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Rage and the Tech Behind id Tech 5
MojoKid writes "id Software's long-awaited FPS, Rage, is set to ship in October. When it launches, Rage will be the first game to feature id's newest graphics engine, dubbed id Tech 5. id Tech 5 has evolved considerably since the company started talking about it four years ago, however. While it contains a number of additional features, MegaTexturing remains one of the game's most visible advances. MegaTexturing uses a single large texture to map the terrain of an entire area. Data from that texture is streamed in depending on where the player is standing and what's visible. Effects that would normally be blended in traditional tiled texturing can be baked into the megatexture and streamed off disc when needed. The advantage of megatexturing is that it allows artists to create unique environments rather than resorting to a variety of tricks to hide repetitive texture tiles."
id's Tim Willits spoke with Eurogamer about Rage's development, explaining how their goal of fast-paced action dictated certain design decisions. Rage will make use of Steamworks, but won't require a persistent connection for offline play. However, small parts of optional single-player content will only be available to players who buy the game new. Willits said, "Most people never find them. But as soon as you do, you're like, oh. And then you start to look for it. That's our first-time buyer incentive."
I'm a long term Id fan here. Let me start by saying the latest id-Tech engine looks awesome, but the buck stops there. The story and the characters look pretty cardboard, when they should be amazing if we're applying the technology uniformly over every possible realm of creativity.
There's a kind of goofy appearance to things, and you can see the split-second jitter when scripted sequences switch between one sequence and the next.
Also this looks too campy. It seems like Id is really missing some of the grit that it had back when it was released Quake. They had Nine Inch Nails do the soundtrack and a lot of the sounds were created by Trent Reznor. All that stuff went away when John Romero left, or at least most of it just fell by the wayside when John Romero forgot he was a cool kid and started making cellphone games instead of gritty grindhouse type stuff.
This appears to be nothing more than an engine release that is dressed up a bit in order to sell the technology.
Look at Battlefield 3; that is the kind of game I expect from Id Software, but we get something kinda goofy.
I'd like to see what Valve would do with this engine if they licensed it -- but I'm not convinced Valve needs it.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
No. This requires a real computer not some "OOH SHINY!!!" piece of shit shat out by sweatshop workers and sold at 500% markup by our fine friends in Cupertino.
Wrong. There is an iOS version. See the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(video_game)
You do realize that they're not the same game at all, and that the phone version was made just for phones, right?
Hasn't it been this way for a long time? I thought all of the pre-GPL ports were done like that.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Guess what? The vast majority of making something look good lies in the artists' realm.
You can put as many polygons onto the screen as you wish, but if you don't have someone competent painting them with the appropriate colors and putting them in the right place it's going to look bad.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
All I really know about id Tech 5 is that many posters here on slashdot claim to have seen previews and tech demos already, and they say it absolutely sucks.
I recall people saying it pales in comparison to any modern game engine, and in fact doesn't even hold up against Source, which is now 7 years old. Specifics included complaints about the polygon count being so low that you could see visible spikes on the heads, shoulders, etc. of characters and such.
Maybe that was just demos; maybe id is the only company in the world to demo the relevant rendering advances without obsessing over technically trivial things like polygon count in non-production projects. Nevertheless, usually the demos and gameplay movies look way *better* than production product, so this seems like a serious concern.
In fact, if these complainers are truthful and accurate, id Tech 5 is truly nothing more than a very early April Fool's joke.
It's a streaming system that lets artists paint unique textures rather than today's tiled patterns. That's a bad thing how? What exactly is it shifting responsibility for? Engines don't create the texture assets.
The key to good trolling is to sound just rational enough that a large swath of people won't dismiss you outright. Try again, anonymous coward.
No, Rage HD is available for IOS, and it's not the same game at all. Rage isn't going to be a gallery shooter like the phone game was.
I will give you the benefit that you probably have not made a game before, so you probably dont understand what MegaTextures really mean to an artist. Your statement is incorrect and too bad comments like these go out everywhere before actually doing some research into the topic. It may be slightly more work for an artist to pull off, but it also gives the artist more freedom to shape the game world that many of us will be spending hours in. Thank you Id Tech 5!
The unfortunate consequence of megatexturing is that nobody will be able to make custom maps for this. Carmack talked about needing an expensive server with 192GiB of RAM to compile the maps.
The technology is really impressive, but I can't imagine it being worth this. id has always been very friendly to the map/mod community—they're the last company I'd have expected this from.
