RAGE: That's actually what you do when trying to get the PC version to work
- Thread starter Farid
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Ike Turner
Veteran
The texture compression sucks hard = fact
But..damn does the game look good at times:
http://deadendthrills.com/collections/rage/
But..damn does the game look good at times:
http://deadendthrills.com/collections/rage/
They wouldn't have to. Just slotting in a new renderer wouldn't require ripping out the entire engine and re-doing it. As you probably know, Wolfenstein uses a modified Doom3 engine using a D3D renderer (in single-player), so obviously this isn't a monumental task since even Raven managed to do it, and for a single game even. Afaik, they've not continued using the Wolfenstein hybrid for any other of their projects...
...Then again, does Raven even exist anymore? Now that I think about it, didn't Bobby Kotick basically gut the whole studio or somesuch? Oh well. There's the answer then. Re-building id's engine broke the studio's back!
(Joking, of course.)
gamervivek
Regular
dual cores and ATI fixed.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1239061-solution-to-catalyst-ai-freezing/
and it works magnificently! :smile:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1239077-ati-4890-1gb-and-intel-c2d-help/
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.ph...for-hd-4000-series-with-dual-core-processors/
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1239061-solution-to-catalyst-ai-freezing/
and it works magnificently! :smile:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1239077-ati-4890-1gb-and-intel-c2d-help/
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.ph...for-hd-4000-series-with-dual-core-processors/
dual cores and ATI fixed.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1239061-solution-to-catalyst-ai-freezing/
and it works magnificently! :smile:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1239077-ati-4890-1gb-and-intel-c2d-help/
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.ph...for-hd-4000-series-with-dual-core-processors/
Did not read the linked threads but does that mean by changing the cvar to 0 you are basically disabling multithreading?
I feel like a broken record fanboy here but this game runs really fantastic on my GTX 560. 2048x1152 2x AA on the new Max game settings, downscaled to 1360x768 and it's at 60 fps almost without exception. The smart vsync seems to work perfectly. This feels really polished, especially compared to my 6950. Unlike the 6950 the game has never crashed in 7 hours here.
I went up to 2720x1536 but I think my card runs out of RAM because when outdoors it can stutter. But it is still at 60fps between those stutters!!
I'd say that this is one of the smoothest PC games in recent memory.. Deus Ex HR was a constant stutter fest and all of the STALKER games hitch a lot. Metro 2033 is pretty smooth but it's just a long corridor. Hard Reset seems strangely demanding for its looks. Crysis 2 is OK though as long as you turn down the messed up object detail.. I haven't tried BF3.
I went up to 2720x1536 but I think my card runs out of RAM because when outdoors it can stutter. But it is still at 60fps between those stutters!!
I'd say that this is one of the smoothest PC games in recent memory.. Deus Ex HR was a constant stutter fest and all of the STALKER games hitch a lot. Metro 2033 is pretty smooth but it's just a long corridor. Hard Reset seems strangely demanding for its looks. Crysis 2 is OK though as long as you turn down the messed up object detail.. I haven't tried BF3.
gamervivek
Regular
Not sure, cpu usage still 100% (the driver?)
I gave the game a try again on the 6950. Smart vsync doesn't seem to work right but once you set it for just "on" all is ok. It seems to be running much better now with the new patch and the preview 2 drivers. Very smooth overall. On both NV and AMD the new large texture cache setting kills most of the popup.
I think they should have gone farther with melee action. I've been running around just fist fighting and it almost feels like Dark Messiah. Gimme a pipe, baseball bat, etc.
I think they should have gone farther with melee action. I've been running around just fist fighting and it almost feels like Dark Messiah. Gimme a pipe, baseball bat, etc.
On the subject of swap tear, it is pretty cool functionality. I believe it has been in shipping drivers for a couple months. I mentioned the recommendation of forcing your desired setting in the control panel, because there is a bug that can cause occasional corruption with Rage. The latest app profile sets a default vsync option to minimize inconvenience. Like swaaye mentions, it is possible to not have a bad experience with the option, but defaulting to a solution that will never show an issue is always best.
