Curious how Grand Theft Auto 2 would have looked in Grand Theft Auto IV's Rage Engine? Well, a new video has been making the rounds lately giving you a brief idea of what the game would have looked like running in Rockstar's latest in-house engine. The only downside is that the project hit a brick wall and it's been canned.
The total conversion was actually quite a ways done, with the entire map already converted over completely rendered in 3D. I'm not sure how many vehicles have been converted and ported but one of the vehicles from GTA 2 is being used in its full 3D form to traverse the city and give gamers an idea of what they won't be playing.
Check it out below, as seen on Strategy Informer.
The post on the GTA Forums a place where many modders congregate to share ideas, mods and bounce around to help each other out indicates that after just two months of work the project was canned.
I've got to say, though, within two months this kid porting over the map and getting most of it to work along with the lighting and car model without artifacts or glitches is a pretty impressive feat.
Nevertheless, the whole thing failed because the kid didn't have the proper help to finish the mod. After the map conversion and the vehicle implementation things just hit a brick wall. It takes a lot more time converting things to the Rage Engine due to the enhanced visual fidelity and physics, so there's a ton of fine tuning to be done in the configuration files. Texture replacement is probably the easiest part of the port.
Don't be surprised if some inspired modder takes up the rein and eventually finishes the port. I never really liked GTA 2 and it's sort of alternate universe prohibition era industrial steam aesthetic, but it would be interesting to see how a finished port would be in the Rage Engine.
