Discussion for Driver 2: Back on the Streets [EU] / Driver 2: The Wheelman is Back [US] (2000)
By Rolling Barrel
Registration Days
#57866
Just an idea I've had. What happens when you combine:
- Source engine
- Source FilmMaker
- Driver 2 Director/replays etc.
- Driver 2 maps and storyline?

Frankly, I would absolutely love to see a re-creation of Driver 2 in the Source engine. Don't know Source?

The Source engine is an engine used by ValvE to make some amazing games- among them are Half-Life 2, Portal and Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive.
The great thing about the Source engine is that it is VERY mod friendly- and as such many mods, both unofficial and official have been made using it. Garry's Mod is a popular one, and The Stanley Parable are great examples of Source mods.
Now, Garry's mod in particular led me onto this idea... the mod itself actually has an avid array of modders... making mods for it, called 'Addons'. There are many vehicle addons too...

You can probably see where I'm going now.

There are several car addons, but I will draw your attention to 2 main ones:
The S-cars, which are made to be more realistic than for looks, being able to take damage, have lights, need fuel, etc.
TDM cars, which are made more for looks than much else, but also have different handling compared to S-cars.
There are other car mods and addons too, but looking at these two, I think one could take attributes of both - handling mostly from TDM cars, and damage, light, etc. capacities of the S-cars - and make...
Perfect re-creations of the vehicles in Driver 2 - but with realistic detail and physics (Thanks to the Source engine).

Aside from the Source engine itself and it's many games/mods, we'll take a look at Source FilmMaker- or as most call it, SFM.
SFM is an animation software, which can be used to create films and stuff.
Remember those animated cutscenes from Driver 2 (Of course you do... I'm typing on a website dedicated to the game :D )?
The game's engine and those cutscenes were made with COMPLETELY different software- the game engine and the program used to make those animations no doubt are absolutely nothing like eachother.
However. Source FilmMaker is about as close as an animation software can get to the Source engine- in fact, it uses the Source engine itself.
Currently, it's in it's beta - it can be used with any Source game content, but at the moment it can only utilize the original Team Fortress 2 game as a means of live recording. That's absolutely fine though, as you don't need to record stuff to make a good film or animation- you can do it from scratch. Better yet, because it utilizes the Source engine, you can go to any point in the timeline and actually move around the map itself in 3D. You can even record while stuff you've recorded previously goes on around you- so you can record one scene, and you can record again in the same scene from a different perspective while maintaining the first recording.
To understand what it can really do, go see what it is here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/1840

So. You could re-create the vehicles in Driver 2. You could even re-create the cutscenes within the same game engine. All with better physics, detail, etc. for primarily the PC.
Maybe later you could think about the Source engine in game consoles (Such as TF2 on the XBox, Steam/ValvE game console coming out soon, etc.)?

To sum this all up, what I'm really talking about is a chance to either remake Driver 2 (Or even one of the other games in the series), OR make a completely new chapter. Or both...
Honestly, this is really just an idea. Serious modifications would have to be made, both within the Source engine and possibly some features of the engine itself (For instance, it requires changelevel scripts currently to change map, rather than having one gigantic map that renders with distance, such as in Skyrim V- Although it can utilize things like fog and areaportal entities to render certain sections of a map at a time, so perhaps one super map would be possible...)

I wouldn't be taking this on myself. It's too big a project for one guy, especially as I'm still in education (Yeah. Time kinda disappears).
But a team of modders? Now that could make all the difference.
Btw, all of the stuff you need to make a basic Source engine mod are available itself- the SDK engine base, the Source SDK tools (Which includes a map editor which I know my way about), and of course you can use modelling programs like Blender to make models, and things like Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 for coding entities and stuff. All of which are free.

As I say, I wouldn't have time to dedicate myself fully to this (or probably the patience), but from just looking at some stuff on this site and at the works of others who make game modifications I know there're people who can dedicate themselves to such a colossal task.
If anyone does want to do anything that I've suggested, please count me in for a little- I'm learning SFM and know Hammer (Source map editor) quite well. As I say, it just takes a great amount of patience. Or as Gabe Newell said...
"These things... they take time."

P.S. - I'll take this time to advertise my YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25oY6 ... HXO4Sj1s8A



Posted by Rolling Barrel Productions (A.K.A. Oblivion592 on Steam)
By Rolling Barrel
Registration Days
#57879
I'm saying that a modding team could do some pretty sweet stuff if some of you guys or a group of Source modders got together. Only a joint effort would pull this off well, which is why I'm not going to attempt a full-blown mod by myself.
Perhaps I could aid an effort, but realistically it's not likely to happen by attempting it on my own.
Ok, I know the Source engine wasn't exactly made for vehicles- but, on the other hand, it can support vehicles, and good ones at that;
Call me ignorant, but why is it terrible for vehicles? (Presuming it's not something like a lag issue? Or handling issue at that- handling can differentiate depending on the programmer- it's up to them how their vehicle turns out)