On recommended drivers, developers and IHVs always recommend the drivers that they believe will work best. The fixes / changes may not impact your configuration, but telling all users to use a single driver is always less confusing. For GPU transcode, the required driver is probably something more like 275.xx.
As for more transcode tech info, here is something brief. I hope to get something more out in the future, because I think it is an interesting direction.
Texture transcoding generally works as jobs in the game, allowing the game to keep progressing, rather than waiting on textures. GPU transcoding substantially reduces the CPU work required for a single transcode job, but it still leaves the CPU to do work it is more efficient at. By making the CPU jobs shorter, it means that the results are ready to send to the GPU sooner. When the game would normally upload the textures, it instead sends a command to launch the GPU portion of the jobs and update the textures. Load balancing works by setting a maximum number of jobs that the GPU can help with. When the game detects the GPU is running too slow, it reduces that number. When the game detects that the GPU has extra time, it increases that number. If the game wishes to transcode more textures than the GPU, it just does them in SW to ensure the user is still getting at least as many texture updates as with GPU transcoding disabled.
The novel thing about GPU transcode in Rage, is that it takes the workload in the game's jobs system, and it just makes it go faster. The system just replaces part of what the game was already doing rather than adding something special. The GPU does exactly the same thing the CPU would have done. Since transcoding pages can be one of the biggest CPU loads in the game, it can help someone on an older CPU or lower end CPU get an experience much closer to a newer, higher-end CPU, assuming that resolution / GPU memory allow it.
On recommended drivers, developers and IHVs always recommend the drivers that they believe will work best. The fixes / changes may not impact your configuration, but telling all users to use a single driver is always less confusing. For GPU transcode, the required driver is probably something more like 275.xx.
As for more transcode tech info, here is something brief. I hope to get something more out in the future, because I think it is an interesting direction.
Texture transcoding generally works as jobs in the game, allowing the game to keep progressing, rather than waiting on textures. GPU transcoding substantially reduces the CPU work required for a single transcode job, but it still leaves the CPU to do work it is more efficient at. By making the CPU jobs shorter, it means that the results are ready to send to the GPU sooner. When the game would normally upload the textures, it instead sends a command to launch the GPU portion of the jobs and update the textures. Load balancing works by setting a maximum number of jobs that the GPU can help with. When the game detects the GPU is running too slow, it reduces that number. When the game detects that the GPU has extra time, it increases that number. If the game wishes to transcode more textures than the GPU, it just does them in SW to ensure the user is still getting at least as many texture updates as with GPU transcoding disabled.
The novel thing about GPU transcode in Rage, is that it takes the workload in the game's jobs system, and it just makes it go faster. The system just replaces part of what the game was already doing rather than adding something special. The GPU does exactly the same thing the CPU would have done. Since transcoding pages can be one of the biggest CPU loads in the game, it can help someone on an older CPU or lower end CPU get an experience much closer to a newer, higher-end CPU, assuming that resolution / GPU memory allow it.
Played the game through the Garage level (pretty early on, it's the 2nd "dungeon" you get to), and it's a lot of fun and the game runs great on my rig, other than for some intermittent stuttering that I can't quite nail down the cause of.
Anyhow, it doesn't really detract from the fun - and I do think the game's a lot of fun - so why complain? It'll hopefully get sorted when AMD gets crossfire working, and maybe even transcoding, who knows. Anyway, the game looks GREAT for the most part. I've seen no texture pop-in so far. Not a single case of it. Maybe it's been there and I simply never saw it, but I doubt it. No flickering NPCs either, or any other anomalies that I know of.
Of course it's super easy really to find terrible textures, they're absolutely all over the game, but 98% of the time I don't even notice, because I'm MOVING, ducking, weaving about, dodging enemy fire, traversing the landscape and so on. Only when I stop to study things up close does the visuals break, as long as you are on foot everything's absolutely gorgeous, particularly the big vistas. There, megatexturing REALLY pays off. Really, really.
In big, open spaces Rage looks absolutely fabuloutastic, especially when you get the big blue skies and the sun, and the godrays and all of that in the picture as well. id really nailed the visuals IMO.
