Rockstar Newswire

Sun-kissed beaches, glamorous night spots, sprawling mansions, squalid ghettos and the various vehicles you use to traverse them...
Creating the world of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City called for tireless and meticulous City Design in making its ambitious level of architecture, locations and modes of transport possible. Today's concluding Part 3 of "The Lab" - a rare behind the scenes look at the design of Vice City through interactive displays originally produced nearly a decade ago for an exhibit at London's Design Museum - has some very special glimpses of the modeling, interior design, and 3D rendering that brought Vice City to life. 

• “Buildings”- Rare rendering videos that show the Cherry Poppers ice cream factory, the Malibu Club, and the Diaz Mansion from wireframes through to 3D models and fully rendered locations in the game world.
   
• “Interiors” - 360-degree video tours of the inside of the Ocean Apartments lobby and dining room, the Malibu Club's dance floor, and Ken Rosenberg's stately office.
   
• "City Wireframe”- Focused around the city's Downtown area with its hi-rises and landmark Hyman Stadium, see the city come alive from wireframes to final city render with a view to the south.
   
• "City Renders" - Render images of various parts about the city both interior and exterior - living spaces, work spaces, playtime and outside vistas.
   
• "Vehicle Design" - 3D models, wireframes, final renders and damage models for a variety of vehicle types in the game - the Box Ville truck, the Faggio scooter, Squalo speedboat, Sandking rover, Hermes vintage sedan, and the Maverick chopper.

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Previously:
Part One: Animation | Part Two: Sound

In our latest look about the world of Instagram, we've seen impressive #GTA homages decorating the flesh and steel of some pretty hardcore fans, as well as race and chase grannies, Vice City mobile highlight reel shots and more. If you stumble upon any other fun user pics whether from GTA or any of our other games, send them our way via Mouthoff and remember to follow us at instagram.com/rockstargames to always see our latest official pics.

VC to SA to MAN. Salford tattoo artist @mrjackart hooked up this sleeve for @jamespanayiotou in a tribute to #ViceCity, #SanAndreas and 'sunny' Madchester.		There's been lots of choice IG photos posted by fans returning to #ViceCity via their iPhones, iPads and Droids. Doing an insane stunt jump in a bus while rocking 2 stars? Impressive, @wupreme666.
Spotted on the streets of Berlin - this guy took Pay 'N' Spray to a whole new level (via @canbaba)...		And in the UK - this one found in a Tesco parking lot by @ryanpanayis.

Part two in of our special three-part series in honor of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City's 10th anniversary, "The Lab" - a set of interactive tours through the game's design elements that originally appeared nearly a decade ago as part of an installation recognizing Vice City at London's Design Museum - focuses on the painstaking work poured into the game's sound design.

From the attention paid to the Vice City radio dial which hosted an unprecedented soundtrack of licensed music from the 80s plus original 'talk radio' stations, to the intensive sound design that helped make the game's open world come alive, today's edition of The Lab has some glimpses behind the scenes that have never been published online til today:

• “Radio Stations”- Tune in to audio from all 9 original radio stations from the Vice City radio dial: Fever 105 (soul hosted by Oliver "Ladykiller" Biscuit), Radio Espantoso (latin hosted by Pepe), Emotion 98.3 (ballads hosted by Fernando Martinez), Wave 103 (new wave hosted by Adam First), Wildstyle Pirate Radio (rap hosted by Super Rockin' Mr. Magic), V-Rock (rock hosted by Lazlow), Flash FM (pop hosted by Toni) and talk stations K-Chat and VCPR. For the 7 music stations, you can hear snippet mixes of selected excerpts whilst for the 2 talk radio stations, "The Lab" contains the station audio in its entirety for a full streaming listen.
   
• “SoundFX” - A special breakdown of just one small element of Vice City's sound design - helicopter sound effects. As the section explains, the total amount of space available at the time for sound effects would hold less than 12 seconds of music from a CD, therefore all of the sounds created for the city needed to be very short. Each sound has to be produced in isolation so that it can be controlled independently depending on how the player interacts with the game. Listen to the various individual sounds used and then check out a video demo of the final product in action as Tommy Vercetti lifts off in the chopper.
   
