Programmer Imagines Grand Theft Auto V If It Was Normal
Too Normal.
When you think of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto games, "normal" is probably the last word that comes to mind, given their bizarre characters, over-the-top missions, and game worlds drenched in satire where a lack of normalcy serves to enhance the comedic aspect of the games.
But what if that wasn't the case? What if the world's most beloved sandbox game series was, in fact, normal? Enter Lucas7yoshi, a Programmer and Rockstar Games enthusiast, who recently reimagined the latest installment in the series, GTA V, as an entirely normal – perhaps even a bit too normal – experience.
That's right, instead of following Jack Thompson's tenets and making the game less violent and, by extension, less fun, Lucas7yoshi tweaked the game's code to render only the Normal Maps, giving GTA V a truly unusual appearance and, interestingly enough, creating a strong urge to replay the game for the gazillionth time but in this "Normal" mode.
According to the author, the demo depicts the normals of the models, but not the actual Normal Buffer with Normal Maps, which cannot be viewed in real-time. "This is just the 'display depth' preset in ReShade set to normals," commented Lucas7yoshi. To demonstrate how Grand Theft Auto V's Normal Buffer actually looks, the creator also shared a screenshot, noting that the result was achieved by "[fumbling] around in RenderDoc":
Over on Lucas7yoshi's Twitter page (the one dedicated specifically to Rockstar, as the author has multiple pages), you'll find lots of interesting insights regarding GTA, as well as many of Lucas' personal experiments related to the game. So, if you'd like to take a deeper dive into the world of Grand Theft Auto ahead of the upcoming GTA 6 launch, which reportedly won't be slowed down by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, we highly encourage you to follow Lucas7yoshi on Twitter to see more amazing projects.
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