12:26 PM
Rage Super DupRager Thread. (Rage Preview, Gametrailers Special) :
Good day, welcome to the Rage Super Duper thread buds. The intention of this thread is to share data with users for id Software's Rage. This time around I will focus quite a bit on the technical aspect, so grab a cup of hot chocolate, tea or coffee and enjoy. Information was obtained from multiple resources, I take no credit for this thread. Lets get started..
id Software Lead Designer Tim Willits shared some details regarding the new game, and the internal team working on Rage. However, he warned up front what they show during QuakeCon is a tease at what is coming down the road. "I know it's been done before," he says, "but a comet hits the earth and sets off this chain of post apocalyptic events. It allows us to have things grounded in realism but flash-forward with some realism, but also incorporate fantasy in a way that makes sense."
He doesn't want to give away too much -- so I bring him a rum and coke. He continues. "You're kind of like Buck Rogers in a sense that you come to this world that has long-since forgotten about you. The lines between good and evil are a little grey. There are settlers in this wasteland and an evil regime -- a veryvintage story. I think the key thing here is that everything we're doing has got to be fun. No extras to show off some tech. It has to serve a purpose and make the game fun. With the big wastelands you can get out of your car, you can drive everywhere, go into little caves, talk to people, we have a better inventory system--it has some adventure elements, too -- but this isn't an RPG." Players will be able to upgrade their cars with money won from races.
Beyond the graphic engine, beyond the story, the plans behind the gameplay, the one thing that popped out most in my mind is that id is making a "T"-rated game. "We don't need the hyperviolence," says Willits. "We're going in a different direction, but we're not stepping that far out of what we do. It is still a first-person shooter, after all." Are the blood baths a thing of the past as the team matures? "In the past we would have [made it bloody] just because we could have. But we're doing this for 14 years as a company. Does it make the game more fun to have body parts flying around? Again, that goes back to our whole plan for what we want to do with Rage. If it doesn't add to the fun, we don't need it. I don't think we need to turn the streets red."
id Tech 5 ____________________________
id Tech 5 is the name of the new game engine developed by id Software. The name follows id's new naming scheme, which gives information about the generation of the engine (for example the Doom 3 engineis now called "id Tech 4"). This was done so people wouldn't build too strong an association with the in-house game anymore. It was demonstrated for the first time at the WWDC 2007 by John Carmack on an eight-core Apple Macintosh computer; however, the demo only used a single core and a single-threaded OpenGL implementation running on a 512 MB 7000 Quadro video card.
The engine was shown to potential licensees at E3 2007, but not to the public. The first real public demonstration took place at QuakeCon 2007 during the annual keynote held by John Carmack. The game engine will be used in id's upcoming games, Doom 4 and Rage.
An interview with John Carmack, the lead graphics engine developer at id, indicated that like its predecessors, id Tech 5 will eventually be released as open source. This will likely be many years after id Tech 5 has been used in commercial games. At the QuakeCon 2007, Carmack said to LinuxGames that he would integrate as little proprietary software as possible into id Tech 5, because "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be opensource also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release."
The focus of id Tech 5's features are centered predominantly on development. Rendering features and performance will be competitive, but unlike the unveiling of previous id technologies, the demos of id Tech 5 have talked more about the advantages to developers as opposed to players.
The demonstration with which the new game engine was shown had 20 GB of texture data (using a more advanced MegaTexture approach using textures with up to 128000x128000 pixel resolution) and a completely dynamically changeable world. This means that developers do not have to concern themselves with memory constraints or texture limits, as the engine will stream textures into memory as needed. This will simplify the creation of content and eliminate the need to adapt content for different platforms.
One of the features the renderer will include is a penumbra in the shadowing, by using shadow maps. This is unlike the shadowing of the id Tech 4 engine, which had very sharply defined shadows, with no penumbra.
John Carmack mentioned in his keynote at QuakeCon 2007 that the id Tech 5 engine will be OpenGL and DirectX 9 based, thus not requiring DirectX 10 (and with it, Windows Vista) to run.
