Modding discussion for Driver.
#17931
The Chase data can be found under ReplayData/Chase

I renamed the folder and when I went to pursuit, the game was all messed up and it didnt work right. I then proceeded to rename it back and it worked!

This is a complete guess, but maybe the chases are replays?

I'm going to experiment with this.


edit: Hmmm....

In the User folder, there are:

.CAMS
.KEYS
.PADS
.SAV
.CFG

In the Chase folder, there are:

.PLAYER
.LEADER
.PINGS
.PADS


How would this work?

Im going to try renaming different files to see what the effect is, like what does renaming .PLAYER do, and what does renaming .LEADER do? etc.

~~Effect of deleting player~~
Game crashes. Lol.

~~Effect of deleting pings~~
Game crashes. Lol.

~~Effect of deleting pads~~
They sit there and chill. Invisible.

~~Effect of deleting leader~~
Random start position, no opponent

So what did i gather on this? 2 things:

Pads are the 3d data of the opponent?
Leader is the position?

WTF?

Now i'm going to make a replay, go all random, and replace the LA files with the user PADS files. Could it work? We'll see...

UPDATE

HOLY sh*t HOLY sh*t. I figured out what PADS does! ITS THE PATH IN WHICH THE CAR GOES!


I'm ready to make my own car chase missions!


Oh, now I know what leader and player does. They are starting positions. I replaced laa1.leader with player and etc.

I'm going to attempt something that has never been done before. Wish me luck!

UPDATE 2

Just in the little time I experimented, I found lots of things.


-The PADS files are basically the path files, they determine every move the car makes and what it does

-The PLAYER & LEADER files are the start positions for the Player and the Leader....but how in the world do you crack that code? It looks so damn compressed as usual...

-The reason for so many different files is because the game uses a randomize system that changes the route each time you restart or play again, so however many files there are originally is how many different routes the car will take

Information that needs to be figured out:

-What the PINGS files do....


Your friend,

CarLuver69

UPDATE 3

Ok, you know that STARTPOS.X file that you can find in the main directory? Well, that file records your last known position. So, use this to place the player and the leader car.


I'm awesome, aren't I? :)

UPDATE 4

I honestly don't know what the .PINGS files are for....This is bugging me :shock:

Deleting them crashes the game, so they gotta be for something...AGH THERES SO MANY OF THEM!!!
Last edited by Fireboyd78 on Tue Mar 03, 2009 5:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
By Driver of DOOM
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#17949
You've been very busy, well done, i looked at those files and tried things, all with no success, keep it up and the DMEP right on track!
PS can you use data from any replay? also might the pings thing the script that controls new objects being loaded into memory like civilian cars etc.
User avatar
By Fireboyd78
#18063
Here are final answers I hope to get out of Andreas -
Drea wrote:
Pitchshifter105 wrote:
Drea wrote:
Pitchshifter105 wrote:
Drea wrote: Hi,

What do you want to know?
Sorry for late reply.

Ok, here is my list:

Where are the models located?
How did you do them? what program?

Any tools used that you still have?
Where the hell is the music?


I have more, but please get back soon.
Well, we made the models in Lightwave (5, I think) plus some old Irix SGI stuff. As to where they are on the disc, I have no idea. It's not something I had anything to do with. The same with the music.

All the data will have been compressed and packed into our own internal formats. If you want to extract that stuff, I guess you could try to reverse engineer the data, but I'm afraid I can't help you with that.

Hope that helps.
Thanks alot. As of right now, we have someone working on being able to extract and re-import the images. It's going well.

I myself found out how to make my own chase missions, you guys were sneaky with hiding the chase data inside ReplayData.

For another Q that I ask, why didn't the guys over at GT/Reflections decide to make modding tools? This game is already popular enough with the ability to mod missions, but why on earth not allow us to make new levels?

For now,

Pitchshifter105
Nothing sneaky about the chase data. :wink:

As I remember, chases use exactly the same method as replays. It's just a recording of controller inputs.

As to why we didn't make mod tools, it was probably because D1 was largely a PS1 project. The PC version was, to a certain extent, a port done with quite a small team using (mostly) the PS1 tools.
Drea wrote:
Pitchshifter105 wrote:This will make my day if you answer this.

How do you "record" chase missions? I noticed that if I change the LeadCarModel from whatever the original number is, it gets all screwed up. Now, I know how to drive around and use the $TEMP$.PADS file and bla bla bla, but what are the .PINGS files for? What is their purpose? I changed one line one time and it said "OUTOFRANGECOMMAND command missing!" and then the mission ended. If I don't include a PINGS file, the game crashes. So, if you and Tony scripted the missions, surely you also made the chase missions??