No, their past games have shipped with Linux binaries, or had binaries available on the internet at release time. Even Quake 4 had a Linux client on release. They've never pushed if off like this. What you might be thinking of is the GPL source code releases.
You do realize that all computer companies outsource their manufacturing work to the likes of Foxconn, not just Apple right?
On the suicide note from your other troll post: the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories are less than the suicide rate at US universities.
Why would they? There are a bunch of other engines around that do the job at way cheaper rates. I don't think one developer has licensed Idtech5 as of right now, although I could be mistaken.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
There's a video on steam that you can view. It looked good enough to me, but how it actually pans out on your home system may be subject to change/hardware.
gets sucked into steam.. sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second. sadly most games including many indie titles have now jumped onto this bandwagon.
used to be a pretty avid gamer, not so much anymore. steam pushed me away because i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.
Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost. So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.
One of the big things with previous iD games is their engines were amazing. They were some of the best things you'd ever seen. Good looking, ran well, etc, etc.
Then we get Doom 3. While the realtime lighting was nifty, after you played a bit it got annoying because everything was overly dark since there was no radiosity or other global illumination. It was also extremely resource intensive, you had to have a really hot computer to run it. Compared to Unreal Engine 2.5, it really wasn't that great. UE 2.5 looked nicer over all, despite not being as "advanced" and scaled much better.
Of course they've then been stuck on that for a long time. UE3 came out and was a far better engine, and we are now on UE3.5, and still nothing new from iD yet. iD Tech 4 has not aged gracefully at all. Brink is a wonderful example. Never mind the gameplay problems, it just doesn't look very good and doesn't run well given how it looks because of the engine.
You can see it in terms of licenses too. iD Tech 4 has a total of 6 games out, almost all of them either iD themselves, or Raven (who has always liked to make games using iD's stuff). UE3 has near 200, and it was released later.
We'll see how iD Tech 5 does.
Am I the only one who thinks that Rage looks a lot like Borderlands, but without the variation in weapons? I haven't come across such a comparison yet, but it was the first (and still prevalent) thought I had upon seeing the trailer.
Modding is still extremely popular, the problem is just that many game engines have poor, if any, tools for modding them. The ones that do have good tools, they get mods a plenty. Have a look at the Nexus sites, Elder Scrolls Nexus, Dragon Age Nexus, and so on to see the massive amount of mods out there.
Likewise, look at Epic. They ran the "Make something Unreal," contest. Tons of mods came out of that, some fairly amazing done by small teams, but also plenty of good maps often done by a single guy. That is using Unreal Engine 3, which is newer and more advanced than Doom 3/iD Tech 4, but just has some top notch tools including an extremely powerful map editor.
Seems to me like maybe just the road he has chosen to take his engine down is not friendly to modders. Not everyone has taken that same road. Yes, it does mean more work on the developer's part. I mean Epic's map editor is just legendary. That thing is as advanced as many 3D renderers. I'm sure it took a lot of work to polish like that, never mind all the tutorials they made. However, against that there is the fact that they've licensed like 200 copies of Unreal Engine 3. Part of that is the high grade tools. If you are a company looking at making a game, maybe you decide to license an engine to save on development effort. Well makes sense to license one with really good tools, since that saves more time.
There is no way in hell any other game developer would license the Rage engine.
They wouldn't be able to anyway. It's already been stated that id Tech 5 will not be licensed to 3rd parties.
Well, we have confirmation that Steve Balmer reads slashdot at least.
I can see every little detail of the textures in the lame fucking grindfest! Look at the incredible lighting as I fight the same shitty enemies as in every other goddamned FPS! This millionth hall that I'm running looks INCREDIBLE!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You do realize that I said "version" and not "direct identical port" and that the AC is still wrong when he flat-out said "No" and that a "real computer" is required, because, in one form or another, Rage is available for iOS, right?
In the same way that the "full web browsing experience" is available on your iphone AND your computer... but only if your computer does NOT have flash installed.
wait, am I arguing with an AC? *doh!*
On the suicide note from your other troll post: the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories are less than the suicide rate at US universities.
Yeah, no nets to catch jumpers at US institutions. Or maybe it's because students at US institutions realize that there is no hope for them, since they weren't born wealthy, and the chinese aren't quite so dis-illusioned with their chances.
... or maybe paying someone for the privilege of wasting your time is more depressing than getting paid for it? No matter what, you're comparing apples to oranges... but nice try. You know there's a journal article being reported on that talks about fanbois taking criticism personally when people attack their company of choice?