• "Pedestrians”- Wherever you go in the streets of Vice City - from the beach to the shopping mall to the airport - you're sure to overhear tons of colorful dialogue from the city's resident peds. Strutting playboys, lecherous pervs, blue collar slobs, glamorous fly girls, and more - have a look and listen to a sampling of the vast audio recorded in populating Vice City's ambient world.

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Previously:
The Lab Part 1: Animation

Here’s a special treat from the archives. Nearly ten years ago, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City was honored by London’s Design Museum as an annual design award nominee recognizing the ‘biggest contribution to design in 2002’ alongside such other newfangled technology as Apple’s iPod. Part of the award festivities included a special installation at the museum for which we produced an exclusive set of interactive kiosks to give visitors a glimpse of how Vice City was created – specifically focused on the game’s Animation, Sound, and City Design architecture. In honor of Vice City's 10th anniversary and release for Android and iOS, we’ve dug up the original files from this digital display not seen since the original museum exhibition and for the first time are publishing the entire three-part series online – starting with today’s Animation chapter seen above. Enjoy rare footage and sketches including:

• “Motion Capture”- a rare video showing a cutscene between Kent Paul and Tommy Vercetti going from motion-capture through to 3D model wireframe to finished product.
   
• “Sketch Book” - a progression of original character sketches through to final models and now-iconic illustrations of such folks as Lance Vance, Avery Carrington, Ken Rosenberg and more. 
   
• “Tommy Moves”- a set of clips showing the genesis of Tommy’s animations whether jumping into a Comet sports car, dive kicking a biker off his chopper or running with a chainsaw...

Embed code is provided below for anyone who’d like to re-post – and be on the lookout for Parts Two and Three quite soon.

To commemorate the release of Vice City for mobile devices, we're unveiling a new set of custom gear and collectibles created specifically for the 10th anniversary of the game. This new collection includes an assortment of distinctively 80s gear like the color morphing tees from Body Faders®, a nickel-plated Money Clip, a custom Vice City themed Rubik’s Cube® and more...

Ready for action. Presenting the members of the Max Payne 3 DLC Multiplayer Cast. From left to right, avatars bearing the likenesses of Rachel Locke, Jeremy Wallace, Louis Van Bree, and Cesar Aguirre.

This past summer, thousands of  Max Payne 3 fans auditioned via a series of special Multiplayer Events for the chance to be cast as avatars in an upcoming Max Payne 3 DLC pack. The future is now for Social Club members Cesar Aguirre, Jeremy Wallace, Rachel Locke and Louis Van Bree who will each make their debut next week cast as members of the De Marcos Abroad faction in the Painful Memories Pack. Proverbial fish out of water, albeit heavily armed ones – members of the ruthless De Marco crime family have taken a South American holiday for a bit of pleasure and to conduct a transaction or two. This new faction will come with a range of avatar wardrobe options from beach attire to New Jersey goombah business chic.

This coming Black Friday through Cyber Monday, November 23rd through 26th, the Rockstar Warehouse will be offering a huge sale for fans worldwide to pick up all apparel, gear and collectibles for 30% off. To boot, we’re also offering reduced international shipping with orders over $50. So this is a chance to score that coveted GTAIII Knuckleduster Mug, Max Payne 3 Gun Bag, Rockstar wardrobe or Soundtrack CD collection at a pretty sick discount whether for yourself or as a holiday gift. And considering most Black Friday sales involve depriving oneself of sleep to stand outside waiting for stores to open at 4am and getting elbowed in the aisles by violent and desperate competitive shoppers, this is a pretty enticing deal.

As we throwback to the 80s in a Vice City state of mind celebrating the game's 10th anniversary and forthcoming mobile release, here's a special edition of the Rockstar Soundtrack Alumni Concert Calendar compiling a list of places and dates where you can catch notable artists you've heard in our games perform live.

It's great to see so many of these legendary artists still so actively touring around the world, so whether you had your dial locked to Flash FM, Wildstyle Pirate Radio, Wave 103, V-Rock, Fever 105 or Wave 103 - there's bound to be a nostalgic favorite act out there from the Vice City radio waves to catch coming your way. Peruse the below list we've put together that covers dates into early 2013 from the East Coast to the West Coast, across Europe, Australia, South America and more. Do shout in comments if you're aware of any other soundtrack performances we missed, experience some live music from the decade of excess and revisit a time when wearing neon was un-ironic...

Hit the jump to see the full calendar.