Stunning GTA mod combines GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas

A new Grand Theft Auto mod is doing something fans have wanted to see for years. It connects GTA 3, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas inside one live session. No map conversion. No fake transition. No long loading screen. Instead, the mod uses working portals that let players look into another game, shoot through the opening and step directly into a different city. Liberty City, Vice City and San Andreas all keep running in the background, ready for the player to jump between them. It’s one of the most technically interesting GTA modding projects we’ve seen in a long time.

Three GTA games running at once

The mod, created by Dryxio, doesn’t place all three maps inside the San Andreas engine. That’s an important difference. Each game still runs independently. GTA 3 handles Liberty City, Vice City controls its own sunny streets, and San Andreas manages Los Santos and the rest of its world. The mod links them through portals while keeping their original systems active.

When the player approaches a portal, they can see what’s happening on the other side. Cars move. Pedestrians walk around. Police react to trouble. The destination isn’t a static image or a recorded video. It’s the actual game running live. Walk through, and control moves to the relevant title.

That means the player can leave Grove Street, enter Liberty City and continue as Claude. Another portal leads to Vice City, where Tommy Vercetti takes over. The switch happens quickly enough to make the three games feel connected, even though they remain separate underneath.

The portals actually work

This isn’t just a visual trick. Players can fire weapons through a portal and hit characters or objects in another game. The people on the other side react using their own game’s artificial intelligence. Police can respond. Traffic continues moving. Physics still work according to the rules of that specific title. That makes the portals feel like real openings rather than decorative screens.

The setup also creates unusual gameplay possibilities. A player could attack enemies from another city, escape through a portal during a police chase or place an opening in a location that completely changes how a mission area works.

The mod includes a tool for moving portals around, so they don’t have to stay in fixed positions. That flexibility could lead to some strange combinations. Imagine opening a doorway from a quiet San Andreas neighbourhood into a busy Liberty City junction. Things could get messy fast.

Why this GTA mod is different

Other GTA projects have combined the classic maps before. Modders have imported Liberty City and Vice City into San Andreas, creating one larger environment that players can explore.

Those projects can be impressive, but they rely on a single game engine. Once Vice City enters San Andreas, it has to follow San Andreas rules. Vehicle handling, artificial intelligence, visual effects and other systems come from the host game. This new project takes another route.

It keeps GTA 3, Vice City and San Andreas running as their own games. Each city keeps its original behaviour, presentation and internal logic. The portals simply create a connection between them. That’s much harder to achieve.

How the mod works

The project uses reverse-engineered versions of GTA 3 and Vice City alongside tools that connect with San Andreas. It also relies on an open-source reimplementation of RenderWare, the technology behind the original games.

All three titles run inside the same process and share graphics resources. The mod decides which game receives player input at any given moment. When the player crosses a portal, control switches to the destination game. The computer still has to simulate all three worlds.

That means it tracks traffic, pedestrians, physics and other background systems across multiple games at once. Since the destination is already running, the player doesn’t need to wait for the city to load after stepping through. It sounds simple when you watch it. It isn’t. The technical work behind those smooth transitions is likely far more complicated than the finished demonstration suggests.

It’s not available to download yet

The mod isn’t currently available as a public release. Right now, it’s best described as a working technical demonstration. Several questions also remain unanswered. We don’t yet know how well it handles long play sessions, complex missions or large numbers of vehicles moving between worlds. Performance could also vary depending on the computer, as running three open-world games at once demands more resources than playing any one of them normally.

A public version would need testing, installation tools and clear compatibility requirements. It may also face legal concerns because it combines technology and assets from several commercial games. So don’t expect a simple download just yet.

A major step for GTA modding

The most impressive part of this project isn’t the chance to walk from Los Santos into Vice City. It’s the way the mod makes three separate games communicate in real time. That opens the door to ideas that go well beyond larger maps and sharper textures.

For years, GTA mods have added cars, characters, missions and visual upgrades. This project changes the relationship between the games themselves. It treats each title as part of a connected system without stripping away its original engine.

Whether it becomes a full public release or stays an experiment, the result already makes a strong impression. Three games. Three cities. One live connection. That’s a clever piece of PC modding.