The enemy AI is also really interesting. I love their running commentary as you blow them away, that they're able to take cover, fire blindly at you, retreat and so on (although I don't understand why all the bandits speak with a Brit cockney accent... HMM!) While down in the garage, going for the distributor cap, I had shot one guy with two more dug in behind some furniture, shooting back at me. I was pondering just what to do when one of the knobheads tries to lob a nade at me, only to have it get caught up on some random bit of geometry or something and land somewhere near their feet. The result was absolutely hilarious.
"Fuck!", the lobber yells in dismay at his own fail, then the nade splodes and kills both of them and vaporizes the dead guy on the floor in a huge cloud of blood and gore (no loot for me.) As I walk closer, I realize one of the two also literally disappeared in the explosion, and the other's body I only found coming back, tossed behind some bits of random level wreckage. To say I LOL'd would be an understatement. Friggin' awesome!
This brings me to one item of criticism... Level interactivity. As in, lack of it. Everything, literally EVERYTHING is nailed down (including phones, broken LCD displays and table lamps), and indestructible. Except for glass bottles, because I managed to shatter one with a stray shot in the Garage hideout. That's effing weird, and feels very borked. Even those ceramic urn things you see here and there can't be broken, I've wailed on them with my fist and my weapons, to no avail.
Also, the field of view is extremely narrow, particularly on a 5:4 aspect monitor like mine. It literally feels like I run around wearing a horse's blinders on my face, it's extremely distracting. I'm going to get a new monitor someday, but until then playing Rage gets a tad confusing at times.
Anyhow, I'm liking the game so far. Based on what I've seen, I'd give it a good score, 8/10 at least and I'm pretty picky when it comes to games.
Anyhow, it doesn't really detract from the fun - and I do think the game's a lot of fun - so why complain? It'll hopefully get sorted when AMD gets crossfire working, and maybe even transcoding, who knows. Anyway, the game looks GREAT for the most part. I've seen no texture pop-in so far. Not a single case of it. Maybe it's been there and I simply never saw it, but I doubt it. No flickering NPCs either, or any other anomalies that I know of.
Of course it's super easy really to find terrible textures, they're absolutely all over the game, but 98% of the time I don't even notice, because I'm MOVING, ducking, weaving about, dodging enemy fire, traversing the landscape and so on. Only when I stop to study things up close does the visuals break, as long as you are on foot everything's absolutely gorgeous, particularly the big vistas. There, megatexturing REALLY pays off. Really, really.
In big, open spaces Rage looks absolutely fabuloutastic, especially when you get the big blue skies and the sun, and the godrays and all of that in the picture as well. id really nailed the visuals IMO.
The enemy AI is also really interesting. I love their running commentary as you blow them away, that they're able to take cover, fire blindly at you, retreat and so on (although I don't understand why all the bandits speak with a Brit cockney accent... HMM!) While down in the garage, going for the distributor cap, I had shot one guy with two more dug in behind some furniture, shooting back at me. I was pondering just what to do when one of the knobheads tries to lob a nade at me, only to have it get caught up on some random bit of geometry or something and land somewhere near their feet. The result was absolutely hilarious.
"Fuck!", the lobber yells in dismay at his own fail, then the nade splodes and kills both of them and vaporizes the dead guy on the floor in a huge cloud of blood and gore (no loot for me.
) As I walk closer, I realize one of the two also literally disappeared in the explosion, and the other's body I only found coming back, tossed behind some bits of random level wreckage. To say I LOL'd would be an understatement. Friggin' awesome!This brings me to one item of criticism... Level interactivity. As in, lack of it. Everything, literally EVERYTHING is nailed down (including phones, broken LCD displays and table lamps), and indestructible. Except for glass bottles, because I managed to shatter one with a stray shot in the Garage hideout. That's effing weird, and feels very borked. Even those ceramic urn things you see here and there can't be broken, I've wailed on them with my fist and my weapons, to no avail.
Also, the field of view is extremely narrow, particularly on a 5:4 aspect monitor like mine. It literally feels like I run around wearing a horse's blinders on my face, it's extremely distracting. I'm going to get a new monitor someday, but until then playing Rage gets a tad confusing at times.
