Original GTA designer taking Liberty City to Game Maker

Liberty City, the setting of the original Grand Theft Auto, is being ported to the Game Maker development suite by one of the game's original designers, Michael Dailly.

Dailly, head of development at Game Maker creator YoYo Games , is using the project as a way of showing off the underused 3D capabilities of Game Maker: Studio. There is nothing playable yet, but Dailly has been posting pictures of how far he has got on microblogging site Twitter.

Dailly has admitted that he is unsure what he will do with the project once complete, although he has said that he could not go down the route of a full remake and couldn't release anything with the maps and textures as he doesn't own the rights to those assets. He did, however, suggest that he could release the tool he made to extract the maps and textures from the original title.

Game Maker: Studio is typically only used in the creation of two-dimensional titles and has most notably the software behind the original Spelunky and top-down violent action puzzler Hotline Miami. Whilst something like Unity is often used for its strong 3D capabilities, Game Maker is still capable of creating 3D environments.

The original Grand Theft Auto was released in 1997 and was developed by DMA Design, the studio that later re-branded as Rockstar North following its acquisition by the US company. The game started life as a non-violent racing title called Race 'n' Chase. Development on Grand Theft Auto changed direction after the team accidentally programmed overly-aggressive police cars into the game and discovered that escaping them was far more enjoyable than the game they had so far.