Rage (id Software)

[BadTB25]

All of the vids of Rage that I've seen look "samey" to me with the same desert look and same racey sections.

I'd like to see some variety to what we've seen so far. It really needs a hook that we haven't seen before--it's going to be tough. We already have Horde, Firefight, Beast mode, vehicles, Saved films, Forge, Turrets, dual wielding, etc.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

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.

Well, the PC version of the Force Unleashed on Steam is ~25 GB already. So there's already a precedent for BRD length DD games on Steam. Thus it's not a valid argument for iD to use. Now, 2-3 years ago maybe.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

It wouldn't be practical drawing 3x additional texels, and going from ~14 GB (two Xbox 360 DVDs) to 30-40 (3-4 dual-layer DVDs) for the PC version.

Why?

There's been absolutely tons of PC games that came on 3 or more discs, including several Blizzard titles (Diablo 2 + expansion = 5 discs, WoW was also 5 discs for years - 3 more discs for Burning Crusade - unless you had the collector's edition on 1 DVD for example).

Also, if they really stress the SPUs for transcoding, or even one full 360 core with low-level VMX - single-core and low-end dualcore PCs will have trouble keeping up.

What makes you think that?

Even a low-end PC has gobs more RAM and way faster I/O than a crappy ol' console. There'd be no need to transcode textures in realtime on a PC, even if they're stored in id's proprietary compressed format to save install size you just transcode the whole level at load-time and spit the result back out to disk if neccessary, then stream the relevant bits at ~60MB/s or more, straight from HDD.

Only consoles need to jump through hoops, due to their inferior hardware.

 

[assen]

That's _exactly_ how MT works: the IQ is already there.

That's my point - the IQ for 1280x720 is already there; unlikely much more texel density than that.

What makes you think that?

Even a low-end PC has gobs more RAM and way faster I/O than a crappy ol' console. There'd be no need to transcode textures in realtime on a PC, even if they're stored in id's proprietary compressed format to save install size you just transcode the whole level at load-time and spit the result back out to disk if neccessary, then stream the relevant bits at ~60MB/s or more, straight from HDD.

Umm, experience?
Transcoding is about CPU power, not "more RAM and way faster I/O". You can't transcode "the whole level", because, first, the entire game is in two "levels", and second, see above, the raw dataset for it is 1 TB. Maybe you have a way more powerful PC than I've seen ;-)
You can't count on 60 MB/s on the users' machine - you'll get into serious trouble on old, badly fragmented, or laptop drives.

Only consoles need to jump through hoops, due to their inferior hardware.

Oh, you should have started with that, it would have made my reply quite a bit shorter.

 

[Richard]

That's my point - the IQ for 1280x720 is already there; unlikely much more texel density than that.

I'm referring to the compression strength which id has admitted has influence on the IQ. For that they don't need to rework the artwork because it's authored uncompressed and then the resulting that 1 TB worth of megatextures are shrunk to fit onto 2 DVDs.

Now 2 DVDs for XBOX is mandatory because of the Arcade SKU and because you can't have disk swaping back and forth. On PCs however, instalation to HDD is the only option so they could ship the game on 50 DVDs if they didn't mind the cost. I wouldn't go that far, I believe a 25gb version, as per PS3, ought to be sufficient with a manageable cost for them.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

Saw the RAGE demo at IGN. Must say this game has the best artistic direction amongst all the games shown at E3 ! The town they showed is absolutley lovely ! Brink too has nice looking environments, but something is not cohesive about that game.

One issue, I thought , after all the talk of megatexturing, textures of walls getting blurred up when the player got close is a shame. It seems that textures are going to be just like any other game. Outdoors do looks uber sexy, though !

 

[nightshade]

It seems that textures are going to be just like any other game.

But without even a single repetition in texture !

 

[joker454]

But without even a single repetition in texture !

I wonder how true that really is. In principal yeah ever pixel can be unique, but in practice I figure there must be some cut&paste going on in the mega texture itself, otherwise it would take them eons to finish the art.

 

[Alucardx23]

I wonder how true that really is. In principal yeah ever pixel can be unique, but in practice I figure there must be some cut&paste going on in the mega texture itself, otherwise it would take them eons to finish the art.

IGN has an old but pretty nice video that shows how they add detail to the textures.

