Pre San Andreas Interiors

by gtaadmin on 22/03/09 at 11:32 am

Now that the search for San Andreas Hidden Interiors is coming to an end, I have started looking for interiors in the older 3D GTAs.

I'm sure a lot of people already know about these as the games are quite old and there have been quite a few topics about them on game forums. Unfortunately most of these topics seem to concern modding the PC version of the games which I don't have as I only own the PS2 versions.

I enjoyed exploring the San Andreas universe as if it was a real environment and hunting for interiors without twisting the gamefiles to do so.

If possible I would like to do the same with GTA3 and Vice City.

Assuming that nothing really changed between the PS2 and PC versions, then I know where most of these interiors are located from the old topics. I just have to work out how to get there.

As far as I understand it the development of interiors used in the game has been like this:

GTA Interiors Overview

GTA 3 Interiors

Everything here seems to exist at one time and is exactly where you would expect it to be if this were the real world. This means that interiors are inside their own exteriors and many of these are available just by walking in.

Vice City Interiors

There are now many more 'walk-in' interiors (AmmuNation, Pizza Stack, etc) most of which can be robbed. When entering some interiors that appear to have open doorways, a loading screen appears for a few seconds and then you are inside. This is because some interiors exists in a different 'universe' to its exterior. By this I don't mean that they are in different places, but that only certain parts load visually at any one time. This is to save on game memory by only showing what is essential. I am assuming that some of these interiors are grouped to load together (because they later did in San Andreas) and so I would refer to these groupings as seperate universes or worlds. This has been referred to as 'Ghostworld', But I believe there to be multiple ghostworlds.

San Andreas Interiors

There are now very few of the original 'walk-in' interiors left. Most aren't even located inside their exteriors and entering door markers outside different places can take you to the same interior. Most of these interiors are actually high in the sky above the maximum height for flying vehicles. Without certain glitches or cheat devices these would be impossible to see.

GTA Interiors In Detail

GTA 3 Interiors

Most shop interiors can be reached by simply walking through the open door. Of the cutscene locations only Joey's Garage and Mr Wong's Laundrette are inside buildings. Joey's can be seen by using the rocket-launcher trick to look through the wall. I've been inside using the 'faster gameplay' button cheat. I parked a car up against the blue front garage door and (with the cheat activated) ran between the car and the door. It seems that this forces our hero inside.

The laundrette can be seen through the large front windows at any time. All the rest seem to take place in the outside world. Some of these are impossible to reach without mastering the Dodo plane controls which many just don't have the patience for. These include Donald Love and Kenji's rooftops and the ultimate prize as far as I'm concerned - The setting of the opening Bank Robbery and Betrayal scene. [I really wish Rockstar had recreated that as a solid set in a Los Santos film studio]

Vice City Interiors

I think I know all the interiors and I know some tricks for escaping some of them and into their unloaded exterior 'ghostworlds'. If some interiors load together in the same world then you could leave one and travel across the invisible landscape to see the other. Because the radar and map stay active when in interior world and because vehicles are still accesible it is easy to move around the ghostworlds as as long as you avoid the water.

The interiors are:

• Marco's Bistro (backroom) - Used in opening cutscene - located in the Oceanview Hotel.
• Oceanview Hotel - Used as safehouse and cutscenes - located in its exterior in a different world to Marco's Bistro.
• Printworks - seen in cutscenes - located inside printworks.
• Auntie Poulet's - used in mission cutscenes - located in its exterior.
• Ken Rosenberg's Office - used in mission cutscenes
• The Greasy Chopper (Biker Bar) - used in mission cutscenes - located in its exterior.
• Apartment 3c (Scarface Apartment) - Easter Egg location / always accessible - located in its exterior. I've heard this loads in the same world as The Greasy Choppper.
• The Malibu Club - used in mission cutscenes / always accessible - located in its exterior.
• Pole Position (strip club) - always accesible once open - located in its exterior.
• Washington Beach Police Department - accessible interior - located in its exterior.
• VRock Recording Studio - used in mission cutscenes - located in its exterior
• Love Fist Arena - used in mission cutscenes - I've heard this includes an unseen backstage area.
• Vercetti Mansion - always accessible after Diaz's death - located in its exterior
• North Point Mall - always accessible - located in its exterior
• Bank (can't remember name at the moment) - main lobby always accessible, basement vault only available in mission (I think) - located in its exterior
• Stadium - Apparently exists as 3 seperate interiors - located in the sky

I've heard many methods of escaping these interiors by using glitched wall/ceiling areas or certain vehicles, but the only ones I can say I've done successfully are:

[Note: only attempted on PS2]

The Malibu Club

Drive Caddy (golf cart) inside. The interior will not have loaded. Walk to the exit and you will re-spawn as if you've just entered a fully loaded interior. Get back in the Caddy and reverse out. This is hard to do and usually requires steering left and right to wiggle your way through the doors. Does not require high speeds so just take your time. When outside the exterior world will not be loaded.

Pole Position

Drive any motorcycle or scooter fast towards the entrance and jump of at the last moment. The vehicle should continue through the door. If you can get it past the point where you go to exit when inside, then you can enter a loaded interior as normal, get on the bike and drive back out into ghostworld.

Now for the ones I have problems with:

Apartment 3c

My biggest problem is with Apartment 3c. Everything I read says all I have to do is 'drive in on a scooter and then drive out again'. My problem is that driving in causes my scooter to vanish. There isn't enough run-up to try the Pole-Position trick. What am I doing wrong? Or does the PC behave differently to the PS2 on this occasion?

Oceanview Hotel and West Point Mall

None of the tricks seem to work here.

Washington Beach Police Department

I've not heard any tricks for this one, but it is so badly glitchy that you'd think the person who designed it would have made some mistake with the collision data allowing me to walk through a wall. I can see the ghostworld outside just by going close to many of the walls.

So there you go. Just another pointless activity to keep me amused when I'm bored.

If I had the walk-thru-walls code for my AR Max (PAL UK) Vice City (revised2) codes then this would all be much easier. These don't seem to be available at the moment. Maybe I should try converting them myself.

I had heard the following:
Greasy Chopper loads in the same world as Apartment 3c.
Malibu Club loads in the same world as the VRock Recording Studio.
I've checked and the VRock Studio is not grouped with Malibu. This may be a difference between PC and PS2 or just a difference in the way we're making them visible.

I decided to put the disc in my computer and see if the files in there told me anything. I don't usually do this and don't pretend to know what I'm looking at. Looking at certain lines of code (I think it was in the maps folders) I noticed that most of the lines seemed to be broken into X and Y coordinate (no Z). Most importantly I saw that lines that had to do with places that (in my opinion) loaded together all began with the same first number. I made a list of what was mentioned by each number.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions about these being different 'worlds'. I hope so because it means that almost everything loads in a separate world to everything else. If that's the case then I can say goodbye to exploring with just a walk through walls code.