> > Yeah, thought that was neat too. There's more stuff like that, like
scaring
> > birds from trees if you scrape them.
> The trees are probably the only thing I haven't hit...
> > Can't wait to see the "real" demo.
> Me too, but I wonder if the city will be any bigger, my hope is it
actually is a
> mission instead of just lose the tail...I wanna be waiting outside a bank
in
> downtown and have to make it to those houses with the garages with 5 or
more
> cops coming after me. :-)
> > Have you noticed how much better the drone traffic behaves too? In MM
when
> > you're waiting at the lights cars coming up behind you crash into the
> > scenery or into eachoter as they try to overtake you. Those in driver
seem
> > to really know you're there and just stop behind. Although I find them a
> > little "static" on the long stretches (no differences in speed, no lane
> > changing or overtaking).
> I see lane changing quite often, but the poor textures don't let you know
they
> are changing lanes (you really just have to look if the have a turn signal
> on)...I find the roads a bit confusing with the double line in one-way
> traffic...should be a dotted line on the major roads since they have a
median
> seperating the traffic directions.
> I don't know about smart AI...a few times I have had a green light and all
the
> sudden a car makes a left hand turn through the entire intersection (it's
ok if
> it's 1-way on 1-way, but don't use up the whole road please :-). Oh yeah
and
> magically some ars just disappear going to Dodge Island, even on the N-S
road
> that is the furthest east street, and I seem to notice 2-way streets
becoming 1
> way streets later on when I sometimes backtrack to lose the tail...some
weird
> stuff, but much better gameplay than MM.
Have you notice that the pedestrian traffic RUNS red lights in the game. For
example, you see the person in front has their blinker on to make a left
turn. The light in front of them is green, but they just sit there. When the
light turns red, THEN it makes the turn toward the green light meant for
traffic going perpendicular to them. This is some wierd, and dangerous AI.
However, at this point, I don't agree that Driver plays better, or is more
enjoyable than MM. MM has more ambience, has more stuff to look at, better
textures, denser traffic, interesting road layout instead of stretches of
straight roads with hardly any break in it, and repetitive buildings with
blah textures. There also isn't any doppler effect when a car whizzes by.
Please keep in mind that I'm comparing the Driver demo to the full version
of MM, but I think the MM demo blew the Driver demo away. Also, in MM, cars
don't act like drones and drive at a certain speed in a straight line and
they stay reasonably close to each other. They are also very vigilant with
getting the hell out of your way when you're driving head on into them. They
make very convincing evasive maneuvers that has a fifty percent chance of
weaving out of your way unless they reacted too late. In the Driver demo, I
was being chased and got on the wrong side of the road, and the ploddingly
slow pedestrian drivers made zero effort at dodging me and I crash into them
every time.