Anyhow, I'm liking the game so far. Based on what I've seen, I'd give it a good score, 8/10 at least and I'm pretty picky when it comes to games.
Ike Turner
Veteran
Played the game through the Garage level (pretty early on, it's the 2nd "dungeon" you get to), and it's a lot of fun and the game runs great on my rig, other than for some intermittent stuttering that I can't quite nail down the cause of.
Anyhow, it doesn't really detract from the fun - and I do think the game's a lot of fun - so why complain? It'll hopefully get sorted when AMD gets crossfire working, and maybe even transcoding, who knows. Anyway, the game looks GREAT for the most part.
Of course it's super easy really to find terrible textures, they're absolutely all over the game, but 98% of the time I don't even notice, because I'm MOVING, ducking, weaving about, dodging enemy fire, traversing the landscape and so on. Only when I stop to study things up close does the visuals break, as long as you are on foot everything's absolutely gorgeous, particularly the big vistas. There, megatexturing REALLY pays off. Really, really.
In big, open spaces Rage looks absolutely fabuloutastic, especially when you get the big blue skies and the sun, and the godrays and all of that in the picture as well. id really nailed the visuals IMO.
The enemy AI is also really interesting. I love their running commentary as you blow them away, that they're able to take cover, fire blindly at you, retreat and so on (although I don't understand why all the bandits speak with a Brit cockney accent... HMM!) While down in the garage, going for the distributor cap, I had shot one guy with two more dug in behind some furniture, shooting back at me. I was pondering just what to do when one of the knobheads tries to lob a nade at me, only to have it get caught up on some random bit of geometry or something and land somewhere near their feet. The result was absolutely hilarious.
"Fuck!", the lobber yells in dismay at his own fail, then the nade splodes and kills both of them and vaporizes the dead guy on the floor in a huge cloud of blood and gore (no loot for me.
This brings me to one item of criticism... Level interactivity. As in, lack of it. Everything, literally EVERYTHING is nailed down (including phones, broken LCD displays and table lamps), and indestructible. Except for glass bottles, because I managed to shatter one with a stray shot in the Garage hideout. That's effing weird, and feels very borked. Even those ceramic urn things you see here and there can't be broken, I've wailed on them with my fist and my weapons, to no avail.
Also, the field of view is extremely narrow, particularly on a 5:4 aspect monitor like mine. It literally feels like I run around wearing a horse's blinders on my face, it's extremely distracting. I'm going to get a new monitor someday, but until then playing Rage gets a tad confusing at times.
Anyhow, I'm liking the game so far. Based on what I've seen, I'd give it a good score, 8/10 at least and I'm pretty picky when it comes to games.
Be prepared to be even more amazed by the vistas and levels once you advances in the game. It's simply gorgeous... THe Anemy AI gets even better with other races IMO (the Shrouded for example and the Authory folks..). One of the best FPS I'veplayed in a while..
I've noticed that the AI says some of the same things as the FEAR guys. "He killed the whole squad" etc. The AI is rather similar in behavior too actually. And that is a good thing.
And yes there are many amazing visuals as you progress. Truly breathtaking artistic work.
The tradeoffs in astounding outdoor work vs the indoor stuff that sometimes looks like late 90s texturing is so strange. Clearly they compressed too much, but it appears that they prioritized various textures because many textures are clean but others look like a JPEG at 20% quality.
The AI is rather similar in behavior too actually. And that is a good thing.And yes there are many amazing visuals as you progress. Truly breathtaking artistic work.
The tradeoffs in astounding outdoor work vs the indoor stuff that sometimes looks like late 90s texturing is so strange. Clearly they compressed too much, but it appears that they prioritized various textures because many textures are clean but others look like a JPEG at 20% quality.
Is it possible that a better openGL driver for games could lead to better professional series drivers? If so AMD has some incentive, otherwise they probably don't care to work on it.
I am glad you are enjoying it Digi.
