The original GTA from 1997, recreated in JavaScript. Most of the code was written by, surprise, surprise... AI.

(Although maybe the real surprise is that it was Gemini, not Claude 😅.)

Bramus Van Damme, a software engineer at Google, decided to recreate the engine of the original Grand Theft Auto using JavaScript and WebGL.

He didn't have access to the game's original source code, so he fed Gemini technical documentation, open-source projects, and sometimes simply described gameplay mechanics he remembered from playing GTA back in the day.

The result? The game actually works. In a browser.

Of course, not everything is perfect yet. The physics and animations differ from the original in some places, and a few mechanics are still missing, but the game is already playable.

Just a few years ago, a project like this would have required countless hours of writing code by hand. Today, a significant chunk of the implementation can be handed off to AI, allowing developers to focus on providing context and verifying the results.

It's just a shame the author didn't share how much time and how many tokens the whole project took. I'd love to see those numbers.

link:https://gtajs.wtf/