Creating A GTA Clone In 10 Days

My first GTA clone

This clone came with cars, NPC's, a mini map, and working guns

In the winter of 2021, I decided to participate in my first game jam. It was called 7dfps. You're supposed to create a First Person Shooter in 7 days, but they've always been a lot more open than that.

I remember seeing all of the youtube videos about doing insane things like creating grand theft auto clones in 24 hours, or other absurd challenges. I wanted to try my hand at it, with only a years worth of programming experience.

I grabbed assets for the NPC's, guns, buildings, and pretty much everything. I was just there to code stuff. Ironically, the code is usually the easiest part.

In 10 days, I actually managed to create a dinky looking GTA clone. To this day, I am impressed with the shortcuts I was able to find- using an overhead camera to mimic the mini map, sharing almost the exact same code between 3 of the guns, and the NPC movement.

The NPC movement was by far the most commented on thing about my game. To be real, all I did was look at it from the simplest approach possible. I set a bunch of nodes around the map that act as travel points. The NPC's just point towards the nearest travel point when they reach one. I explain it all in this video.

That was one of my first YouTube videos, and I'm quite proud of what I accomplished back then.

Creating that game was wild- staying up late at night, drawing concepts, and creating code while at school was really stressful, but in a good way. I look back on that week and think about all the fun adventures I had while making it!

Play the game on Itch!