-PS105
The chases we're recorded with a special build of the game that was built alongside the regular build. As the chases are just replays, whenever the vehicle handling, the city layout or a dozen other things changed we had to re-record the chases. Because of that, we had probably half the company, not just me and Tony, doing the recording. I don't know what the code does under the hood for that build.

He's such an awesome dude.
User avatar
By Driver of DOOM
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#18128
He looks it, if he had tinme to help you, always thought that the PC one was made 1st, silly me!
User avatar
By Fireboyd78
#18162
UPDATE:

I will stop trying to make chase missions. We obviously don't have the right tools, and Andreas said they used a special build. So they probably had access to the traffic cars/they could edit all the necessary files to for them to be perfect.
#41946
I would like to bring this ages old topic back up from the dead...it has been 2 years, 5 months since any updates on chase missions. Well, as luck would've though, Jeff has found out a way to enable the chase recorder. I will definitely be posting a "tutorial" on this later today (it's 4:30am in the morning)...

STAY TUNED. This method involves hex editing, SO BE PREPARED!
User avatar
By Fireboyd78
#41967
Here's a quick tutorial I planned for YouTube...

Hello there, and welcome to my tutorial on how to make Chase Missions in Driver. You will need a HEX editor to do this, so please bear with me here. Once you make these edits, you can save this as "RECORD.EXE" to record your chases, exit that game, and then go to "GAME.EXE" and test your mission out.

To figure out which version you are running, simply open GAME.EXE and then ALT+TAB back out to the Desktop. Look at the icon for Driver, it should say "Driver V1.x" (2 or 3, not sure if there's a 1)

To start, you will need to open up GAME.EXE and find these addresses:

V1.2:

0x54ea = 01 (originally 00)
0xF9465 = 00 (originally 01)
0xF946F = 01 (originally 03)

V1.3:

0x54ea = 01 (originally 00)
0xF9555 = 00 (originally 01)
0xF955F = 01 (originally 03)

Real quick, we need to set up the positions of the cars. Go to your Driver directory and go to "ReplayData/Chase" - copy the files "ma0.player" and "ma0.leader" and RENAME YOUR COPIES to "tut0.player" and "tut0.leader" respectively. For more advanced placements, you will need to copy "STARTPOS.X" and rename them accordingly. At the moment, it is unknown whether or not there are keys to set this up faster - we will be looking into this for sure. But for now, it takes some time to set things up. Moving on....

Now that we have these edits done, we can proceed to making our DMS file. I will be using the mission "Take Out Di'Angio's Car" as a template. To make things as easy as possible, make a copy of "Mission46.dms" and put it somewhere safe. Now open "Mission12.dms" - we're going to be making some changes, but first save over Mission46.dms (I hope you made a backup of it first). We're going to be editing this file from now on.

First thing's first - get rid of the "QuickRender" line at the top. Don't worry about the commented stuff, that won't affect us in game. Now move on to the area where it says "SetLeadCarModel" - you're going to define what cars to record in.

For the "SetLeadCarModel", here is a list of cars to use:

0 = Playercar (it will look exactly like you)
1 = Cop Car (this is buggy and will not work right)
2 = Bad Guy (those guys that chase you)
3 = Sporty Cadillac (looks like the bad guy model)
4 = Convertible
5 = Pickup Truck
6 = Van
7 = Station Wagon
8 = Hatchback
9 = Taxi (For Miami, the palette you need to set is 12. I'm not sure about other cities.)
10 = Cadillac Sedan
11 = Small Coupe

For the "SetLeadCarPalette", I'm not quite sure on the list of colors. These will differ from city to city, so you're responsible for finding out which one to use. I know for Miami, there's a really dark gray color, which uses "13" as the setting.

Next, we're going to edit the "RandomChase" line. Change "ma" to something completely different, such as "tut" (short for tutorial). Try to keep this short, I'm not sure if there's a limit to the amount of characters in a name.

And of course, get rid of the "Night" line so you can play in the daytime. For more advanced mission editing, download the Driver Mission Configurator.

Make sure "ChaseHQMode" is set to "1" so you have to hit the opponent to disable them. "ChaseModeHits" defines how many hits it takes to disable the opponent. Leave these if you want.

The rest of this stuff is a bit more advanced. I STRONGLY suggest downloading the Driver Mission Configurator if you don't know how to change most of these settings.

And don't forget, always play around with the settings! This is advanced stuff, so it can be stressful to do.
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By Clutch
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#41975
Dr. Doom wrote:Here's a quick tutorial I planned for YouTube...

Once you make these edits, you can save this as "RECORD.EXE" to record your chases, exit that game, and then go to "GAME.EXE" and test your mission out.

