Rage (id Software)
- Thread starter Alucardx23
- Start date
Svensk Viking
Regular
We don't know that much about multiplayer, but can you see RAGE having split-screen? Or does it seem to be too "hard" on the hardware already?
Two players possibly in two different locations opens up a possibility of requiring two completely different sets of Megatexture tiles, streaming from two different locations on the disc at once, and so on. Other games can both forfeit highres textures as the smaller screen resolution can hide it, or just keep all the textures of a multiplayer level in memory at once.
In short it is very unlikely for Rage, due to its unique architectural requirements.
In short it is very unlikely for Rage, due to its unique architectural requirements.
deathindustrial
Regular
Splitscreen is part of what made Borderlands so awesome, at least for me and the wife anyway. If Rage is weak on the co-op front then it risks coming off as a lesser "me too", no matter how pretty it is. Especially if Borderlands 2 gets released anywhere around the same time frame as Rage.
IMHO of course.
Cheers
IMHO of course.
Cheers
It wouldn't be practical if they didn't already mention the possibility of PS3 having larger datasets because of Blu-ray. All we're asking is that the PC be given the same opportunity.
True, coincidentally yesterday I picked up Kane & Lynch (the original) for 10 euros. The sole reason? I need another coop game to play with the missus. Any game that has single-machine COOP is very, very likely to enjoy a sale from me even if it sucks. That reminds me, I need to pick up LEGO Harry Potter.
What they've mentioned is using less compression on the same source dataset for the BR disc. There was no word about doing it at an increased resolution, and it makes no sense either. It'd have a serious effect on their workload and would probably tax the system itself beyond its limits, too.
Svensk Viking
Regular
Laa-Yosh, would it be possible with splitscreen co-op if you both always were in the same locations then? Or if ID for example brought down the framerate to 30 FPS in splitscreen(I think Mario kart Wii does that)?
How much extra does splitscreen really require??
I can't say that Gears 1 and 2 are bad when playing singleplayer, but I really found them MUCH, MUCH more enjoyable when playing splitscreen with my bro/sis...Same thing with Guitar Hero(that game is more family friendly tho), and RE5 went up a notch because of it
My list with games being much better with splitscreen can go on and on
How much extra does splitscreen really require??
I can't say that Gears 1 and 2 are bad when playing singleplayer, but I really found them MUCH, MUCH more enjoyable when playing splitscreen with my bro/sis...Same thing with Guitar Hero(that game is more family friendly tho), and RE5 went up a notch because of it
My list with games being much better with splitscreen can go on and on
The problem I suspect here is that for every single frame, the engine determines a set of tiles that the camera can see. This has a relatively fixed memory cost, and the tiles have to be constantly replaced as you move around, by streaming in and decompressing/recompressing more tiles from the optical disc.
There's probably some caching involved as well, to reuse tiles around you, but seeing how the textures are completely unique it's probably only good to cover the case of the player suddenly doing a 180 degree turn; and maybe read ahead in the most possible movement direction.
Even if the players are just a few meters apart, it could already change 60-80% of the required tiles, maybe even more. The biggest memory hogs are probably the highres tiles right around the player, and split screen would have to duplicate this part. There's not enough memory, optical disc bandwidth, or transcoding processor power to support this on a single system.
Even if they'd stop using the highest MIP level for all tiles to conserve RAM, it'd still require two independent streaming processes that'd mess up the optical drive, jumping all around the disc to read different pieces of data.
Also, the streaming and transcoding parts are almost completely independent of the actual frame rate, they are done in the background anyway and are more closely related to the movement speed. The entire system can be transplanted into Doom4 easily, and the framerate cut to 30fps will only effect the lighting and shading parts of the engine (if they follow in the footsteps of Doom3, it'll pretty much require dynamic lighting). So cutting the framerate wouldn't help at all, either.
There's probably some caching involved as well, to reuse tiles around you, but seeing how the textures are completely unique it's probably only good to cover the case of the player suddenly doing a 180 degree turn; and maybe read ahead in the most possible movement direction.
Even if the players are just a few meters apart, it could already change 60-80% of the required tiles, maybe even more. The biggest memory hogs are probably the highres tiles right around the player, and split screen would have to duplicate this part. There's not enough memory, optical disc bandwidth, or transcoding processor power to support this on a single system.
Even if they'd stop using the highest MIP level for all tiles to conserve RAM, it'd still require two independent streaming processes that'd mess up the optical drive, jumping all around the disc to read different pieces of data.
Also, the streaming and transcoding parts are almost completely independent of the actual frame rate, they are done in the background anyway and are more closely related to the movement speed. The entire system can be transplanted into Doom4 easily, and the framerate cut to 30fps will only effect the lighting and shading parts of the engine (if they follow in the footsteps of Doom3, it'll pretty much require dynamic lighting). So cutting the framerate wouldn't help at all, either.
