Geek Builds World To Be Happy In" vibes but anyway... Hope you like the game. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOVJ...

youtube.com

Developer Plays Plentiful — Nature Sandbox & Water Simulation

YouTube video by Obbe Vermeij

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

You could do worse than giving the 'Plentiful' demo a shot this weekend. It's like a 90s god game but with modern world building, dynamic water & visuals. Demo & wishlist on steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3044790/... #Indiegame #Indiedev #godgame

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

I don't remember why we chose not to affect driving. Yeah, it's a pill because certain drugs speed you up.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Yes it was a blast. We probably couldn't have gotten away with it. It was a little glitchy sometimes but still very impressive for a mod.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

I did hear about those but never played them. R*Leeds went and did their own thing and did it well.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

GTA4 is when we finally nailed it. 4 programmers and several level designers worked full-time. We’d always envisioned a two-game strategy: First: Basic multiplayer Then: Online experience Both North and NY had wanted to make this happen since the gta3 days.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

We pushed for multiplayer again in Vice City. Even hired a couple of network coders. But with tight deadlines, it was abandoned once more. For San Andreas, we didn’t even try. It was the final PS2-era game — not worth the effort. We added local co-op instead. But yeah... not the same.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

…but we ran out of time. We needed lobbies, scripts working over network etc. We decided to cut the effort. #ifdef GTA_NETWORK in the source code is a leftover.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

For GTA3, I prototyped a simple deathmatch. Players could kill each other, drag each other from cars, and respawn around the city. It was promising...

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

In practice, this wasn’t always reliable. I remember a test match where everyone thought they'd won. Turns out all the games had drifted out of sync. This wasn’t how multiplayer would be built in the future.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

GTA1 and 2 had LAN multiplayer. To save bandwidth, they only sent keypresses between machines — assuming the game state was 100% deterministic. That meant every game had to run in perfect sync, at the framerate of the slowest PC.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Wishlist & Demo: store.steampowered.com/app/3044790/...

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Hey #PitchYaGame, Plentiful is a wholesome nature sim. - Shape the landscape by stacking stones. - Capture water in lakes and ponds. - Grow fruit and vegetables to feed your people. - Chill

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

The other massive trailer released today.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

Also: If it was my call I wouldn’t release any additional trailers. There is more than enough hype around VI and the element of surprise is going to make the release only bigger as an event.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

I’m guessing decision-day for VI will be similar. Fingers crossed for Take2’s August earnings report. (Before you ask; I have no inside info)

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

The original release date was October 16th 2007, in time for Christmas. We made the decision to delay the game in July 2007. Only at that time did it become clear we were going to miss the deadline.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

We finally realized the 32 player network game which later evolved into gta-online. I left R*North 9 months later. With the project and team getting bigger I didn’t enjoy work as much as I used to. I also thought the game would continue to get darker and more serious. gta5 proved me wrong there.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

The missions were designed to suit the story. Previously it had been the other way around. The ps3 was difficult to work with so the 360 became the lead platform. R*San Diego produced their Rage engine to replace the discontinued RenderWare engine.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

17 years ago, on April 29th 2008 we released Grand Theft Auto IV. On order to focus on making the game truly next-gen, we dropped a ton of game features from San Andreas. Stats (fitness, weight), Multiple cities, Stealth, Underwater swimming, Jet packs, Tanks, Bicycles, Monster trucks, Car modding

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

No, I just used English phrases. It's just that because of the hash key bug, random sequences also triggered the cheats.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Map artists just placed the lights, ran the game, and it all worked—no extra setup needed. Simple, but it still worked this way in IV. During gta3, I gave players a 1-star wanted level for running red lights. This was not popular with the team. I quickly removed it.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

In gta3, traffic lights cycle through 3 states: North/South East/West Pedestrians The traffic light’s model orientation determines its cycle, and at startup, my code stored the cycle in the road nodes. This is why, even if the light was knocked over, cars still obeyed the light.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Not sure why that got lost. Could be a bug/oversight.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

There must be a misunderstanding. The PC and Xbox version of gta3 and Vice weren't forked. The codebase moved forward as one. (It may have been different for SA as we didn't do that pc version)

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

That was someone else. I handed over the camera to another coder (Derek Ward) who joined SA after finishing Manhunt.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

There are a few things that can cause the next viewpoint to occur. The line of sight from the camera to the train is broken (for more than a second or something) Or the train is far away and also moving away. Probably a timer in there as well.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

I had a look at it but it's not clear to me why that is happening. I did the code for the general crimes. But the level designers also had script commands. They handle the military base for instance. So there's either a bug in the code or in the script. Sorry I can't be more specific.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

zit was just like when driving a car. From behind and above the train carriage.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

Somebody suggested trying the same in a car. I added the wheel cam, as well as the view from chasing cars. The team found it surprisingly entertaining so the cinematic camera stayed in.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

When working on the train in gta3 I found riding it boring. I considered letting the player jump ahead to the next station but this would cause streaming issues. Instead, I made the camera switch between random viewpoints near the track. This made the ride more interesting.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

The Steam demo of my world crafter is now live. Plentiful v21 introduces: Volcanos, Lightning, Fire and Locusts store.steampowered.com/app/3044790/... A follow to anyone who kills the spiders on the 'Islands' level.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 08/01/2025

We had too many features in SA in retrospect. I can't think of anything I'm sad didn't make it. I guess the skateboard is the biggest I can think of but did anyone really miss it?

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Reposted by Obbe Vermeij

TJGM @tjgm.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

A new video is now live! Ever wonder why vehicles in San Andreas can't reach their top speed in certain areas? Let's take a look! (Sorry @obbevermeij.bsky.social, I believe I said your name wrong in this one 😅) youtu.be/vp9WlW9reG4?...

youtu.be

The Hidden Speed Limits of GTA San Andreas

YouTube video by TJGM

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I think there was an RC mission in gta1 and we carried on from there. We thought they were fun.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 05/12/2024

I don't know. It wasn't unusual for stuff to remain between games. Usually it would get cleared out at some point but sometimes it wasn't.

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Obbe Vermeij @obbevermeij.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Sandy Roger made a rag doll gun for the testers. It would fire rag dolls (corpses) so that the testers could look for hole in the map. I don't think it was ever considered as a serious cheat (again, too many issues including potential crashes) but it would have been good.

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