RAGE: That's actually what you do when trying to get the PC version to work

[Laa-Yosh]

What, you also believe there are some super high sized textures sitting on id's servers? That's utterly silly...

They did the following in order to fit the terrabytes of texture data onto just 3 discs:
- most environments have no normal/specular maps at all, only diffuse color, with lighting, shadows and even specular highlights all baked into the texture - this cuts out nearly 2/3 of the environment texture data
- they ran brute force simulations of where the player can get to and downsized textures for the areas that are unreachable
- they used 1:50 HD Photo lossy texture compression on the remaining data

It's all completely clear and logical. There isn't much point in releasing a "high res" texture pack because at least 90% of the textures aren't more detailed in the source data at all.

 

[Richard]

No, the barely noticeable improvement was about shipping a level with the original textures and with near lossless compression. Carmack apparently thought that more textures got downsized during level optimization.

Not compression. Near lossless would be a terabyte but would improve IQ quite a bit in some of the shots I saw. The size is impractical of course. The ideal solution would be larger assets but as JC said, most textures were authored at the resolution they were shipped in.

 

[Sxotty]

What, you also believe there are some super high sized textures sitting on id's servers? That's utterly silly...

They did the following in order to fit the terrabytes of texture data onto just 3 discs:
- most environments have no normal/specular maps at all, only diffuse color, with lighting, shadows and even specular highlights all baked into the texture - this cuts out nearly 2/3 of the environment texture data
- they ran brute force simulations of where the player can get to and downsized textures for the areas that are unreachable
- they used 1:50 HD Photo lossy texture compression on the remaining data

It's all completely clear and logical. There isn't much point in releasing a "high res" texture pack because at least 90% of the textures aren't more detailed in the source data at all.

If they have no specular maps where did they get the specular highlights they baked?

 

[Richard]

They have "normal" textures with corresponding normal maps, specular maps, etc. but they all get baked into a single 3 channel texture. That in turn is compressed into the MT that is distributed.

 

[Sxotty]

They have "normal" textures with corresponding normal maps, specular maps, etc. but they all get baked into a single 3 channel texture. That in turn is compressed into the MT that is distributed.

I am well aware of that. He complained that the original assets were crap (low res and no specular maps etc).. My point was even in that post he contradicted himself.

There are two separate issues.

1) Bicubic sampling.
Result: Crap in crap out
2) Quality of original assets
Result: Unknown at this point.

The two keep being conflated. Failure of bicubic sampling means nothing about original asset quality.

 

[swaaye]

Bicubic might even exacerbate the fakey cell shaded look on those low rez textures, btw. It has the effect of increasing the definition of high contrast edges (haloing/ringing).
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/08/the-myth-of-infinite-detail-bilinear-vs-bicubic.html

 

[HMBR]

I'm still amazed by how problematic this game is with my PC (radeon 5700, dual core cpu),
since the game was released id released a patch and AMD at least 3 different optimized drivers,
I installed today the latests 10.10 and... the game runs with lower framerate
while the always 100% cpu usage was solved when I started the game with my usual commands (+jobs_numThreads 0 +vt_pageImageSizeUnique 8192 +vt_pageImageSizeUniqueDiffuseOnly 8192 +vt_pageImageSizeUniqueDiffuseOnly2 8192 +m_smooth 0 +m_rawinput 1+vt_maxPPF 8) it was working at 30-60fps at the place I choose (just outside the mayor's room at subway city), without any command it was better, 50-60 with some low 40s...
but the trouble is, with the older preview 2 and the commands I get solid 60fps, even if the CPU usage is always 100% (no variation at all, always 100, with the newer driver I saw it varying for the first time, from 60-80), I reinstalled preview 2 and problem solved, solid 60fps

the only problem I have with this driver is that sometimes when I start the game it works at 20fps (I tried to understand why, and "playing" with process priority settings while the game was working in this "slow mode" t improved it), but the way to fix it is simple, I just need to enter on windowed mode, close the game and start again (on windowed mode) and it works at 60fps again...

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I am well aware of that. He complained that the original assets were crap (low res and no specular maps etc)..

What are you talking about, where am I complaining about anything?? And what contradictions???

1) Bicubic sampling.
Result: Crap in crap out

So you've already seen the game like this and that's how you know it's crap?
Also, what about the detail textures that Carmack talked about?