The engine is cross-platform, making it possible to render the same models on different platforms without the developer having to write different code for each platform. This reduces the complexity of deploying a game on multiple systems.
The engine comes with a new content-creation tools package called id Studio which is supposed to be much more user-friendly and polished than in earlier versions. Previously, content creation required artists to run various command line tools besides the level editor. Unlike the engine, id Studio works only on Windows.
The engine will likely feature a number of other graphical effects such as various materials for lighting, high dynamic range rendering-centric effects, depth of field, and motion blur. The engine will also support multi-threaded processing on the CPU for many of its tasks, including rendering, game logic, AI, physics, and sound processing.
id Tech 5 is not a shooter-only technology. The engine will also work well outside the shooter genre: Steve Nix from Id Software "Not only do we think people can make games outside the action-shooter space with our technology, we encourage it. We'd actually like to see those games made."
The Concepts ____________________________
Rage
Rage Rage
Rage
Rage
EA Partnership ____________________________
This still seems to be the case, but id's defection from long-term publishing partner Activision towards Electronic Arts, which has released several mobile titles masterminded by John Carmack and developer Fountainhead in recent years, is notable.
"Rage represents a new direction for our games," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "Rage is a shooter unlike any other, developed on our cutting edge new technology, and built to the exacting standards id is famous for. We're excited to have the support of EA Partners to launch RAGE on the world."
"The Rage publishing deal is the epitome of EA Partners' mission: Provide the world's best developers with access to the world's best publishing resources," said David DeMartini, senior vice president and general manager of EA Partners.
Note: On December 15, 2009, ZeniMax Media Inc., who had acquired developer id Software in June 2009, announced that it has picked up the publishing rights to Rage, and that EA will not be involved in the sales or marketing of the title. The announcement also notes development of Rage has not been affected by this new deal.
A few Rage details:
Gallery ____________________________
(Note: Simply Left Click an image or Right Click and select View images for native screens)
Megatexture ____________________________
MegaTexture refers to a texture allocation technique facilitating the use of a single extremely large texture rather than repeating multiple smaller textures. It is featured in Splash Damage's game, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and was developed by id Software technical director John Carmack.
MegaTexture employs a single large texture space for static terrain. The texture is stored on removable media or the hard drive and streamed as needed, allowing large amounts of detail and variation over a large area with comparatively little RAM usage.
Then during rendering, required parts of the texture space are streamed inside dynamically (re-)allocated textures in video memory, scaled to the correct mipmap level(s) depending on the polygon size. This allows the engine to reduce the number of texels in VRAM/number of pixels on the screen ratio (the goal being getting closer to 1), saving memory.
The upcoming games Doom 4 and Rage, powered by the id Tech 5 engine, use textures that measure up to 128000×128000 pixels.
The "Pushing Boundaries" Panel Title is Mostly a Clever Way to Reference How id Tech 5 Streams only the Pieces of a MegaTexture it Needs (in Large Levels, a MegaTexture Can Cover Far more Territory than the Player Sees at any Given Moment) and How the Tech Can Help Artists Better Hide the Seams -- or Boundaries -- in their Levels. In Most Games Now (and This is about as Rudimentary Explanation as Possible), a Pillar will Have a Separate Texture from the Floor, for Example and the Point at which the 2 Meet Can Clash -- and it's Tricky and Time-Consuming for Artists to Meet these Seams "Right" with Existing Techniques. Megatextures, according to Hooper, Offer an Easy Way for Artists to Get Pixel-Resolution Access to Add Unique Details and Make these Seams Look...well, Seamless. Hooper Showed off a Series of "Before" and "After" Shots of Interiors and Exteriors in RAGE. Uniformity Exemplified the Former; Unique Details and more Naturally Blended Outdoor Environments Marked the Latter.