The main reason I'm referring to Source is because of my personal experience with it. I find that it is probably the best solution to a possible remake of Driver 2, for gameplay itself as much as the looks. I bet you that any road vehicle in Driver 2 could be perfectly recreated in Source (Including the way the vehicles handle), but with better details- handling, skids, effects and all.
Besides, this is just a suggestion, right? If nothing happens, nothing happens.
But if anything does happen? I'd rather see it either in the current Source engine, or in future incarnations.
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By DatDirtyBananas
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#57882
The reason why Source isn't for vehicle type games is because Source itself has map limitations. You can't have a whole f***ing city because when they made Half-Life there was loading. Even the 2nd one had to load an entire new area. We don't want to wait for it to load every damn time we enter another area of the city
By Rolling Barrel
Registration Days
#57884
I Agree. But have you heard of areaportals? They basically render certain sections of a map at a time. I think you can use fog to do the same, but at a set distance to the player.
It's possible that you could actually make one gigantic map, actually- it's not as far fetched as it seems in the source engine. Not only that, but one or two guys on TWHL (http://twhl.info/index.php) actually made their own map editor version of Hammer (Called Sledge - see it here: http://twhl.info/forums.php?thread=18410&page=1) for the old GoldSrc engine- Yes, yes, the GoldSrc engine can definitely NOT support vehicles, that is not what I'm suggesting- but they actually managed to increase the capacity of maps. But in the Source Engine, you would only have to change the map editor (Latest version of Hammer) so that you could make and compile one super-map - and set up either a clever grid network of areaportal entities, or better still, just use fog to render sections of the map at a time, so it can be run.
This is mainly speculation, but I think it's more possible than you would imagine...
I'll ask the guys down at TWHL, see if they can help. If it is possible, a whole tonne of stuff could be done in Source.
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By DatDirtyBananas
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#57885
dude, no one's porting anything to Source, not this series, and this isn't DeviatnArt where you can just request people to make a mod just for you. I wonder how old you are... :lol:
By Rolling Barrel
Registration Days
#57886
Oh well. I'll stick to making SFM movies... or improving them anyways :mrgreen:
Btw, I wasn't requesting anything. I was expecting feedback and suggestions and maybe I'd start something.
So. See ya when I see ya.
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By pete
Registration Days Posts Posts Posts Avatar
#57887
Well, it is actually possible to make rather large maps for the Source engine.
Here's one I made, based off a leaked Half-Life 2 Prototype map which was even larger, but even this unfinished version takes forever to compile and is glitchier than all Driver games combined, so I had to make it a bit smaller.

Image thumbnail

Image thumbnail

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You already mentioned that there is no point in attempting to make a fan-made Driver game in Source, but I just wanted to show off my mapping skills :mrgreen:
User avatar
By VAIMAHDO
#57889
I would honestly never like to see any driving game in Source. It is a first person shooter engine not a driving simulation engine. Garry's Mod is a fine example of how terrible cars suffer in the Source engine, they're clunky, dumb, and overall boring and can't understand a thing about physics.
Also, it sounds like you want us to make this, well, we won't. Every "Driver 2 remake" project that has ever been on this forum has failed or never was finished. Let Driver 2 be, we're all tired of getting excited over nothing. Let us modders just tweak the actual Driver 2 game as it is and learn from it's engine as we already are in the topic; ".LEV File research"
Source also can't properly render an entire free roam type map that Driver 2 has, the entire city doesn't even have any LOD models unless you're talking about individual pedestrians. Therefore the game would be poorly optimized, and overall the visual effects and rendering engine just doesn't match the feeling Driver 2 emits.
By Rolling Barrel
Registration Days
#57896
Have I not made it clear?
I'm not expecting ANYONE to make a port, NOR am I going to make one myself- It was merely an IDEA. Apparently a dead, ancient one...
Nice mapping work pete, keep it up.
DirtyBananas, I think you've made it clear enough that you hate anything to do with the Source engine being used for vehicles.
VAIMAHDO, thanks for reiterating.
Again, goodbye, see ya when I see ya, etc. etc. :roll:
User avatar
By VAIMAHDO
#57898
Most of us on this forum love Driver 2 to death, and want to see an HD remake, honestly. But it has been attempted so many times that we just give up instantaneously when a new topic comes up about a Driver 2 remake. If I attempted to make an HD remake of Driver 2 I would finish it, because for one I love that dam game and secondly I wouldn't have any other projects in the way. After I finish 4729 this December then who knows what I will do. Don't get your hopes up anyone, because you ALL know what happens every time a new Driver 2 project emerges.
By Ss4gogeta0
Registration Days Posts Posts
#57963
Skylabh wrote:Here is a list of the threads about a Driver 2 "remake" or "pc port" idea:

http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopi ... =79&t=2611
http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=804
http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2310
http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3351
http://drivermadness.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=894

As you can see, this is not the first time.
eh, hopefully when summer comes some people will make a full on Driver 2 Remake on the GTA SA Engine :specialdriver:
By Ss4gogeta0
Registration Days Posts Posts
#58222
wanted to say that there is a decent freeroam engine that is released called "Grit" that would be pretty good for a Driver 2 Remake... it even natively supports Rockstar's GTA Formats aswell (so the Driver 2 maps that get converted to GTA could be imported into the engine with ease)

The engine itself was developed by GTA modders who wanted a way to make standalone GTA Total Conversions... GRIT is also Open Source. :!:


more information

http://www.gritengine.com/

http://www.gritengine.com/chat

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