Oh, and all of the above are the result of the very unique architecture of Rage. A COD/Halo type game doesn't require constant streaming, they can probably fit most of a multiplayer level's data into the console's RAM. This way all 2 or even 4 players on the console will share the contents of the texture memory. 200-250MB of textures are enough for a lot for non-unique texturing.
Svensk Viking
Regular
Your explanation reaches out to my tech-limited mind very well Laa-Yosh...Just one question tho
When you speak about the very unique architecture of Rage, I just wonder...Would a high-end PC be able to handle it in splitscreen?
And I have gotten the impression that you actually are a game developer?
When you speak about the very unique architecture of Rage, I just wonder...Would a high-end PC be able to handle it in splitscreen?
And I have gotten the impression that you actually are a game developer?
Yes. I'm referring to the DVD count for PC/XBOX using the same (highly compressed) dataset versus the PS3's using a different one like the idea of a platinum edition for PC Carmack mentioned in an interview.
As for a PC, well, if the Megatexture is on the hard drive, maybe it can handle two simultaneous streams at once. But the HDD would go crazy for sure
Take it for what it's worth but before they clammed up on multiplayer the last word was COOP for all platforms, split-screen only for consoles
grrr: ).Also note that while two-player coop would require two streams, the screen each one would be filling would also be halved.
I guess all we need now is a shipping date, massive hype that is going to swim in the same river the other fps games are in and a then finally wait to see how it reviews and how console gamers (most likely where all the money is going to be made) receive it.
Personally I have doubts as pretty as it looks as to how people will react to it, or if they will understand it or just shrug it off like all previous id software console attempts this gen and last.
Personally I have doubts as pretty as it looks as to how people will react to it, or if they will understand it or just shrug it off like all previous id software console attempts this gen and last.
Oh my, I am famous!
But let me put it this way. I'll be as unhappy as an owner of a high-end Blu-ray player that is forced to watch the DVD version of the movie.
To continue the analogy, the difference is that movies are "naturally" shot on 35 mm film, which has about 4000 pixels of horizontal resolution (if I'm not mistaken); encoding them as Blu-ray simply means throwing away less of the image quality already present in the media.
I don't think EA would be happy to go much further than 2 DVDs for the PC version. Maybe they might do a collectors' edition on Blu-ray?
The general resolution for movie VFX is ~ 2000 * 1500 and for letterboxing the top and bottom are cut off.
The film stock generally does not store more information, whatever the theoretical resolution might be. There's always some blur, a lot of film grain etc. etc. which usually means that even the 2K digital plates aren't displayed at their best quality, compositing has to add various kinds of blur, noise and so on.
IMAX is the only case where there's significantly more detail, which is why VFX for such movies is rendered at 4K-5K resolution.
In short, BluRay has as much information as possible, really, there's no point going any higher for movies that have been shot on film. Purely digital productions could outgrow 1080p eventually, but you'd need your own IMAX home theatre to really enjoy its benefits. 3D and 48-60fps is a much more likely direction.
The film stock generally does not store more information, whatever the theoretical resolution might be. There's always some blur, a lot of film grain etc. etc. which usually means that even the 2K digital plates aren't displayed at their best quality, compositing has to add various kinds of blur, noise and so on.
IMAX is the only case where there's significantly more detail, which is why VFX for such movies is rendered at 4K-5K resolution.
In short, BluRay has as much information as possible, really, there's no point going any higher for movies that have been shot on film. Purely digital productions could outgrow 1080p eventually, but you'd need your own IMAX home theatre to really enjoy its benefits. 3D and 48-60fps is a much more likely direction.
That's _exactly_ how MT works: the IQ is already there. The uncompressed assets are reportedly around 1TB. id just compresses it enough to fit on 2 DVDs (minus the DRM space) for XBOX, while the PS3 is apparently getting 25GB. Why should PCs get the same 2 DVD version when installation will be mandatory anyway? We're already being deprived of split-screen coop...
Bethesda is publishing Rage now. Pressing another DVD isn't costly. It certainly is more expensive to press and produce (and maintain) an extra Blu-Ray collector's edition. But with DD this isn't even a problem as you can have a million different SKUs if you really wanted. I'm sure there are people who wouldn't mind paying a couple of extra bucks/euros for a higher quality version be it DD or optical media.
What I don't get is id's comments how a DD of Rage would "break the internet". Okay fine, let's say for argument's sake that Steam couldn't handle the load; but then wouldn't they want to push BR _now_ when they "only" have 25gb datasets instead of later for Rage 2 when they'll want to have double that? Because if DD doesn't handle Rage's size now, it sure as heck isn't going to handle Rage 2 in a few years. Unless of course id plans to take another 6 years to make it or keep texture density the same for another half a decade.
Another thing I don't get is that two dozen game journalists got to demo Rage at E3: did no one ask this? They're more concerned with "What is the game about" so Tim Willits could repeat the very same thing he says at EVERY. SINGLE. INTERVIEW. /rant