In the End, MegaTextures are just a Tool and it Takes Talented Artists to Make any Technology Matter. But Next Time you're Playing a Game, Pay Attention to Where the Bridge Meets the Land -- if MegaTextures Work out as id Founder, John Carmack ("The Genius Mind") Hopes, the Distinction may Begin to Disappear.
Features ____________________________
Rage Preview by Jeff Buckland ____________________________
"The first impression I got was that the technology powering this game is absolutely the best I'd ever seen. Running on a PC that an enthusiast can build for about $1000, we got an HD resolution along with fantastic visual quality at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. But what's the most amazing thing is the texture quality - the rocks of the canyon that Willits started out in all looked unique and really popped off the screen with detail. This is due to the "megatexture" system that id Software has developed that has completely redesigned how a game uses memory to store the two-dimensional art that covers the game world. It's probably not worth going further than that to describe it for this article, but I will say that as game engines go, this is most definitely a revolution - especially with what the current generation of game consoles can do."
Good day, welcome to the Rage Super Duper thread buds. The intention of this thread is to share data with users for id Software's Rage. This time around I will focus quite a bit on the technical aspect, so grab a cup of hot chocolate, tea or coffee and enjoy. Information was obtained from multiple resources, I take no credit for this thread. Lets get started..
Rage in development by id Software is a upcoming hybrid First person Shooter/Racing Action game. Built with id Tech 5 is currently announced for Microsoft Windows, Mac OSX, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Rage was announced on August 2, 2007 at QuakeCon 2007. Reports indicate that id is developing Rage with a T-for-Teen rating in mind, and that the Xbox 360, PC, and Mac versions will ship on two discs, while the PS3 version will ship on one Blu-ray Disc. Later revealed by John Carmack, Rage totals one terabyte in size in uncompressed data. For Linux users, John Carmack mentioned "It isn't a launch platform for us, but an executable may still show up."
Rage ____________________________
"After DOOM 3, we moved on internally to something we tentatively called, 'Darkness,'" says Carmack. "It was going to be another dark, creepy survival horror game. It was going to be cool -- stuck on an island, doing some interesting things. But we eventually reached a point where we said, 'Do we really want to do another dark id game?'
Everybody should know that we're going to be good at interiors, but we wanted to make a game that offered more. Maybe we should do something that's a little brighter. Maybe stretch out a little bit. What we wound up with is this post-apocalyptic Road Warrior-type game. It's still about 50% run and gun, it's got adventure elements, a lot of driving elements as well."id Software Lead Designer Tim Willits shared some details regarding the new game, and the internal team working on Rage. However, he warned up front what they show during QuakeCon is a tease at what is coming down the road. "I know it's been done before," he says, "but a comet hits the earth and sets off this chain of post apocalyptic events. It allows us to have things grounded in realism but flash-forward with some realism, but also incorporate fantasy in a way that makes sense."
He doesn't want to give away too much -- so I bring him a rum and coke. He continues. "You're kind of like Buck Rogers in a sense that you come to this world that has long-since forgotten about you. The lines between good and evil are a little grey. There are settlers in this wasteland and an evil regime -- a veryvintage story. I think the key thing here is that everything we're doing has got to be fun. No extras to show off some tech. It has to serve a purpose and make the game fun. With the big wastelands you can get out of your car, you can drive everywhere, go into little caves, talk to people, we have a better inventory system--it has some adventure elements, too -- but this isn't an RPG." Players will be able to upgrade their cars with money won from races.
Beyond the graphic engine, beyond the story, the plans behind the gameplay, the one thing that popped out most in my mind is that id is making a "T"-rated game. "We don't need the hyperviolence," says Willits. "We're going in a different direction, but we're not stepping that far out of what we do. It is still a first-person shooter, after all." Are the blood baths a thing of the past as the team matures? "In the past we would have [made it bloody] just because we could have. But we're doing this for 14 years as a company. Does it make the game more fun to have body parts flying around? Again, that goes back to our whole plan for what we want to do with Rage. If it doesn't add to the fun, we don't need it. I don't think we need to turn the streets red."
id Tech 5 ____________________________
id Tech 5 is the name of the new game engine developed by id Software. The name follows id's new naming scheme, which gives information about the generation of the engine (for example the Doom 3 engineis now called "id Tech 4"). This was done so people wouldn't build too strong an association with the in-house game anymore. It was demonstrated for the first time at the WWDC 2007 by John Carmack on an eight-core Apple Macintosh computer; however, the demo only used a single core and a single-threaded OpenGL implementation running on a 512 MB 7000 Quadro video card.