2) Quality of original assets
Result: Unknown at this point.

There's nothing unknown about it, at least 90% of the assets look just like they do in the final game but without any texture compression artifacts.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

By the way the detail textures are probably the reason why the patch takes this long, artists have to go through the levels and somehow tag them, assuming that there are going to be several kinds of detail textures.

 

[Sxotty]

What are you talking about, where am I complaining about anything?? And what contradictions???

You said they had no specular maps. Then you said specular was baked into the texture. If they baked it in then they had it in the original assets. Rather simple.

So you've already seen the game like this and that's how you know it's crap?
Also, what about the detail textures that Carmack talked about?

I just know what bicubic looks like and that J.C. said bicubic wasn't stellar. Swaaye showed everyone.

There's nothing unknown about it, at least 90% of the assets look just like they do in the final game but without any texture compression artifacts.

If they had no texture compression artifacts then they don't look the same. Where are you getting 90% of the assets look the same anyway? If you measure by coverage the optimization they did to wash out detail on places the player cannot get to would likely already ruin your estimate of >=90%.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

You said they had no specular maps. Then you said specular was baked into the texture. If they baked it in then they had it in the original assets.

And where was I arguing with that??
What I've said from the start is that they do not ship any specular maps with the game for most of the environments. If you misunderstood that, it's your problem.

I just know what bicubic looks like and that J.C. said bicubic wasn't stellar.

Where the hell did he say anything about how bicubic looks? Also, it's upsample and detail textures.

What he tweeted about was that the original textures don't look much better because they're not higher res. Someone asked him this:
Will you release the oft-mentioned higher-resolution texture data?
He said:
our first test of a higher res page file didn't help much, because most source textures didn't actually have any more detail.



Seriously, it's only you who's confused about stuff, but quite a lot. Please don't bug me about this any more.

If they had no texture compression artifacts then they don't look the same.

I doubt many could tell the difference.

Where are you getting 90% of the assets look the same anyway? If you measure by coverage the optimization they did to wash out detail on places the player cannot get to would likely already ruin your estimate of >=90%.

If it's more than 10% that gets downsized then their artists wasted a lot of work and money.

 

[swaaye]

Regarding the texture compression, it looked like it actually varied. Or maybe it was that in darker areas the compression was far more apparent. Im sure you guys saw the macro block compression nasties on some of the textures in darker rooms.

But on the other hand those textures, with even lossless compression, would still be way low resolution and still look incredibly fakey and in that uncanny valley of texture detail. The most horrifyingly bad area I recall was the hospital examination room in the Dead City. FEAR looks better and that's not good. Detail textures won't do jack for that. Low rez normal mapped color textures over low poly objects. PS360 trademark.

 

[Sxotty]

And where was I arguing with that??
What I've said from the start is that they do not ship any specular maps with the game for most of the environments. If you misunderstood that, it's your problem.

First of all if you think it is always another persons problem you are incoherent then you need to work on your communication skills.

You said:

What, you also believe there are some super high sized textures sitting on id's servers? That's utterly silly...

They did the following in order to fit the terrabytes of texture data onto just 3 discs:
- most environments have no normal/specular maps at all, only diffuse color, with lighting, shadows and even specular highlights all baked into the texture - this cuts out nearly 2/3 of the environment texture data
- they ran brute force simulations of where the player can get to and downsized textures for the areas that are unreachable
- they used 1:50 HD Photo lossy texture compression on the remaining data

It's all completely clear and logical. There isn't much point in releasing a "high res" texture pack because at least 90% of the textures aren't more detailed in the source data at all.

Now why would they run simulations to get rid of textures in unreachable areas? If the following is true

If it's more than 10% that gets downsized then their artists wasted a lot of work and money.

Then You think only a tiny amount of the areas in the game are unreachable? Last I checked with the clip brushes everywhere there are a lot of unreachable areas. If the artists were smart enough to not paint them in equisite detail then good, but that also means that the brute force simulation was largely useless and would reduce size far less than 10% if applied after the fact as you implied. A more sensible solution would be to run the simulation first and then paint with knowledge about area access.

Seriously, it's only you who's confused about stuff, but quite a lot. Please don't bug me about this any more.