Our friend Kyle deleted the thread where people said they enjoyed the game and liked it
Then he posted an old interview on the page where Carmack said he was a bit dissapointed they did not target PCs more since it released later then they thought it would and the gulf between PCs and consoles increased. The explanation of the clusterf*** and AMDs role is studiously absent. He really has a strong agenda it is pretty funny.
Why do people even pay attention to that childish hack? He's the PC hardware reviewer version of fucking Charlie.
BTW since this is a technical forum and such I have a question.
My understanding of the megatexture thing actually implies they could share the same texture if they wanted. So couldn't they make a switch texture for example and use it on all the switches? Then they could do some of those interior objects at higher res and more detailed but still retain the option to uniquely paint everything. I really think that would be the best of both worlds b/c it could get rid of some of the low res textures that bother some people, but keep the incredibly awesome variety.
edit: BTW I finally experienced the misery of everyone else. My computer was doing a backup onto the drive rage is installed on. Needless to say I got some popup in that case until I paused backup I can see how if it was severe it could be pretty darn annoying though. It almost gave me motion sickness or something. It was weird though having a game that still sticks at 60fps like that regardless.
My understanding of the megatexture thing actually implies they could share the same texture if they wanted. So couldn't they make a switch texture for example and use it on all the switches? Then they could do some of those interior objects at higher res and more detailed but still retain the option to uniquely paint everything. I really think that would be the best of both worlds b/c it could get rid of some of the low res textures that bother some people, but keep the incredibly awesome variety.
edit: BTW I finally experienced the misery of everyone else. My computer was doing a backup onto the drive rage is installed on. Needless to say I got some popup in that case until I paused backup
I can see how if it was severe it could be pretty darn annoying though. It almost gave me motion sickness or something. It was weird though having a game that still sticks at 60fps like that regardless.
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That seems ot be more of a game design issue than a technical one.
But, yeah given the nature of game design, making about 5-10 different light switches(Let's assume you enter, say, 60 buildings in the game, and each has at least 3 rooms that have a light switch. All of them looking the same in a game based around unique texturing would be... Well, you can imagine) and unique other things would work.
But, yeah given the nature of game design, making about 5-10 different light switches(Let's assume you enter, say, 60 buildings in the game, and each has at least 3 rooms that have a light switch. All of them looking the same in a game based around unique texturing would be... Well, you can imagine) and unique other things would work.
spacemonkey
Newcomer
the ending...
Was anyone else disappointed by the absence of a final boss battle? I was saving my BFG rounds.... fended off the final wave of techno-mutants... and the game ended!
The megatexture could have a layer of unique dirt, scratches and whatnot for each switch (or other common object) that the high-res base texture is blended with during rendering. Could lead to some disjointed visuals though if there's a very detailed light switch sitting on a lower-res wall...
I'm not annoyed by this, and I can imagine little things like this sucking up a disproportionate amount of dev time compared to their overall visual impact they have in the game. After all, light switches, how much of the interior of a building do they cover? Not very much! And how much time do you spend actually looking at them while playing? Not very long!
So I can well imagine they had discussions along these lines, but at one point just said 'screw it!', and simply ran the megatexture over everything to save time and effort.
I'm not annoyed by this, and I can imagine little things like this sucking up a disproportionate amount of dev time compared to their overall visual impact they have in the game. After all, light switches, how much of the interior of a building do they cover? Not very much! And how much time do you spend actually looking at them while playing? Not very long!
So I can well imagine they had discussions along these lines, but at one point just said 'screw it!', and simply ran the megatexture over everything to save time and effort.
Billy Idol
Legend
man I love this game...want to play more...damn work
Well they could do a mishmash over everything though as well. So it wasn't just switches. The reason I mentioned that is people stick their noses against switches, control panels, valves etc... But you may be right. Perhaps they thought it would be disjointed seeming. Still I think in the future a hybrid style will be the best personally. Not sure if it would be too crazy to do, but it seems if it had a overlay MT map and a regular MT map that used some repetition to save space it would be best (that was over compression could be avoided). I mean they could use repetitive wall textures for example only in locations where a player could not see them at once anyway, like entirely different dungeons. I dunno, it just seems the only way to deal with space constraints and keep textures sharp would be something like that.