The engine was shown to potential licensees at E3 2007, but not to the public. The first real public demonstration took place at QuakeCon 2007 during the annual keynote held by John Carmack. The game engine will be used in id's upcoming games, Doom 4 and Rage.
An interview with John Carmack, the lead graphics engine developer at id, indicated that like its predecessors, id Tech 5 will eventually be released as open source. This will likely be many years after id Tech 5 has been used in commercial games. At the QuakeCon 2007, Carmack said to LinuxGames that he would integrate as little proprietary software as possible into id Tech 5, because "eventually id Tech 5 is going to be opensource also. This is still the law of the land at id, that the policy is that we're not going to integrate stuff that's going to make it impossible for us to do an eventual open source release."
The focus of id Tech 5's features are centered predominantly on development. Rendering features and performance will be competitive, but unlike the unveiling of previous id technologies, the demos of id Tech 5 have talked more about the advantages to developers as opposed to players.
The demonstration with which the new game engine was shown had 20 GB of texture data (using a more advanced MegaTexture approach using textures with up to 128000x128000 pixel resolution) and a completely dynamically changeable world. This means that developers do not have to concern themselves with memory constraints or texture limits, as the engine will stream textures into memory as needed. This will simplify the creation of content and eliminate the need to adapt content for different platforms.
One of the features the renderer will include is a penumbra in the shadowing, by using shadow maps. This is unlike the shadowing of the id Tech 4 engine, which had very sharply defined shadows, with no penumbra.
John Carmack mentioned in his keynote at QuakeCon 2007 that the id Tech 5 engine will be OpenGL and DirectX 9 based, thus not requiring DirectX 10 (and with it, Windows Vista) to run.
The engine is cross-platform, making it possible to render the same models on different platforms without the developer having to write different code for each platform. This reduces the complexity of deploying a game on multiple systems.
The engine comes with a new content-creation tools package called id Studio which is supposed to be much more user-friendly and polished than in earlier versions. Previously, content creation required artists to run various command line tools besides the level editor. Unlike the engine, id Studio works only on Windows.
The engine will likely feature a number of other graphical effects such as various materials for lighting, high dynamic range rendering-centric effects, depth of field, and motion blur. The engine will also support multi-threaded processing on the CPU for many of its tasks, including rendering, game logic, AI, physics, and sound processing.
id Tech 5 is not a shooter-only technology. The engine will also work well outside the shooter genre: Steve Nix from Id Software "Not only do we think people can make games outside the action-shooter space with our technology, we encourage it. We'd actually like to see those games made."
The Concepts ____________________________
Rage
Rage
Rage
Rage Rage Rage Rage EA Partnership ____________________________
This still seems to be the case, but id's defection from long-term publishing partner Activision towards Electronic Arts, which has released several mobile titles masterminded by John Carmack and developer Fountainhead in recent years, is notable.
"Rage represents a new direction for our games," said Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id Software. "Rage is a shooter unlike any other, developed on our cutting edge new technology, and built to the exacting standards id is famous for. We're excited to have the support of EA Partners to launch RAGE on the world."
"The Rage publishing deal is the epitome of EA Partners' mission: Provide the world's best developers with access to the world's best publishing resources," said David DeMartini, senior vice president and general manager of EA Partners.
Note: On December 15, 2009, ZeniMax Media Inc., who had acquired developer id Software in June 2009, announced that it has picked up the publishing rights to Rage, and that EA will not be involved in the sales or marketing of the title. The announcement also notes development of Rage has not been affected by this new deal.