Rage PC Games Commentary - Tech5 Demo Part 1
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/926419/id-tech-5-project/videos/tech5demo1_quakecon2007.html

Rage PC Games Commentary - Tech5 Demo Part 2
http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/926419/id-tech-5-project/videos/tech5demo2_quakecon2007.html

 

[Sigfried1977]

All this strikes me as slightly pointless. All the texture variety in the world wasted on a desert setting that's filled with the same brand of clone-enemies you see in every other game. If I just shot the same dude in the face for the fifth time in a row, I really don't give a damn if railing a is slightly more rusty than railing b. (and I have yet to hear a complaint about the texture variety in other AAA games)

 

[Npl]

All this strikes me at slightly pointless. All the texture variety in the world wasted on a desert setting that's filled with the same brand of clone-enemies you see in every other game. If I just shot the same dude in the face for the fifth time in a row I really don't give a damn if railing a is slightly more rusty than railing b. (and I have yet to hear a complaint about the texture variety in other AAA games)

Most games just simply do in realtime what id does in the content-creation stage - put some decals on a set of base-textures.
I never got the hype about megatexture either, seems to be id`s next dead-end after stencil shadows.

 

[Alucardx23]

Most games just simply do in realtime what id does in the content-creation stage - put some decals on a set of base-textures.
I never got the hype about megatexture either, seems to be id`s next dead-end after stencil shadows.

I understand that the biggest value of megatextures is that you can add all the detail you want to the textures without lowering performance.

 

[Arwin]

This is also a massive open world. Traditional fps games need smaller environments, slow sections, corridors etc. Whereas in this game you can even fast-travel by buggy. Repeating textures do stand out in open world games.

 

[Sigfried1977]

I thought GTAIV did just fine personally. Same with Red Dead Redemption.

 

[Npl]

I understand that the biggest value of megatextures is that you can add all the detail you want to the textures without lowering performance.

You can do that to all textures - the only advantage is that you have 1 "texture" that the game automatically composes of tons of tiny ones. The only thing you save is artists having to break down the world(-geometry) in small enough tiles to fit texture boundaries - but thats something the toolset could do automatically.
Streaming in unique textures is nothing new.

 

[Alucardx23]

I thought GTAIV did just fine personally. Same with Red Dead Redemption.

But still those games could look better if you can give the artists the ability to add more detail right? You can see in the video where john comments that in games development there is always a back and forth with the artist because they have to limit or remake the work they have already done or can do because of performance issues. I think this should not be a discussion about if someone can notice or not more detail in the textures, but what megatextures can bring to every game.

 

[zed]

I thought GTAIV did just fine personally.

Part of the reason why is the DOF
Im working on a game at the moment
http://www.zedzeek.com/GAMES/scramble/scramble.html (btw any gameplay premise ideas are appreciated) The fog is there cause theres no world boundries

Whilst Im against DOF usually, Ive added it to remove the repetition patterns you see when you tile textures, if theres no DOF its easily noticeable
part of the problem with megatexture is whilst 128k x 128k is a huge texture, stretch it out over a large terrain, and the number of texels per meter (i.e. the detail) isnt gonna be huge.
eg say a 10km x 10km size area (rage is prolly about this size?) now that means each texel is gonna cover an area of ~8cm^2, I suppose you could get away with it on a car game but with a person viewpoint?

 

[Alucardx23]

You can do that to all textures - the only advantage is that you have 1 "texture" that the game automatically composes of tons of tiny ones. The only thing you save is artists having to break down the world(-geometry) in small enough tiles to fit texture boundaries - but thats something the toolset could do automatically.
Streaming in unique textures is nothing new.

Having one big texture is a good advantage when you want texture variety; it’s more efficient on resources since its only one texture being streamed to memory instead of fetching all the different textures to load.

Edit: Good interview explaining more.
http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/johnc_interview_2006_MegaTexture_QandA.html

 

[Laa-Yosh]

You can do that to all textures - the only advantage is that you have 1 "texture" that the game automatically composes of tons of tiny ones. The only thing you save is artists having to break down the world(-geometry) in small enough tiles to fit texture boundaries - but thats something the toolset could do automatically.
Streaming in unique textures is nothing new.

The variety that tech5 can present, and on a seriously reduced memory footstep, is way beyond anything that other engines can ever hope to achieve.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Having one big texture is a good advantage when you want texture variety; it’s more efficient on resources since its only one texture being streamed to memory instead of fetching all the different textures to load.

It's about a lot more then that, the actual texture memory consumption with virtual texturing is significantly lower.
In the case of Rage, due to the limited bandwidth and seek times of the optical disc, the extra memory is probably used for the transcoding and caching though, but the tech in itself basically has a constant VRAM requirement for the given framebuffer resolution, no matter how much detail they put into the game world. They could use a 1024K x 1024K texture with the same memory requirements.