RAGE : It Deserves its own thread now!

It's an id game. Even if Doom 3 wasn't received that great once all was said and done I think most people are at the very least curious and would check reviews and demos of their games. So I see very little point in making ports of old games, games which (IMO) were not very good in the first place.

 

In my opinion it already looks very, very good and may even surpass all the above mentioned games. We'll know more after QuakeCon where I expect the first direct feed media from the game.

Id itself hasn't really done any console development, even Doom3's Xbox version was handled by another company. You shouldn't judge Rage based on those previous efforts, this is pretty much the first time id handles consoles on its own. Also, don't forget that they have an ex-naughty dog guy working on the PS3 code as well.

As for Epic's and Valve's multiplatform work, it's kinda lacking, the PS3 version of the Orange Box wasn't even handled by Gabe's guys and Epic needed some Sony help to get their engine to run properly. But the CoD people did their homework quite well, that's true.

Re-remaking games doesn't make sense, and without completely reworking the art assets and levels, none of those games would be able to stand up to current releases. Id's money is better spent on new games.

 

At QuakeCon '07 he mentioned the PS3's memory partitioning and extra reserved ram presented a problem on RAGE. What else is eating up all that memory?

 

RAGE looks very good for a multiplatform game running at 60fps. Those are two pretty significant factors imo.

My interpretation of the id Tech5 schema is that the engine does the heavy lifting and that while there are shared assets that doesn't mean all 3 major platforms have identical settings. Obviously the PC version is going to allow some settings adjustments for low end (scale back texture resolution, shader quality, AF, AA, shadowing, etc) and I wouldn't be suprised if the console versions were adjusted to work with their respective strengths and weaknesses. Going with the lowest common denominator in every case, even if it doesn't make sense on the platform, doesn't sound like a "smart" approach to the hardware. Having an engine where there is one input from the artists and the engine messages it to the parameters set by the developer to run well on the platform seems more realistic. I know they mention the PS3 being the limiting factor at times, but from what I gather I don't believe they are saying, "The PS3 doesn't do X well and/or have the memory resources for Y, so the PC version won't allow you to enable higher fidelity ever." When JC says, "go cruch some things down" I would be surprised if that means the PC experience will be capped by the PS3 limitations but instead the PS3 build will be adjusted for its limitations (likewise 360 when it is limited or a lower end PC). I mean, its not like the press has thought that lower IQ games look identical this gen anyhow

I guess we will find out soon enough though.

 

One of the advantages of megatexturing surely is that you have a megatexture from which you're going to decompress and scale data you're going to show on screen in realtime, and from another interview I"ve taken that they do the same with LODs ... that very speficially however doesn't at all mean that the same assets will look exactly the same on all three systems. They should look very similar but will use more or less detail. Also the PC version could run at any resolution, while the 360 version is locked to 1280x720 for instance, and same kind of obvious stuff with the AA. Also, I have no idea about what lighting options you have and how these may scale across the different platforms.

Until we see some gameplay on all three systems, we have very little to go on. But they do seem to have put together something that developers may well end up liking a lot.

 

Most of the lighting is probably baked. That's my guess anyway and hence why they hit 60Hz.

John did say that Doom 4 would run at 30Hz, so my guess is that they'll make use of dynamic lights in a bigger scale.

 

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53976

He still likes X360 hardware more though

 

How great will this be? Will it be like Doom 3's "Ultra" mode that had no compression but looked exactly alike? Or will it be greater than that?

 

I doubt that's changed, he's just angling to get MS to allow it to ship on more disc's. I wouldn't be shocked if it works.

 

it reads like ms charges based on discs and the jump from 2 to 3 discs is more than he wants to pay.

 

Yeah. Carmack doesn't just 'say' stuff, he's not Mark Rein.

 

Extended QuakeCon '08 trailer: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53979

 

Are there any direct feed images and videos anywhere?

It looks way too good. I doubt the PS3 or the 360 can do this visuals just as good btw

 

It looks quite good, but we definitely need some direct feed video, as these camera videos always tend to look better than the 'real thing'.
In fact I'm thinking about how to simulate the same effect as in game post processing effect

 

I was there and it looked spectacular on the big screen (which most games usually don't).. I was basically speechless after the trailer. If the game comes at the end of this year, it can easily get the best gfx award. Next year, it will be a contender for sure, but after seeing beyond good and evil 2 trailer, we all know there is going to be competition.

Unfortunately, he did not speak much about the engine itself this year. He mentioned that they achieve these visuals with 60 fps on consoles. He mentioned they are targeting x3 more gfx quality with Doom 4 on consoles as they are aiming 30 fps for that one.

The only problem for 360 seems to be disk space. JC says that they would like to put the game on 3 DVDs, but royalties makes it unpractical businesswise. He said they are trying to find other ways to compress data to 2 disks. If MS royalty policy changes for them, the game might come on 3 DVDs (current policy is royalty per disk rather than royalty per game. That's why they are reluctant to go to 3 DVD)

 

I dont know how much to asume from the trailer, but aparently this game is still 1 year away.

How come they can have so much to show and so little to play with what look like a engine that is done. Is it usually like this? i had the impression that the assets usually are created along side the engine, and things meet up during the last 2 months of crunch time.

 

PC version to ship on Blu-Ray? Nice!!!

I would love to see this transition take place, might even be worth me picking up a drive (i've been considering one for movie purposes).

 

Depends on the studio I think. Looking at LBP, they mostly created the engine and then added content, tweaking the engine as they went. That's how they managed to show something worthwhile 6 months into production in the original GDC show, and then spend a year filling out the engine with content to form a game. ID have obviously been working on in Tech 5 as an engine for some time. They've got it to a functional point, have a game in mind, and now, possibly, just need to make allthe content to fill it up with.

The vid has looked spectacular in the visuals, my only lament being the quickly disappearing clouds of smoke/dust. I would love these to linger around and alter the scene and lighting. Aside from the visuals, I don't understand the game! Is it a racer? What's with the 'orcs'? I probably ought to check out some more movies.

 

LBP is about as hand-in-hand engine and content development as you can get. They even share meetings. Whenever the engine guys come up with something new they get the level designers see what they can come up with and provide feedback etc, and the other way around if the level designers think of something new that would work really well they go to the engine guys to see if it can be added.

 

Shifty is seem that Rage is a FPS, with racing fight portion (like Half-like 2) and got some RPG elements. When I saw the vid, I thinking of a Mad Max game, without the licence, the "orcs" are probably some genetics mutations due to radiation.
And the best all all is a color full game, not another grey variants game!