Anyone know if they had increased the size of Megatexture by going from 6 smaller levels to 2 larger levels ?
I mean something like from 6 megatextures of 64k x 64k to 2 megatextures of 128k x 128k ?
From the earliest JC mentiones Rage's largest MT was always 128k x 128k. Personally I think they did cut content in the form of filler, intermission kind of content. I think settlements and "instanced dungeons" were further apart physically in the world and going for two wastelands simply means they are now closer. For instance I could see the time of day/weather changing when going between any two of those smaller wastelands while right now you'll probably only have one such transition: from first DVD act to the second.
There's simply no reason to change the game in this way as a result of having to ship on more than one disk. I mean, how is it different having one environment on a disk as opposed to 3? Yes it cuts down on inter environment loading but it would do on only a single disk too.
Well, it works like this, once you target the xbox your game has to neatly fit into 6-8gb content slots if you don't want to have any back & forth disc switching. By having 3 DVDs on the xbox version your game has to have 2 clean splits. Rage's story only has 1 clean split where both parts fit on that 6-8gb slot. I'm not at all surprised by this considering I
called it on our MT article.
Beyond3D said:
John Carmack has already admitted that their next game, Rage, using a 2nd generation MegaTexture will require two DVDs. This is a problem for the Xbox 360 if the gameplay can not easily be broken into separate parts. For example, a game like Oblivion would be very hard to make work with two DVDs.
Indeed. Just to recap for everyone not paying much attention, I'll be paraphrasing the important statements from id:
1. JC: "Because of Microsoft's charging royalties per disc Rage will be a 2 DVD game, thus requiring more compression, thus making it look worse. Disc duplication costs are neglegible compared to royalties."
<PS3 fans go wild, xbox fans say JC is lazy>
2. JC: "we're making sure the compression only hits parts the players are less likely to see so the artefact will be some blurry rocks in out of the way places".
<PS3 fans think JC should just ignore the xbox platform, xbox fans say JC should just compress more>
3. JC: "xbox version will look worse than PS3 even though we prefer to develop for the former."
<PS3 fans have an orgasm, xbox fans light their torches>
4. TW: "We had to change the player experience going from 5-6 smaller zones to just two bigger ones so we could neatly split the experience into two DVDs. All the versions will be like that".
<xbox fans rejoyce, PC and PS3 fans light their torches>
5. TW: "I didn't mean that! No content was cut because of the xbox! You know how JC tells like it is and I don't, so rest assured no content was cut!"
<everyone stands around confused>
6. TW: "JC misunderstood, MS does NOT change royalties per disc, they're not dickheads (discheads?) but the disc duplication costs are too expensive - yeah JC doesn't know what he is talking about in point 1".
<everyone stands around confused - part II>
7. TW: "the quality difference between consoles isn't even decided yet. Right now xbox has more compression but DVD read speed is higher so in the end xbox might have better quality".
<PS3 fans say id is lazy, xbox fans rejoyce that their outdated media isn't so outdated afterall>
8. TW: "ok, I admit, if you know what to look for the xbox will look worse"
<everyone just tunes off>