No one is forcing you to respond so don't act like a baby about it. Making that assumption from a tweet is not a terribly great idea b/c we have no idea what area the test encompassed, nor how much improvement there was. Improving only a small percent of the area like gauges and doors that a player sticks their nose against would go a long way. We may eventually find out, but if we are going to make large conclusions based on little evidence then we could just as easily point to the comment saying the artists were sad once they saw how compressed everything was...Why were they sad if that was what they created? Or do we now assume that one comment is widely applicable and correct while the other is not?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

You said:

Now why would they run simulations to get rid of textures in unreachable areas? If the following is true


Then You think only a tiny amount of the areas in the game are unreachable? Last I checked with the clip brushes everywhere there are a lot of unreachable areas. If the artists were smart enough to not paint them in equisite detail then good, but that also means that the brute force simulation was largely useless and would reduce size far less than 10% if applied after the fact as you implied. A more sensible solution would be to run the simulation first and then paint with knowledge about area access.

If more than 10% of unreachable/unviewable spots was actually textured by the artists then they wasted a HUGE amount of time, resources, money, and talent. Any good artist should have been able to deduce how relatively close to X textured location a player could get to and spend the appropriate amount of time and resources on it. Just like any game released you'll spend more texture data on close objects as opposed to far objects. In traditional games that would be handled by lower res LOD textures. In Rage, I'd imagine they just used lower res textures in the first place with no high res texture data at all for distant objects that a player can never get close to.

Most area's should be obvious to the artist whether a player will be able to see it or not and whether they could get close to it or not. The massive computing power they used was to find the "exact" point at which it would be seen by players or not and at what distance, etc.

So I don't find the 10% number at all unrealistic.

Regards,
SB

 

[Sxotty]

If more than 10% of unreachable/unviewable spots was actually textured by the artists then they wasted a HUGE amount of time, resources, money, and talent. Any good artist should have been able to deduce how relatively close to X textured location a player could get to and spend the appropriate amount of time and resources on it. Just like any game released you'll spend more texture data on close objects as opposed to far objects. In traditional games that would be handled by lower res LOD textures. In Rage, I'd imagine they just used lower res textures in the first place with no high res texture data at all for distant objects that a player can never get close to.

Most area's should be obvious to the artist whether a player will be able to see it or not and whether they could get close to it or not. The massive computing power they used was to find the "exact" point at which it would be seen by players or not and at what distance, etc.

So I don't find the 10% number at all unrealistic.

Regards,
SB

That intuitive guess is completely fine but ignores the quote about the artists being sad when they saw the result after compression and processing. Either that is a mistake and they were happy, or detail they worked on was lost.


Unreachable and unnviewable are also different. If a player zooms in with the scope on an unreachable spot the textures still matter. Would the artist have painted them effectively? Unviewable areas should have nothing on them at all. Considering the game took 7 years or whatever ridiculous number I have little doubt there was a bit of wasted time. (See that is my intuitive guess)

 

[Cookie Monster]

So what is the general view of the game? is it worth it?

Im seriously considering to purchase this game atm but so many mixed feelings toward this game (minus the "technical glitches-->game sucks period" crowd)

 

[Sxotty]

There isn't enough to answer you.

What do you like?

If you want an RPG it isn't going to fulfill that need.

If you want grand turismo it won't fulfill that need.

I believe it does have great shooting mechanics that are very satisfying. I enjoyed the driving about, but wished there was even more of it. I am obviously a fan of it, and found it to be a very enjoyable game. The guns are very very good. The art direction is quite nice IMO and there are some really great scenes. The weak points to me are first the game ends too quickly and not well IMO. I enjoyed it very much and played for 40 hours. I don't have a problem with the story, but the last level was a letdown from a gameplay perspective IMO.

 

[Cookie Monster]

Well, im into shooters/FPS games and this game seemed pretty interesting although I wasn't sure if it was worth buy it just now.

Im guessing its a classic id game ala shallow story, excellent graphics/scenery, great guns and monsters. Is this pretty much what I should expect? (Im one of the few people who actually enjoyed doom3 )

 

[swaaye]

This is definitely id's most story and character driven game. It liked everything but the end.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Yeah the game was great until you got to the second area. It just felt like they ran out of time. I get the feeling that they had a lot more planned for the 2nd part of the game but just didn't implement it. The first part was well flesh out and proceeded at a good pace. Then you get to the 2nd part and expect another well fleshed out experience only to see it feels rushed and incomplete.

Regards,
SB