History of the project

2014. ‘Drivers’ Prototype

• The super cool demo that took the community by storm!

2015. Early Alpha

• Lua scripting system has been implemented at basic level, simple missions can be possible now.
• Level editor preparations to make city - generation of tilefield from bitmap
• Traffic cars nearly done
• Replays seems quite difficult, but deterministic at most.

Second release

• Network Multiplayer added
• Newspapers, flying sheets in addition to debris
• Not so stupid but fun cops AI. Pathfinding done on A*
• After felony goes beyond 50%, cops are able to place roadblocks
• Visibility optimization with occlusion planes
• Added some lens flare (I know, not so notable change)
• Bitmap to city generator completed, so city roads are already ok.
• Multiple colored vehicles now supported
• All five vehicles are completed

2016. Alpha 2485 (2016)

• Third release
• Project officially renamed to The Driver Syndicate
• Totally new art style and direction
• Multiplayer removed
• Corrected pursuer AI handling a bit
• Fixed traffic car respawn when lead car is not player
• Checkpoint run mode has introduction now (because there is no city map)

2017-2018. Dormant project

2019. The Come-Back Alpha Stage!

• Performance optimizations
• Countless bug fixes
• Fixed crashes when restarting game
• Fixed throttle disabling when pressing brake
• Added control settings menu - Key bindings, controller settigs
• Improved shadows appearance
• Improved wet surfaces appearance when raining
• Improved replay storage and playback
• Improved Film Director interface layout
• fastseek command is now a lot faster
• Optimized car models with LODs

Gameplay changes:

• Added demo story mission
• Two new cars: Driver 2 Challenger and Taxi Cab
• Removed incomplete cars
• Steering improvements in favor of controllers
• Fire hydrants are now flowing with WATER when hit
• Traffic cars are now more confident on slopes
• Removed pursuer in chase minigame
• Altered cars in getaway minigames
• Interview bug fixes
• City buildings updated
• All unfinished roads has been closed

The origins narrated by Soapy himself

Can you explain us the origins of the project? When DRIVER Syndicate wasn’t a racing game at all!

• 2005. I started making custom maps, models and animations for CS 1.6 and then CS: Source.
• 2007. After spending a descent amounts of time playing STALKER, I had a first person shooter idea (like most kids from CIS who played it) instantly, so I've started learning how to code. Later I eventually got my first ever game engine built on top of Irrlich 3D engine, some shooter mechanics, etc. Same time I involved my school friend, so he started making CS 1.6 maps and models as well.
• 2008. The last school year, I've got hands on Half-Life 2 SDK, and with my friend we improved my idea of the game and we started making it on Source engine.
• 2009. I started this Game Engine that currently powers The Driver Syndicate. Engine got name DarkTech, and it's initial purpose was to overcome some limitations of Source Engine we're facing, but we're continued to make stuff in Source. It used to run Quake 3 BSP format, and shared the same design features from Source Engine as Material System, Sound System, Entity system.
• 2010. The project on Source was scrapped and we're transitioned to DarkTech, which was later renamed to Equilibrium as we had all the tools we needed. Same year we've changed the concept of the game to utilize only the current engine capabilities, also it has been rewritten and got new Level Editor, which had unlimited capabilities for level editing. Aside from this, I got into Driver Madness and made the first ever tool to swap cars in Driver 1 PC. I've also tried to modify some other games, so I've taken some Open-Source game named Stunt Challenge made by students of the University of Oviedo. It was based on Irrlich 3D engine, and as I had good knowledge of the Irrlicht, i've made progress quickly. I improved game physics, added AI and started making experiments on car damage effects, etc. While working on this, I started thinking about a Driver clone or remake thing.
• 2012. The FPS game project was frozen but I continued to work on codebase and improving the quality of the game engine.
• 2014. The project Driver finally started…