Woo! Mods on crack!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
...but I do like Steam.
sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second.
You say that, but you then admit a few things Steam does, which you just don't care about:
i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.
Well, I do like those things, except my current ISP doesn't suck.
I like being able to buy a game, go do something for 15 minutes, and then have it ready to play, without having to leave the house. At the moment (for the next few days, at least), I'm in a small enough town that the only other real option is buying discs from, say, Wall-Mart -- which isn't exactly convenient, considering I'd then need to do some research and find out if I need to keep the disc around, how I can make backups of that game, etc.
I like being able to buy a new computer, type my Steam username and password, and within a few hours, have all the games I care about installed -- and, surprisingly, with my savegames, keybindings, and other settings included.
I like being able to message a friend, in or out of game, and just jump into whatever game they're playing (assuming we both own the same game), or invite them into mine. For that matter, I like that the Steam dashboard seems to apply to most Steam games, even the ones which (thanks, EA) try to get me to sign up for their own competing service -- I can instantly pull that up and see the current time, a web browser, etc. I can click a player's name from an in-game menu and have it pop the browser open to their Steam profile. All this without alt-tabbing, in a nice translucent overlay so I can see what's happening in-game.
I like that all my games stay patched without me having to check them individually, and I've known Steam to even bother me to update my video drivers occasionally. If I could do everything through a similar package manager (like Windows Update, maybe), I would, but better a unified platform like Steam than each game adding something to my system tray, or having to check each game's website for updates.
If I can find a game without DRM, I'll buy it over Steam any day -- but, surprisingly, the Humble Indie Bundle included Steam activation anyway. If a game includes extra DRM on top of Steam, I won't buy it, which means I still have to pay attention -- I was a hair away from buying Arkham Asylum when I realized it had SecuROM on top of Steam -- and I think Steam itself warned me about this. Most of the time, I'll stick to indie games with Linux ports.
But Portal 2 was one of the best games I've ever played, and I'm not going to miss out on that experience because I can't play it on Linux, or... wait, is there anything else I actually want to do with a game that Steam prevents me from doing?
Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost.
Bullshit. Again, the Humble Indie Bundle (at least the latest one) includes Steam activation codes. If you remember, almost all of the original Humble Indie Bundle games released their source. For that matter, you can buy Quake 3 Arena on Steam, and its source is released -- and I seem to remember that id games have included things like CD checks in the past. I much prefer Steam to putting a CD in the drive every time I play -- I've got a terabyte hard drive in my gaming rig, there's no excuse for that.
So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.
If so, why wouldn't they have the same problem have existed with other engines? Quake 4 shipped with a CD check
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Call me old fashioned but if they still made games based off the Doom 1&2 engines that had the same quality of artwork, I'd still buy and play them.
Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.
I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.
Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.
I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.
... so, yeah, let's compare an industrial-park-turned-city to a ... regular city. I expect that a highly regulated, patrolled and enforced living arrangement would have less suicides because of the intense amount of oversight. Again, if you want to compare apples to oranges ... you've got another point. But if you'd like to join us in the real world ...
Not only is Rage whatever id Software decides it to be, but there has been talk of porting further Rage technology to the iPad. Obviously, the AC was just trolling, because Slashdot has become a haven for anti-Apple anonymous cowards who cling to their PCs the way grannies cling to rotary phones. Appliance computing is here, it's the future, and it's taking over. Rage will sell more on consoles than PCs.
Quake Wars did not have a Linux client for several months. I did not buy it until it did. I will do the same here. I run Linux. Yes I can do workarounds, but I will not buy software I have to work around.
How similar is this to the iPad version that's been out for a while now? Obviously better graphics, but what else?
Also don't forget that they always end-up opensourcing their previous generation of engines.
As Rage is release, id Tech 4 (Doom3, Quake4, etc.) will be released under GPL.
So, even though no *commercial user* outside of the Zenimax corporation will use it, it will end-up being used for lots of crazy and funny projects by the community. And in the long term of thing, that counts a lot.
(Just take a look at the current derivative of Quake 3's engine - lot's of them even included some Doom3-type of eye-candy)
Meanwhile, for all of its praises, you can't get to hack Unreal Engine.
So yes, id, feel free to do whatever you want with your engines, as long as, in the end, you end up donating them to the community. The community says a big "Thank you".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Steam means I won't play it. Looks kinda boring anyway.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.