Driver Madness

Thanks for everyone's participation! The top 7 questions will now be chosen and submitted to Douglas. Results will be posted sometime after January 21st.

I've had the opportunity to get in touch with Douglas Kalberg, a former Reflections' graphic/texture artist who worked on Driver and Driver 2. He was one of the elite few who saw Driver go from a concept to a reality, and worked on half of the cars in Driver 2 as well as some cutscene environments. Douglas has agreed to answer some of your questions, as long as they are short and can be answered relatively quickly. You may post up to and no more than 3 short questions for him to answer, with the best one (out of 3) being chosen. I will be picking the top 7 questions that really stand out and would be interesting to know, out of respect for Douglas taking the time to answer community questions in his personal time. Douglas cannot provide any "beta" content in the form of pictures and/or files - please keep this in mind when asking your questions. The rules for posting questions are below.

Rules:

• You must be a registered user in order to post a question - create an account here if you haven't already!
• Each user is allowed no more than 3 short questions pertaining to the time period of Driver/Driver 2's development
• Questions are to be posted within this thread only, any questions asked outside of this thread are invalid
• Questions must not be invasive of personal privacy and must not be disrespectful and/or inappropriate
• Questions must be submitted before January 14th @ 12:00am PST/ 3:00am EST/6:30pm CDT
• Answers will be posted sometime during the week of January 14th (worst case scenario, January 21st)

Please try to stay on-topic by posting your questions only. Thanks, and have fun!

Hmm let's see, what do we don't know yet?

Maybe what the missile in Havana was meant to be? (some people suggested something about the cuban missile crisis?)
Oh and maybe something about that other tunnel not far away, that was never used? Maybe the Mini was originally meant to be there.

I'm not sure what else We know so much already.

There's plenty of things you can ask, it doesn't necessarily have to be public knowledge, maybe something that occurred during development. You still have 2 questions left, edit them in your post whenever.

Well most things that we "see" already are easy to guess why they've been changed or removed, and stuff that isn't public knowledge will be hard because how do you ask something you don't know about? In this case yes, we could just ask him to tell us stuff that we don't know about that occurred during development. That would definitely be interesting. Maybe there's a 5th secret city like in Driver 1

Do you know anything about the short movie Driver 2 - Cuban Connection? (i can't contact the guys who made it)

How many time it took to develop the game?

Did the developers team go on a trip to the actual cities to take the pictures for textures?

Why were some car colors unused? (for example, Gray colors for all the Havana cars) and not used in Take-A-Ride.

Were cars planned to drive around the church and many more places in Havana? when in the final version they aren't.

Was weather/time-of-day (Dusk/Dawn etc.) going to be added to Take a ride? For example Raining in Chicago and maybe Snow, Why is there no weather in Take-A-Ride?

This is a reminder to please specify which game you are talking about. Douglas worked on both Driver and Driver 2, but the most work he did was in Driver 1. Just keep that in mind, and remember, you have 3 questions!

What kind of vehicles where meant to be in Driver 2 ?

Why was Los Angeles in Driver 1 only avalible in night time?

Were there any type of vans, trucks or buses ever planned to make driveable for players in Driver 1?

Did you visit any Police Departments or use an Officer's to help in the making of Driver1 or 2?

Feel free to re-format these if there's any grammar/spelling errors.

What is the blue car seen in few pics of Driver 1 beta? Is it the beta president limousine? Are there beta textures still to be found? And are the original assets still in Reflections HDD's aswell.

What tools were used for making the textures?

What happened to the Driver 2 beta cut-off cars?! Also what is the deal with the beta Havana Patrulla in Driver 2, it seems to be based more on a US Police car than Havana one.

Were guns ever planned for Driver 2?
Were peds that were able to be ran over ever considered for Driver 1 or 2?

After playing Driver 2 right now, I have some good questions.

- Why can Tanner sit down on certain chairs? I'm wondering if this is just some kind of easter egg / made for fun, or if there was actually more behind that.

- In certain missions you have to take the ferry, which will carry you from one point to the other. I think it's actually only one mission. The ferry is steering away from the coast and you have to jump onto it. But in the game there's also a second ferry "station", I don't think it was ever used in a mission or anything. In Free Roam, the ferry can be found at the place where it steers away in the mission I mentioned earlier. It even goes up and down slightly. Now I am wondering, was the ferry meant to go from one station to another and back all the time?