The Former Technical Director from Rockstar North, has explained why planes will sometimes randomly spawn in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would spawn and crash near the player. He’s also explained some other interesting things that happen in San Andreas such as the random NPC that takes a photo and falls to his death off a Cliff.
Obbe Vermejj, is a former Technical Director for Rockstar North, the studio known for mainly working on the Grand Theft Auto Series. Obbe Vermejj worked at Rockstar North from 1995 when it was known as DMA Design until 2009 after GTA IV, the Story updates and GTA Chinatown Wars had released.
Almost 20 Years since the game released, Obbe Vermejj has gave the fans an explanation on why Planes will crash near Carl Johnson in San Andreas.
Why Planes spawn and Crash in GTA San Andreas
Posting the explanation on X (formerly known as Twitter), Obbe explained that they wanted Small planes to periodically perform a fly by near Carl Johnson. He then said that he created some code that before the plane spawns in, it would look for obstacles in its pathway. The scans that would detect obstacles were slow and only scanned in the forward direction of the Plane, so to save time, they used the absolute minimum. This means that sometimes, Thin and tall objects (such as Trees or Pylons) in the San Andreas map wouldnt be detected by the scans and would cause the Small Planes to fly straight into them.
Obbe also said in the X Post that the initial speed of the Planes when they spawned, sometimes wasnt enough and caused the planes to lose height, also causing them to crash into objects around the map. Replying to someone who questioned why some planes spawned vertical, he said all small AI Planes were coded to fly at the same height, around 30 Metres, but there was a bug that caused some planes to spawn a lot higher meaning they would Nose Dive straight down until it reached its assigned coded height.
A game developer and Modder, known as CookiePLMonster pointed out to Obbe that the planes also crash more than should, not just due to the Scans but also because there is a bug in the Collision Detection as planes are spawned, in which it thinks the flight path is clear when its not. Obbe responded saying he wasnt aware there was a big in the gaming code aswell.
Obbe debunked a long myth regarding Plane Crashes, saying its NOT true that Plane Crashes was a Game Mechanic that was affected by the Luck Stat from collecting Horseshoes.
The Famous Photographer that falls to his death
A user on X, asked Obbe to explain the Suicidal Photographer in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The NPC that can be found in Flint County that will simply kill themselves by walking off the side of the Coast and into the water after taking some Photos of Rodeo across the water.
Obbe Vermejj confirmed that this was due to the NPC being pathed to the nearest node. GTA San Andreas used something called ‘Attractors’ which were items such as ATM’s, Chairs etc, which NPCS would head towards the nearest one when they had completed their activity. Obbe suggest that the Photographers nearest Node could have been across the water meaning it was automatically pathed to head towards it, explaining why the NPC committed suicide by drowning all the time.
GTA 3 Map Location Names
Although confirmed in the past and been known for a long time. Obbe confirmed once again that multiple towns in Upsate Liberty City were named after Devs at Rockstar North at the time.
- aaronsville – Aaron Garbut
- Woodcunty – Alistair Woods
- Les county – Leslie Benzies
- Gary town – Gary McAdam
- Adamton – Adam Fowler & Adam Cochrane
- Chris’s Town – Chris Rothwell
- Obbeburgh – Obbe Vermejj
To read the full thread. You can check out Obbe Twitter thread here which includes a lot of interesting facts regarding GTA San Andreas, GTA Vice City and Grand Theft Auto 3.
Subscribe to our newsletter!
Subscribe to our newsletter!
