From what I've read / watched, Rage 8, the engine used for Red Dead Redemption 2, was basically a prototype for doing GTA6, which is on the Rage 9 engine.

These large open world games want you to think there is a large, city scale sim running, but before RDR2, this was all just smoke and mirrors at best.

One key thing Rockstar has been working for GTA6 is separating the various simulations from each other, so that local car and player physics, general traffic, pedestrian pathing, etc, are all fully isolated, and in fact will run on different cores of the processor.

The end result is that you can have large world scale simulations of traffic and pedestrians running all the time, without wasting any graphical or physics processing power on them. That's why the world of RDR2 feels like it's happening whether your character is there to experience it or not. Unlike most open world games where you can just tell "I'm the main character and the world is just a local bubble projected around me".

Even in GTAV, which is basically the best of the old way, you can still see vehicles spawn in and out of existence. Cops just appear on the map because you have a wanted level, things feel like west world, where the animatronics only start their scripts when you walk in the bar.

GTA6 is supposed to do away with all of that. Cars, people, animals, the weather, will persist even when you aren't there to look at them. Events will just be going on in the world. Pedestrians will report your description and car to the police, which will then dispatch local cops to chase you. These various systems able to interact with each other is going to provide far deeper emergent game play across the board.

Far more than higher poly count / more pixels / bigger map, having these core game systems isolated from each other and able to run continuously, will change what a video game world is and can feel like.

When you asked if people were really excited about the game, this for me is at the heart of the hype.

Only in that those games were not the big leap forward in tech the main numbered games always are.

VC and SA were the same engine as III.

VI is a whole new engine and game systems.

Yes, I'm very excited. Every time I've played one of the main, numbered entries in the series, I absolutely loved the experience.

Each one brought something new and unique to gaming, and from what I've seen, this one promises to deliver in a big way.

I'm sure it was because the windshield was littered with too much HUD.

I've done a few runs w a focus on parry, but it is not my preferred approach.

The one I enjoyed most was dual scimitars.

He's not happy they smiled and waved at the people they signed away their lives to protect.

Was born premature, and required open heart surgery when I was only a few days old.

When I was around 17 I had the chance to visit the hospital and tour the children's ICU I had been in. A children's ICU is not the happiest place in the world, and there were strange looks from both staff and parents as we walked around, feeling very awkward.

Then a short man with a thick accent burst through the door and hugged me. Turned out, the doctor who had performed my surgery was there and insisted on showing me around personally.

He walked me over to a woman who was about the saddest person I have ever seen, sitting next to an incubator. "This is what your son will look like in 18 years" he told her.

They took my picture, and hung it on the board for the kids who had "graduated", and I have to believe it was the first time in a long time that room had joy and happiness in it.

If someone had told me that that doctor wasn't welcome because he had a husband I think I would have wanted to become violent.

This law means that those families now have 1/3 fewer people to give a chance for thier kids, and the odds for me hadn't been that great to begin with.

If I could pass one law, requiring multiple redundant scanning tech on anything autonomous large enough to hurt me might be it.

I occasionally go to our warehouses which have robotic arms, autonomous fork lifts, etc. All of those have far more saftey features than a self driving Tesla, and they aren't in public.

World size, density, and traversal have to be balanced.

I tend to play without fast travel, and skyrim meets these three pretty well, using the carts and horse for faster travel.

GTA can be bigger, with cars and planes for long distances.

Large worlds are great, if they are packed w content, open barren landscapes are terrible.

Ghost recon wildlands for me is the sweet spot for a big, interesting world with good traversal options.

So the man has a stutter, and he's old, what ever. All I can do is cast my single vote. Last time, I voted against Trump, and honestly, even after the debate, I'll cast my vote this time for Biden.

I'd much rather cast my vote for Hakeem Jeffries, or Shift, or Bernie, or a dozen other people who aren't an option.

Thing is, I'm going to cast my vote in Cook county IL, so it literally won't matter. IL is going blue no matter what, and I feel like my participation is merely token.

I wish I could do more, I want to scream at clouds about what is happening to the country, and it doesn't matter.

Saw a stat that says Trump is 65% to win, and want to physically grab people and shake them, but what would it matter?

Had I walked into that debate blind, not knowing who those people are, what the "facts" and the facts are, I'd have thought, that Biden guy seems weak and befuddled, and boy that Trump is sure a confident leader. It made me feel sick.

As I told my mother today, I don't have kids, I live in the midwest, have a good job with a big stable company, truth is, even a second Trump term won't effect me that much. I can just sit back, enjoy my 30 so years left, and watch the world burn, but damn it, I have empathy for others, and there are many, many people whose lives and livelihood are going to be seriously impacted, and that bothers me.

Circumcising a child.

I will never forget how surreal the Four Seasons presser was.

My brother and sister were ordained to perform my younger brothers wedding. This joke had a lot of legs that weekend.

It was my primary social media site for over 10 years, and only one in probably the past five after ditching Facebook.

All I ever used to access it was baconreader. When the first talk of killing off the API started with the rate hike, I had a sinking feeling this was the end.

Rode it out till the last day, and reflexively kept opening baconreader just to realise again it was offline.

Decided to give Lemmy a try, and while it took a couple days to get it sorted, I have to say, for my daily browsing fix, it's more than enough.

Yes, reddit is a giant database, and when google searches take me there I'll view the info, but for everyday use, lurking, posting, and commenting, never again.

Not sure of its bias, user saturation, bot, shills, demographic, or what, but while smaller, the quality and content of the comments here just seems better. It reminds me of the early days on fark or even back on IRC.

It really does piss me off that greed over an IPO ruined something that had been a part of my life for so long.

I am enough of a grumpy old bastard that unless they fix the API and baconreader starts up again, I'm done. The internet is a big weird place, and I'm happy to go see other parts of it.

Well, it's not like RDR2 had a short story, so I'm ok with that.

I suspect they want enough of a solo game to not piss off us old guys, then will quickly pivot to GTA6 online for the cash cow.

If the world and AI are good, I'll have endless hours causing chaos and jumping motorcycles.

I got pretty bad heat stroke once while running in Texas. Was in the military, and due to a stupid miscommunication was told I was not allowed to drink water.

Lap or two later and I started having symptoms I'd never experienced before.

I can 100% believe that my look and behavior could have been mistaken for drug use.

I had stopped sweating, looked pale and disoriented, I'm sure I was not speaking clearly. My friend grabbed me and dragged me to a water fountain.

Once I had time to recover, get some A/C, and rehydrate, I was pretty much fine, though I remember having one hell of a headache like a hangover.

George Carlin said it best, yes a receding hairline is annoying, but no where near as bad as an advancing hairline.

Who would want to have to shave their forehead?

This is 100% my girlfriend, and I take great pleasure in never correcting her, I find it charming.

That, and the meta data shows the files were edited in Adobe

Nothing, and I mean nothing, can convince me to have a child.