Facts about Driver 2

These facts was found during reverse engineering process of Driver 2 in symbols and in the game content.

Page is WIP and still populated

Fun facts

• Despite the fact the game is 3D, the collision detection between cars and buildings is performed in 2D manner. Car vs Car collisions are in done 3D.
• All chases (except Find the Clue, Steal the Keys and Save Jones) are pre-recorded by the developers and stored simply as replay files. This explains the infinite mass of chased cars.
• Find the Clue, Steal the Keys and Save Jones getaway cars have complex AI called FreeRoamer Lead AI in the code, which was pretty advanced at the time. It was able to analyze roads for obstacles and had complex behaviours and intentions to fool the player, panic, etc.. But because of the Playstation's limited RAM it could not be used alongside with Cop AI.
• There is a maximum of 20 cars that can be spawned nearby the player. The second car in the list/slot will always have music on and if it is hit hard by a cop or player car, it will always "die".
• In cutscenes that have Tanner or pedestrians, these will be always in the cutscene from the beginning. They are hidden only by the cleverly picked camera angles and timing.
• Only two cop cars can emit siren sound at the same time due to Playstation sound channel limitations - 16 channels for game sounds, 8 channels for music.
• According to the source code, the Havana secret base is named "Drea And Steve's Evil Lair" after Havana level designers Andreas Tawn and Steven Adams.
• If the player is inside a specific car model with a specific colour, civilian cars will never be spawned with the same model and same colour as the player until you leave that car.
• Undamaged cars are not colliding with buildings and barriers and loosely collide with the ground. In a combination with allowing Tanner to leave car in unusual ways (rear wheels in air/sliding sideways) this opens the possibility to get through the thin walls when entering car back again.
• Vegas Trains in Take a Ride still have an assumed velocity. It was hard-coded for "Beat the train", but it was forgotten to limit it to this specific mission. As a result, if a car touches a train, it will be hit hard in a specific direction; or if the player as pedestrian steps into it, he will die with "You Drowned" message. This was fixed in REDRIVER2.

Cut / Unimplemented / Broken / Unused details and notable bugs

• Trailblazer and Gate race were supposed to appear as Multiplayer modes. The code is complete for Gate race, but there were no missions made for these modes.
• Cops'n'Robbers in Multiplayer was supposed to have civilian traffic enabled, but it was disabled maybe due to performance problems. It was re-enabled in REDRIVER2.
• Barriers nearby lifting bridges in Chicago are seen in multiplayer levels and as it turns out, barriers are still placed in non-multiplayer levels but normally are not visible due to how cell object lists work. Also 1.0 version of the game has them raised while in 1.1 they are down.
• Las Vegas Monorail near Luxor Hotel was unimplemented but its model is still inside the LEV file. It was later found placed on the rail but was not visible for the same reason as the barriers in Chicago. It was implemented in REDRIVER2.
• Driver 2 has the same four 3D target arrow models (Arrow, Exclamation mark, Timer, Max speed/stop zone) as Driver 1 but never uses all of them.
• Hubcapped wheels in Rio do have a fast/rotating wheel texture but that was never seen. As it turns out, it had been disabled in Driver 1 for New York (Rio and New York have the same city index 3) but developers forgot to remove the hack. This was fixed in REDRIVER2.
• Driver 2 still has lamp breaking code but due to changes to the LEV cell objects and how they work, it was completely broken. Also there is no light pole that has the breaking feature. That was restored in REDRIVER2 and introduced in Havana.
• Driver 2 has only car light trails but there are no trails from traffic lights unlike in Driver 1. As it turned out, this was a bug with the same cause as in the fact above.
• When you start Take a Ride in Las Vegas with Limo, the limo wheels will be broken after a Restart. This happens because the Special Cars have both LCF and spooled from LEV car cosmetics, which differ. The game has to re-spool the cosmetics for the special car slot from the LEV file. This was fixed in REDRIVER2.
• There is still an unused Puppy Dog Cops mode that traces back to the Driver 1 mission Bait for a trap. You can now enable it in the Debug Menu of the Dev version of REDRIVER2.
• There is still a leftover Mini Cars cheat from Driver 1 that can be enabled only with gameshark because it does not exist in menus. The cheat was reworked and added to the menu in REDRIVER2.
• According to the game code, pedestrians were supposed to be able to get into parked cars and drive away. The function for getting into a car still exists and is named CivGetIn.
• Hubcaps code was never touched during Driver 2 development and works exactly like in Driver 1. Hubcaps code was completely reworked in REDRIVER2.
• At night, player car lights were supposed to look wide when you choose "In Car" camera like in Driver 1, but because the code was barely touched it was bugged and the wide lights only showed in replay. Fixed in REDRIVER2.
• All cars in Driver 2 have their exhaust pipe position set, but there is no exhaust seen in the retail version (it only can be seen in the first Driver 2 trailer). Restored in REDRIVER2.
• Barrel caps were never visible. Fixed in REDRIVER2.
• LOD models were not switched for light poles, traffic lights and Chicago train tracks. Fixed in REDRIVER2.
• Light poles in Navy Pier and Lakes were not working because of small mistake in the code. Fixed in REDRIVER2.

Missions

• Tanner is supposed to have pedestrian felony but it was always reset to zero, which leads us to the following facts:
  • In Caine's Compound, Tanner gets invisible felony as soon as the mission starts. The Van was supposed to pursue you as soon as you are about to leave the warehouse and get on the road, but that was never realized.
  • In Car Bomb Getaway, cops were supposed to pursue the player as soon as Tanner leaves the explosion area but that never happened. This was reworked in REDRIVER2.
  • In Destroy the Yard, cops were supposed to make an ambush at the player but that never happened. This was reworked in REDRIVER2.
• When you have to steal the limo with a cop car in Caine's Cash, you can pull limo over by turning siren ON
• Initially in the Caine's Cash cutscene, Tanner was not supposed drive out. This is explained by the alarm sound raised by the guards which never heard due to far distance.

Easter eggs

Havana has an "I Have The Power" easter egg. Start Take a ride, exit the car and go to the cemetery (Necrópolis Colón) arc. Then press and hold Circle.

• Weather will become rainy
• Civilian cars will behave strange