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Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 2:57 am
by driverretro

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 8:37 am
by Krishty
Dammit. Had this only been released before the weekend :D

Seems legit, though I don’t understand why there is just one disc.

I don’t have time to fire up my emulator and run it, but I did extract the levels.

The LEV format is generally identical to the release builds, but there are some edge cases here and there. E.g. one level has lots of padding in lump 22.

Many object names are present which had been removed for the final version. LEFT_ARM, CURVE12_MEDIAN, etc.


Chicago:

The Wrigley Field sign got a new background.


Havana:

I have trouble parsing it. A few tiles produce garbage object positions.


Rio:

The Moon was larger.


Vegas:

You will always remember ... Stevie B Master Magician Psycho Casino!
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The barrels were not black but green, just like in this screenshot I found here years ago:
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The train wasn’t Sharratt Pacific but Southern Pacific.

Ghost town had slightly different textures and more trailers.

It also had a larger Moon.


All in all, Vegas got a lot of love during that last month. The other cities just got small bugfixes, it seems.

Edit: Wow, comparing the versions of Vegas really is like night and day in some places. The highway walls looked entirely different!
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Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 10:26 am
by driverretro
Glad you're enjoying it.
No worries about legitimacy, I always post the real deal. This is actually the form that the uploader had it originally, as far as just 1 disc. He's had it for about 16 years, so he might be remembering incorrectly as he said, but he also mentioned he'd update the page if he comes across another part to the rip file as he's digging through stuff.

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 3:13 pm
by Anthony817
Thanks so much! This is legendary! :mrgreen:

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:18 pm
by RacingFreak
@Krishty you should definitely join the Discord Server to get always updated with latest releases like this - it has already been released there few days ago :mrgreen: Thanks a lot for the comparison pics!

Also, the multiplayer levels for Vegas contain a cut car's textures - '72 Plymouth Satellite. It is then replaced by the Challenger in the normal day & night levels. It is quite challenging for me to recreate it accurately as was able to find only about 3 screenshots of it remaining, mostly from a Sep 28 build of the game:
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Vegas Police car is also different, it has a front texture we never saw before and reuses some textures from Driver:
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There are also a lot of differences and we're still in the process of documenting them. :specialdriver:

Also, a CD2 patch has been posted by Soapy in the Discord server, so that you can continue playing the missions (please check pinned messages in #driver-chat).

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 9:47 pm
by Krishty
Hah! I’ll be sure to take a look at the Discord :)

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 2:12 am
by Krishty
FYI, I updated the Driver 2 Levels as VRML archive on my Driver page. It contains all three game revisions (called prerelease 0.9; 1.0; 1.1) of the levels in the English PAL version.

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 5:51 am
by RacingFreak
Krishty wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 2:12 am FYI, I updated the Driver 2 Levels as VRML archive on my Driver page. It contains all three game revisions (called prerelease 0.9; 1.0; 1.1) of the levels in the English PAL version.
Awesome, great job!! BTW, is it possible to do the same with all car models and their palettes?

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 6:02 am
by Krishty
Absolutely; SOAP already managed to export them to OBJ with his tools.

I didn’t have the time to do it for Driver 2 yet, only for PC Driver 1 … and the palette handling is often tricky. Going to check it out some time, but don’t get your hopes too high.

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:51 am
by RacingFreak
Krishty wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 6:02 am Absolutely; SOAP already managed to export them to OBJ with his tools.

I didn’t have the time to do it for Driver 2 yet, only for PC Driver 1 … and the palette handling is often tricky. Going to check it out some time, but don’t get your hopes too high.
I mean the Beta levels car models :P Soapy's tool works great, however palettes are missing and all faces are separated so smoothing is lost :(

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 8:10 am
by Krishty
Oh, I get it now :D Don’t know, gotta check it out …

Thanks for the other thread. I didn’t know there were two demos! I can now at least say that the Havana level didn’t change.

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Wed Mar 18, 2020 10:57 am
by driverretro
Is the person who uploaded this on this forum? If not, how can I contact them other than through discord?

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:58 pm
by Krishty
RacingFreak wrote: Wed Mar 18, 2020 7:51 amSoapy's tool works great, however palettes are missing and all faces are separated so smoothing is lost :(
Just had a look at the smoothing and it’s bad. It’s absolutely useless to export it:
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You are better off joining and smoothing automatically in your 3D modeling tool of choice. I don’t know why they did it this way, but it looks utterly stupid to me.

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 7:51 am
by RacingFreak
Looks fine to me actually! I can easily fix that (still better than manually joining faces by a long shot) :D

Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:23 am
by Krishty
RacingFreak wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 7:51 amLooks fine to me actually! I can easily fix that (still better than manually joining faces by a long shot) :D
I’m not sure you understand – faces are still not joined, and this cannot be done due to discontinuities in UV coordinates. You only get additional normals now, and poor ones so. You should really use your 3D modeler’s vertex joining function instead.

But I’ll release an updated package anyway, if only for the improved texture handling. Edit: Uploaded!

Some more 0.9 vs 1.x differences; I don’t know in how far these are known …

Chicago’s Mercury:
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Vegas’ pickup:
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Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:04 am
by Skylabh
Krishty wrote: Fri Mar 20, 2020 8:58 pm You are better off joining and smoothing automatically in your 3D modeling tool of choice. I don’t know why they did it this way, but it looks utterly stupid to me.
Indeed by welding the vertices, it looks better.
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Re: Driver 2 PAL beta released

Posted: Sun Mar 22, 2020 9:33 pm
by RacingFreak
Krishty wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:23 am I’m not sure you understand – faces are still not joined, and this cannot be done due to discontinuities in UV coordinates.
Ah I see! It looked to have joined faces to me, so I got confused. Thanks a lot for the update! Greatly appreciated :specialdriver: