id Software Releases RAGE
Today marks the launch of RAGE, id Software's post-apocalyptic first-person shooter that's been in development for at least four years. Early response to the game is mixed, but mostly positive. Eurogamer wrote, "This certainly isn't a video game like the ones we're used to playing in 2011, smothered in celebrity voice actors and shoulder-grabbingly intense expository cut-scenes, and varnished by psychologists so we never look in the wrong direction when we're sprinting away from a set-piece. Instead it's something simpler and more old-fashioned. Judged on game design and content, then, it's slightly anachronistic, but as a toy box full of things you can only do in games, RAGE is warm-hearted and refreshing." The review at Opposable Thumbs was much more critical, saying, "None of the game's ideas are thought out or fully explored, so the game feels like a series of dead ends in a world that is hard to care about, in which you play a bland character doing boring things against stock enemies using weak guns." If you'd like to see a look at the actual gameplay, Giant Bomb has a lengthy video with commentary.
Gaming press interprets tech demo as game, responds accordingly.
That only allows you to change resolution, from a company that made their name in PC gaming.
...video on the Giant Bomb site is HTML5 and it doesn't work. utter crap.
I've been having fun with it, even though I only got to play for about 45minutes before work.
My only complaint so far is that the enemies seem to pop in from nowhere, unlike other FPS/RPGs that have enemies that are always on the map. This might just be a bad impression from the first mission, but that's how it seems so far.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Be aware that the PC version has a serious texture popping issue. I've yet to read someone state they DON'T have this problem, no matter the hardware: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5oEdfT4OWY BTW, and here's the extent of your in-game graphics options: http://i.imgur.com/Rlvr6.jpg The game is designed to set its quality settings automatically relative to your hardware capabilities, but this very rarely works well in practice and also doesn't account for people like me who prefers a lower, but still playable frame rate in exchange for higher quality graphics. Anyways, sounds like the game was designed for consoles first anyway (at time of writing the FOV can't even be changed despite someone finding out how to enable the console). Way to go Carmack.
I'm in the UK, so I don't get this game until Friday. However, I've had my Steam pre-order in for a month or so now. The big question in my mind this morning revolves around whether the PC version is a flawed, inferior port. I had thought this to be highly unlikely, given id's pedigree.
However, I notice that various forums relating to the game are this morning jammed with reports of stability issues, graphical issues, and a severe lack of configuration options. It's hard to draw any firm conclusions for this - visit the Steam forums for any major game on release day and you will see problem reports (mostly because the people with no issues are off playing the game) - but things seem particularly bad in this case.
Any idea of how widespread the issue actually is? Is it a case of a few people having problems due to odd hardware configurations, or is it something more widespread. I'm using an i7 3.2ghz and an Nvidia 590, so I would hope that performance wouldn't be an issue for me - but the stability and tearing/distortion reports are more worrying.
Gaming press interprets tech demo as game, responds accordingly.
Are you serious?
... just to make sure nobody gets confused about the situation?
May I politely point out they're charging full price for it? In fact it is the exact same price as Battlefield 3 which is due in 4 weeks...
The US price for RAGE is 59,99 USD (sity bucks)
The EU price for RAGE is 49,99 EUR (approx 66,62 USD)
Can we call it a full-price tech demo then? Or perhaps a "full-price-cross-platform-tech-demo"?
You know
- Jesper
My security clearance is so high I have to kill myself if I remember I have it...
Watching the review just made me sick, reminds me too much of quake 3. Somehow IDs games always trigger this problem (unreal tournament was the worst). I think it has to do with the way the gun points in first person shooter mode. ID always makes the gun point to the right side of your body, but enemies come either straight at your or the left. To shoot properly one has to strafe or turn slightly, which feels weird. Looks like a good game but there's no way I will be able to play this for 20hours.
did you forget to take your meds?
Does anyone know if the usual Id Linux port will make it out of the labs? Chalk me down as a Linux sale if it does
...I'll need 26,000 floppies to get a copy of Rage for my current existing Windows version :-(
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I am waiting for... Fallout 4 on id tech 5.
Forget the tech demo RAGE is.
You, sir, need to read http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe and call us back in the morning!
Will there be a Linux version, as there were for the last few ID games?
Stupidity is an equal opportunity striker.
Fellow slashdotter Bill Dog
I mean, I AM a post-ap kind of guy : loved madmax, loved fallout, watched every single post-ap movie ever made, from A Boy and His Dog to Zardoz. I would have been happy with pretty much anything decent. but this is not decent. here's why.
Remember Fallout 3 ? A dense, complex storyline complete with a totally open world, tons of items and character customization, amazing landscapes, pure pleasure.
Remember Quake ? Intense non-stop action, perfectly fun physics, great weapons, genuine visual originality...
I'm that kind of guy : if it's good, it's good. Genre is irrelevant as long as internal coherence is there.
But Rage isn't like this. Rage isn't an RPG : your character is a stupid dummy with no identity, and no way for you to infuse him with signs of personality. Rage isn't a FPS : the action is tedious, mobs are repetitive, the rythm is all wrong. Rage isn't even a good multi-mini-game flick : all of them are pointless and WAY too easy to master. So what is Rage ? Rage is nothingness with a good engine. Boring to death. Pointless.
I would suggest you try Arma 2 :D
If you have been playing their games for 15+ years, then this game is going to be exactly what you have come to expect from id. A cutting edge game engine, with a bare bones but enjoyable game running on it. I played for about an hour last night (via wine) and it was alright. Was it worth $60? no probably not. The product I have seen is pretty much the same as the single player Doom 3 and Quake2/4. I don't think it is as horrible as the Ars review makes it out, but then they probably had higher expectations. I look forward to trying out some multi-player.
Anything with the word "post-apocalyptic" in it seems dated, shopworn and boring and reeks of Mel Gibson.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDl04ojR4gY
There is an issue where it shows 0 video ram as well. The thing heavily uses Cuda and Cg.
FTFA:
I recently picked up "Blood's a Rover" via audiobook, and I find that his dense staccato style is extremely difficult to listen to. Since I have heard so much positive about Ellroy's writing (and yeah, I know the film version of LA Confidential diverts from the novel, AND that "Blood's a Rover" is the third of a rough trilogy), I think he's an author that has to be read, not heard. I may approach him starting with his first novel (my understanding is he didn't start this type of prose until an editor told him to make one of his books shorter, so he began removing words rather than plot items). Once I'm hooked on his storytelling, I may be able to adjust to his unique approach to language.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
He says he played it all the way through in the article. Still, just one person's opinion.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
I don't trust these online authentication systems. Right now, I have older games that I *bought* that I can't play on my netbook because said older games contain malware that requires a CD be in the drive to run. So, If companies can't be bothered to remove disk checking malware from their older games when CD drives become obsolete (which they have), why should I trust some online authentication system that can be shut down by the owner whenever they want? I even called support for these older games in question and the publishers wouldn't help me out.
I'm tempted to just send id software a check when they release the Doom 3 source code. I really do appreciate that, because it will greatly help my favorite game (The DarkMod), but I don't want to support the game industry as it exists today.
The GP was incorrect. Binaries have been released, but no source code.
I have been a fan of id for years. I bought every game they released. I played a lot of Quake and loved Quake 2. Since then I've grown to realize that id just releases the same game engine disguised as a game over and over, it just gets prettier. I won't be on board for their games anymore.
I look forward to making Jesse Pinkman my bitch!
Pretty much sums up my experience of every game from id.
"..the game feels like a series of dead ends in a world that is hard to care about, in which you play a bland character doing boring things against stock enemies using weak guns."
In other words, it's just like every other console shooter ever invented.
That's fine, consoles are a big market, but that does mean it isn't something to get on a PC.
Looking at that video, I'm guessing part of the problem is the guy has an ATi card. ATi's OpenGL support has never been as good as its DirectX support. You can argue that maybe they should improve it, but it is what it is. Not a problem, games use DirectX on Windows.... But not iD games. Despite Carmack saying that he likes DirectX better, they have not moved their engine over. As such, it wouldn't surprise me to see Rage run poorly on ATi cards and better on nVidia cards.
Same deal with Brink, which uses iD Tech 4. Game is not that graphically high end, but it runs like shit on ATi cards because it is OpenGL.
Seems like a poor choice to me, given that over 30% of cards in game systems are ATi cards (per the Steam survey, something that is by definition of gamer systems) but there you go.
Though I own an nVidia card, I won't get it until it comes down to budget prices. Partially because I'm not real interested in the Borderlands style of game, but partially because this looks like something that is a poor PC port.
I'm not one of those PC heads who demands games should be made PC first and only, but I do expect that when a game is ported a good job is done on it. So something like Deus Ex: HR, hell ya. The PC version works well, has good PC controls, well worth it. This? Nah, I give it a miss.
I mean since you are doing 3 very different platforms anyhow: PC, Xbox 360, and PS 3, you'd think you'd abstract. I could see not doing some of that if you just did PC and 360 as MS has made it extremely easy to write once, run in both places, but of course that would mean using DirectX. You go to the PS3, you use Sony's somewhat bastardized version of OpenGL ES or the low level libgcm, and also have to make changes to use the Cell since it is very different from the architecture of PCs and 360s.
In that case, you'd think a modular multi-target approach would be in order, particularly if your engine is designed for resale (as iD Tech is). That's how Epic does it. Unreal Engine is fully modular. All the different components (graphics, sound, input, net) can be replaced with other stuff without too much trouble. You can even have multiple ones available on a given platform. You can see with with UE2 in UT2004. It has DirectX, OpenGL and even a software renderer called Pixomatic that Arabash made. In UE3 (UT3) they took everything but DirectX out, but only because there was no need for anything else on the PC. It has other renderers for the other platforms it uses.
However iD has a love affair with OpenGL for whatever reason. They claim it is tools, but I have some trouble believing that. No matter what that reason is, the result is Rage is an OpenGL game and so performs poorly on ATi cards.
If it were me the game would support two APIs on Windows DX9 and DX11 (since DX11 has some rather superior features when run on DX 10/10.1/11 hardware). It would also have an Xbox renderer (similar to DX9 but a few non-trivial differences) and a PS3 renderer which would probably be libgcm based (more work, but better performance).
and yet still launches in *this* state...? (ripped from Steam forum)
Issues: No Custom settings for Video Cards
Video Cards not being detected properly by the Auto-Detector Resulting in using 0MB of Vram and using the lowest texture/gfx settings...
No Console command
No Vsync options - Results in screen tearing - Forcing Vsync causes the game to crash the drivers and game(AMD)
Unable to skip intros??? To disable the intro videos put this "+set com_skipIntroVideo 1" in the launch options of Rage Via Steam.
Mouse acceleration?
Can't use Crossfire or SLI..
Bad FoV for PC's - Short-term solution: FOV adjustment howto
(Nvidia)Enabling V-sync by forcing it in the control panel causes the game to Stutter and have lines appear:
OpenGL Issues: GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex not available
Missing Files or GFX card not compatible? - List of compatible card: http://feedback.wildfiregames.com/re...ts_base_vertex this issue seems to be common with laptops and mobile video GFX processors meaning the game may not run on a mobile GFX chip(Laptops)
Bugs:
Texture Streaming is bad and slow resulting in always reloading the same textures thus causing the textures popping in effect - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7Ch6TX-Cbs&hd=1
Missing/blinking textures...
Random Crashing: when exiting the Arc, after intro video, including when trying to start a new game and loading new areas.
LoD issues(popins dispersing items)
Audio stuttering and not blending properly.
Occasional Artifacts appearing- http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/9...0322215294.jpg
Low Frame rates with occasional fps spikes
Loading saves causes videocard drivers to crash...
Game Fails to start with error code #51.
Shadows turn Green
Binding keys don't always save and remain unbound and unable to be set
No Sound? this is a common issue with creative soundcards - Possible Fix: Buy a new soundcard or try and use your onboard sound.
But for some reason, because one of the guys who worked on it did some cool stuff a few years ago, this is somehow acceptable?
where is the Linux version? I won't buy it if there isn't one.
I took a peek @ this -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XGo5BnfU2Y & it doesn't seem worn-out to me:
Rather, it seems to be a very refined upgrade to idSoftware's "Tech 4" engine and a good one @ that!
Their display engines in games are neat & very configurable too for the hardware you have (Intel CoreI7 920 CPU @ 2.67ghz + NVidia GeForce 470GTX here, 1280mb RAM), & with which I've spent years tuning & refining here on Quake IV &/or Doom III, mainly for a "perfect mixture" of speed & quality of display...
Why?
Well, because I am BIG into "mod maps" is why (one thing I love about idSoftware games is, you buy the tech now, & entire COMMUNITIES pop up with modified BETTER versions even (different maps, weapons & more, galore)). You get their games now, you can play them for 1/2 a decade with all the variants that popup from the user community that are FREE no less!
* Anyhow/anyways: The idSoftware Tech5 engine seems to yield even MORE highly detailed objects & they have solved their "large spaces" problem in megatexturing than Tech4 did!
(I.E./E.G.-> You can look @ the "large space" place (think outdoors scenes) from a HIGHER UP view, & go down to focus from there @ high detail, down to pebbles in the sand being just as detailed - F A S T, & cleanly)...
APK
P.S.=> ON this game itself? Yes - I got an impression of part "I AM LEGEND" (the most) & yes, the "RoadWarrior" post-apocalyptic/dystopian future per my subject-line, but I liked what I saw in the youtube vidcap of actual gameplay above!
& I cannot WAIT to see this tech5 engine applied to my fav. from idSoftware - DOOM 4, & YOU KNOW THAT'S GOTTA BE COMING!!
... apk
I'm really getting a bit tired of seeing the incredibly inaccurate posts about this game being nothing more than a tech demo. Yes, personal opinions will always be varied but to just write this game off as nothing more than a showcase of id tech 5 is just plain ignorant. Compared to Doom 3, which in my opinion was more of a tech demo but did find the game incredibly immersive, this game brings all of the classic elements we love from an id game while pushing forward in terms of what we would come to expect from a modern day FPS.
I think we can all agree that the graphics are just stunning...the level of detail and performance is jaw dropping. I don't know what everyone's gripe is about the storyline and other gameplay elements. Might not be groundbreaking but were people really expecting it to be? To me, the game is just plain fun!
Really would love for people to actually list their missed expectations here. I think that might add a little more value than just making generalized statements that seem to come from some initial hardware glitches or watching gameplay videos.
Thanks!