To start, you will need to open up GAME.EXE and find these addresses:
V1.3:

0x54ea = 01 (originally 00)
0xF9555 = 00 (originally 01)
0xF955F = 01 (originally 03)
Which edits? I don't understand? I make a backup od GAME.exe, rename it to RECORD, edit with hex editor.
Editing these adresses crashes my game.
DMC editing - I know these things. However I can't make working recorder...?
#41980
Did you find out which version you have?

For V1.2, if your hex editor has a "GoTo" function, do that and type in "54ea" and make sure you OVERWRITE the original value. Do the same for the other ones. Same thing applies to V1.3.

If you have V1.1, we may need to take a look at it and figure out what to edit. It shouldn't crash your game, that means you inserted more text, instead of modifying existing values.


VIDEO TUTORIAL!!!!
#41996
RacingFreak wrote:Completely new storyboard;
I'm working as a game designer, writing storyboards is my job. However, I have a full-time job, so I haven't time for amateur projects at the moment :( But some day...
RacingFreak wrote:New cars (fully working!);
Not fully, we need dummies editing (editing positions of wheels and lights)... I pass over the wheels exchange and vertex limit, it is coming soon.
RacingFreak wrote:Additionally make renders (most hard)
It is very long, hard and sometimes expensive work. However I suppose benflex would be able to make so advanced features, he is a talented beast ;P
#42045
Yes, after watching video tutorial (you have bad sound recording quality and noisy mouse and keyboard) I did it :)
However, I can't do something not related a little bit with exact chase recording but with chase mode.

But... I think I'll post it later, what is the matter.
#42049
If you want see something interesting - open Game.exe with hex editor and go to offset 001543A0. A lot of ascii text, maybe you'll find something interesting here.

Edit:

At 00155150 are credits ;) I think so.
At 00155B00 - CARLIGHT... a track of lenses positions? ;]
At 00155D20 - SPARK, DERBIS, SMOKE, COP FLARE and more ;]
At 00161910 - Replay cameras?
At 00162110 - Felonies :D "Terrorising pedstrians" :D
At about 165510 - level files loading?

I suppose there are exe internal codes referencing to some features in game and files.
I hope, Jeff, it will be helpfull for your opensourcing D1 :)


--------------
Edit 2

I wanted to write, which things I wanted to do and failed or did in my tries.

Did:
--- Files .leader and .player are same types like STARTPOS.X, so if you replace xxx.player with STARTPOS.X renamed to xxx.player, you will start in the chase from your last postition recorded in STARTPOS.X.
The same thing is about .leader file - you can change start position of leader.


Tried and failed:

--- I wanted to make two or more leaders at once. I wrote in script "SetLeadCar" and other commands twice. The game plays the first one in the order. Second is ignored. Recorder ignores second one too.
I thought about merging files with hex editing, however, it think it is impossible, inter alia because each records contain traffic. Some traffic may be generated in the same place as in the second record.


What I'm planning:

--- I'll try to merge Checkpoint and Pursuit missions. Maybe it will make able to make missions like "you lose/win the race".


About things I haven't idea how to do:

--- I think, deleting "You losed your targer" aspect of chase missions would be good idea. However, I haven't ANY idea how to do it. It would be propably next hex editing.

--- I don't know, why the game ignores cops in the chase mode... I think avoiding this thing would be hex editing again...

Maybe Jeff will invent any solution :) However, I don't force it. Just asking :)
#42051
I think, deleting "You losed your targer" aspect of chase missions would be good idea. However, I haven't ANY idea how to do it. It would be propably next hex editing.
Unfortunately that isn't possible. Driver uses "sectors" for the levels, basically big square sections, and only has 4 loaded at a time depending on where you are. The reason the lead car goes out of range is that it starts heading into a not loaded sector, so it has to say you lost it.
#42072
Clutch, these things you found directed to smoke, debris and flares, its the names the game should load to the respective effect.

I think its interesting to disable the loading pictures. At 0014EEE0 making the bmps in dots (example 'COPYRIGHT.BMP' to '.............') make the loading pictures disabled, example here :)

PS
888 posts w00t.
#42088
I tried to mix Dirt Track Time Trial with Pursuit scripts.
Without any success.

The matter is in the Objective line - in the script you can place only one objective - so, in mixing case - Chase or Reach Target.
If we could use two objectives at once....

Another thing - it is small thing, however quite annoing me, I don't know if you too.
I would like to turn off the red arrow floating above the leader car. What do you think?

And eventally, I don't know it would be possible - enable leader car to set chase camera or incar camera in film director.
Crazy Copper Frenzy

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