RAGE : It Deserves its own thread now!

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 ?

 

Sorry, this may be have answered earlier in this thread but could ID avoid all these issues and retain a 2 dvd release if they made a mandatory HDD install for the 360?

 

They've made sacrifices for both platforms. They've talked previously about having problems with the PS3 version due to less RAM.

 

Its only 10% less (if that) how can it be causing so many, if any problems.

 

The 10% of difference due to the OS respective size is the minor part of the equation, it's more unified Ram pool vs two pools.
Carmack spoke about this, Im lazy to search the interview but somebody linked it.

 

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.

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.

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>

 

LOL awesome summation. Thanks!

 

True, but I have to wonder how difficult it would have been to simply confine 3 environments to each disk and still only have a single point were a disk swap would be required.

i.e. in the current 2 wasteland version, I assume you will still be restricted as to when you can move from one to the other by either the games storyline or its geography(otherwise you will still be potentially swapping disks all the time). I'm not seeing why thats same restriction couldn't exist if you had 3 environments on the first disk. Either restrict it through story line (you can only move between environments 3 and 4) or restrict it through geography by grouping the first 3 and the second 3 environments together with a single point of contact.

 

We probably should delete the rest of the thread and just keep Rich's summary.

 

Result: Carmack won't make any public appearences before the next Quakecon at all.

 

It is a great summary but misses all the other barbs in the other directions. How soon people forget

 

But it's sad that it's true. Really is.

id need to get their act together and come clean, show us tech-demos and walkthroughs of both PS3 and 360 builds, as well as give projections. With the mess they've created, they have scared many buyers off, I guarantee that.

Also, we can rest assured that PC will have the upper hand in ANY case, so that's really negligible.

 

Well I thought they would used 64k. They wouldn't have fit six 128k Megatextures on two or three 360 DVDs. 128k Megatextures would be around 3-4 GB or more. So I assumed they used smaller one like 64k. And since they moved to two larger maps, they might used 128k.

If they were indeed planning on having 6 smaller maps with 128k megatexture each before, then there is quality drop. No wonder Carmack wanted 3 DVDs.

Megatexture even at 128k can't handle really large environment without drop in quality. Quality wise it's better to have six smaller maps with 128k megatexture each.

 

Maybe it's a sick kind of PR. We've all kept talking about Rage..

 

Why does id have to do that? You could just wait until the game is out and then compare them in reviews, in videos, in screenshots, in the store or in game demos. There is no reason for id to "come clean" and explain what the differences are going to be and what tradeoffs are being made so far ahead of release. Any information they give us is either to hype their product or just because they have an interest in tech talk, but they don't HAVE to give of any technical information if they don't want to.

 

As amusing as the technical talk and fanboy fighting are, iD still has to convice me this game won't be a boring pile of crap.

This may very well end up being much ado about nothing.

 

What? They have scared many buyers off because of what? Because there have been some confusing tech reports?

Im sure that less than 0,01% of the potential buyers of this game cares about the mess and confusing surrounding the tech side of this game, to such a point that they are "scared off" from buying the product.

Get a grip on reality. The amount of people that care about this "mess", and feel that ID needs to come clean is few, its a few fanboys and some tech geeks at best. This "mess" will have no significant impact on sales whatsoever.

 

They've already done quite a few tech and tool demo's showcasing Tech5 and RAGE.

 

Other than the trailer and very few screenshots? Where?

This is just for interest purpose, no flame intention or whatsoever, maybe it even has been discussed before, but what do you guys here think, was the footage in the trailer rendered by consoles (PS3 or Xbox 360)? Or do you think it was rendered by PC instead?

 

They've shown Rage in quite a few different places, from quick demos & quick trailers to full 'mega-texture walk-throughs. This video is one of the times they showed multiple platforms.

I'm pretty sure the trailers were rendered on PC.