DryxioGTA builds live GTA portals, letting players switch GTA 3, Vice City, San Andreas instantly

A Grand Theft Auto multiverse without waiting for GTA 6 is already here, and it is not a gimmick trailer. Modder DryxioGTA has built a work-in-progress mod that lets players travel instantly between the settings of Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. The key is that the “portals” are not pre-rendered or recorded video tricks. DryxioGTA’s demo shows that the other game content is actually running “behind” the portals, in real time.

In the clip, players move through brightly colored portals located in San Andreas' Grove Street, and the mod switches them to the appropriate game and location, including the relevant player character. DryxioGTA says the three games are running “inside the same process,” sharing “one Direct 3D device.” Even more important: each portal is “a live GPU texture,” with the relevant game “actually running behind it, it's not a video or a captured window.” That is the difference between a cool screenshot and a true parallel world. The mod is essentially staging three classic GTA worlds so they can react to player actions as if they were happening at the same time.

To understand why this matters, remember what GTA means as a series. The games have spent decades cycling through a familiar set of locations, with each new entry taking Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas and pushing fidelity higher. Historically, though, each game is its own universe. You cannot normally walk through a door in one and end up driving in another. DryxioGTA’s mod breaks that assumption by letting each world maintain its own saves, missions, and settings. It also continues to run each world state in real time, including traffic and physics. So the portals are not just teleportation points. They are active windows into independently simulated gameplay.

Then comes the moment that turns impressive engineering into “wait, that should not work” gameplay. DryxioGTA demonstrates interactions across the worlds. He shoots through a portal, gunning down civilians. That causes pedestrians in his current world to attack him and triggers a wanted rating. In other words, the game logic does not treat the portal as a harmless view. Actions propagate into a reactive systems layer where peds respond, hostility escalates, and the familiar GTA wanted mechanics kick in.

Why should executives and board members care about a mod in development for older games? Because it is a signal about the real competitive surface area in games, which is shifting underneath everyone’s roadmap. The source notes that it is “not a proper name yet” and still “in development,” which means the concept is live, not finished. At the same time, Rockstar is preparing for GTA 6, due in November, and that anticipation is already affecting the broader release calendar, with other developers “scurrying to get out of the way” of the “behemoth.” When mainstream launches dominate headlines, it is easy to miss the quiet work happening in the margins. But mods like this show how quickly creators can assemble platform-changing experiences out of existing codepaths and assets.

There is also a platform and risk subtext. Mods that run multiple game instances inside one process and share Direct 3D devices raise practical questions about performance, compatibility, and user safety. The source does not go into policy details, but in any consumer ecosystem, board-level attention inevitably turns to questions like: How does this interact with anti-cheat, privacy expectations, and distribution rules? Even if the mod is community-driven, its existence highlights how much value can be extracted from a game engine’s flexibility, and how that flexibility can be tested in ways the original publisher did not design for.

Finally, the “inter-GTA portals before GTA 6” quote from the comments is not just fan hype. ross3695_basedhax’s line captures a deeper tension. Players are waiting on a flagship sequel, but the experience of waiting can be disrupted by community engineering that reaches for impossible-feeling features. For peers tracking audience retention, creator economies, or platform ecosystems, this mod is a reminder: the next breakout moment in interactive entertainment might be built by someone without a billion-dollar marketing budget. The portals are still in development, but the underlying capability is already demonstrated. If you are in the business of shipping the next world, this is the kind of proof point that should make your roadmap team ask harder questions about what “new” really means.