A few Rage details:
- An engineering system to craft devices including sentry turrets and RC car bombs, if you have the blueprints and parts.
- Your health regenerates--a gift connected to your history.
- Races and missions are available from hub towns.
- Vehicular combat is a big part of racing, with power-ups and ammo placed around the courses.
- Weapon upgrades, such as a scope and aiming stabilisers for a crossbow.
- Alternate ammo types, including a crossbow bolt which allows you to briefly control victims before they explode.
- Stealth is an option in combat too.
- A gladiatorial game show named Mutant Bash TV offers big prize money.
- A car parts system allows boosts to areas such as acceleration, traction and suspension.
- Other car upgrades include bombs, a magnet to draw power-ups, tire shredders and EMP shields.
- Multiplayer modes are currently not finalised.
- One weapon is a three-tipped boomerang called the 'wingstick,' which will return.
- The PC version will offer higher resolutions, more anti-aliasing and faster texture page-in times, but the three versions are essentially the same.
Gallery ____________________________(Note: Simply Left Click an image or Right Click and select View images for native screens)
Megatexture ____________________________
MegaTexture refers to a texture allocation technique facilitating the use of a single extremely large texture rather than repeating multiple smaller textures. It is featured in Splash Damage's game, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and was developed by id Software technical director John Carmack.
MegaTexture employs a single large texture space for static terrain. The texture is stored on removable media or the hard drive and streamed as needed, allowing large amounts of detail and variation over a large area with comparatively little RAM usage.
Then during rendering, required parts of the texture space are streamed inside dynamically (re-)allocated textures in video memory, scaled to the correct mipmap level(s) depending on the polygon size. This allows the engine to reduce the number of texels in VRAM/number of pixels on the screen ratio (the goal being getting closer to 1), saving memory.
The upcoming games Doom 4 and Rage, powered by the id Tech 5 engine, use textures that measure up to 128000×128000 pixels.
The "Pushing Boundaries" Panel Title is Mostly a Clever Way to Reference How id Tech 5 Streams only the Pieces of a MegaTexture it Needs (in Large Levels, a MegaTexture Can Cover Far more Territory than the Player Sees at any Given Moment) and How the Tech Can Help Artists Better Hide the Seams -- or Boundaries -- in their Levels. In Most Games Now (and This is about as Rudimentary Explanation as Possible), a Pillar will Have a Separate Texture from the Floor, for Example and the Point at which the 2 Meet Can Clash -- and it's Tricky and Time-Consuming for Artists to Meet these Seams "Right" with Existing Techniques. Megatextures, according to Hooper, Offer an Easy Way for Artists to Get Pixel-Resolution Access to Add Unique Details and Make these Seams Look...well, Seamless. Hooper Showed off a Series of "Before" and "After" Shots of Interiors and Exteriors in RAGE. Uniformity Exemplified the Former; Unique Details and more Naturally Blended Outdoor Environments Marked the Latter.
In the End, MegaTextures are just a Tool and it Takes Talented Artists to Make any Technology Matter. But Next Time you're Playing a Game, Pay Attention to Where the Bridge Meets the Land -- if MegaTextures Work out as id Founder, John Carmack ("The Genius Mind") Hopes, the Distinction may Begin to Disappear.
Features ____________________________
Rage Preview by Jeff Buckland ____________________________
"The first impression I got was that the technology powering this game is absolutely the best I'd ever seen. Running on a PC that an enthusiast can build for about $1000, we got an HD resolution along with fantastic visual quality at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. But what's the most amazing thing is the texture quality - the rocks of the canyon that Willits started out in all looked unique and really popped off the screen with detail. This is due to the "megatexture" system that id Software has developed that has completely redesigned how a game uses memory to store the two-dimensional art that covers the game world. It's probably not worth going further than that to describe it for this article, but I will say that as game engines go, this is most definitely a revolution - especially with what the current generation of game consoles can do."
Edited on Mar 20, 2011 10:36 am PT Edited 45 total times.
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