RAGE... Good, but really not awesome at all!

[wuliheron]

Yes they are, the game was programmed for the lowest common denominator and it runs almost identically on a HD 4200 or a HD 6990.

That's the game, not the engine. They deliberately designed the game to run at 60fps on consoles so of course it has wimpy PC demands. With Doom 4 they intend to add more monsters and graphics effects and settle for 30fps on consoles. Only then will we get a better idea of how much the engine can actually push a PC.

Also, the engine lowers the resolution of the textures dynamically to maintain 60fps. It runs the same on the two PCs, but the quality of the graphics is different just as it would be if you had to lower the graphics settings manually to get it to play.

 

[TestKing123]

I agree but I will say this

Id has the best art direction in the industry. The art assets in rage are the best I have seen to date and I can't discount that aspect. I think the problem with the game isn't carmacks crew but carmacks intelligence. I think carmacks said "ok, I need to make a console game. How can I make the best looking console game."

They are the worst I've seen to date. Seriously, a flat low resolution texture to represent pipes in a wall? In a 2011 game?

The game is 24gigs in size and yet the gameworld is surprisingly small, gameplay is surprisingly short, and these are the textures we get?

 

[JSt0rm]

Im not talking about the textures. Im talking about the design of the art.

 

[shortylickens]

Yeah Fallout 3 is a shit role-playing game (made even more obvious by trailing on the heels of a good franchise) but if you consider it to be a shooter with depth then they definitely raised the standards of gameplay a great deal. You would need to do a lot to surpass it. Doom 3 and Quake 4 and Rage dont even come close. Borderlands starts off good, but I lose interest quickly with all the consolitis infecting it.

 

[JSt0rm]

Yeah Fallout 3 is a shit role-playing game (made even more obvious by trailing on the heels of a good franchise) but if you consider it to be a shooter with depth then they definitely raised the standards of gameplay a great deal. You would need to do a lot to surpass it. Doom 3 and Quake 4 and Rage dont even come close. Borderlands starts off good, but I lose interest quickly with all the consolitis infecting it.

yeah but on a art level rage destroys fallout 3. I guess to me thats its 1 redeeming quality and if it was high res like it was in the promo vids we would all be like

 

[wuliheron]

I agree with all of your points but none of that has to do with art DIRECTION. Games with limited texture budgets can still have great art DIRECTION and games with huge texture budgets can have horrible art DIRECTION.

That's like saying sometimes an artist can make a masterpiece out of scrap. Sure, its possible, but that doesn't mean they can do it every time with just any old pile of scrap. Give them whatever materials they need and the freedom to do whatever they want and you're much more likely to get a great finished product. The less constraints they have, the less expertise they need in how to use all those scraps too.

 

[wuliheron]

Yeah Fallout 3 is a shit role-playing game (made even more obvious by trailing on the heels of a good franchise) but if you consider it to be a shooter with depth then they definitely raised the standards of gameplay a great deal. You would need to do a lot to surpass it. Doom 3 and Quake 4 and Rage dont even come close. Borderlands starts off good, but I lose interest quickly with all the consolitis infecting it.

Almost every game has its pros and cons. Fallout 3 is buggy as hell and stutters like it has a neurological disease. For a fan of id games that can be the kiss of death and the last thing they might want is more "depth" in their game. Instead they tend to prefer 120fps and good graphics.

 

[wuliheron]

What the actual code is in the Source Engine you and I will probably never know, but I don't think it's a fair statement to say that Valve simply added physics and a few other features to id's technology to create the Source Engine.

edit: we've also been ignoring the fact that the Quake engine is OpenGL and the Source Engine is DirectX, so the code in the Quake engine would probably not call the correct functions/libraries anyway.

"Source distantly originates from the GoldSrc engine, itself a heavily modified version of John D. Carmack's Quake engine..."
Wikipedia

 

[destrekor]

From what I've witnessed, and what I have played of their previous offerings of the last Id Tech engine... Id is failing to stay modern and relevant. It's sad, really, because they could be capable if they even tried. But beyond updating engines, it doesn't seem like they are trying to even stand out in the genre. It's like they are striving for mediocrity.

 

[shortylickens]

Almost every game has its pros and cons. Fallout 3 is buggy as hell and stutters like it has a neurological disease. For a fan of id games that can be the kiss of death and the last thing they might want is more "depth" in their game. Instead they tend to prefer 120fps and good graphics.

I never had too many bugs or any stutters, at least not without tons of add-ons and the script extender running. I think its your system.

 

[JSt0rm]

That's like saying sometimes an artist can make a masterpiece out of scrap. Sure, its possible, but that doesn't mean they can do it every time with just any old pile of scrap. Give them whatever materials they need and the freedom to do whatever they want and you're much more likely to get a great finished product. The less constraints they have, the less expertise they need in how to use all those scraps too.

Do you know what a concept artists is? Why would the overall design and color have anything to do with what you are talking about? The assets are made at the highest level. If you had a coffee table book at the highest resolution of the art of rage vs say the art of fallout 3 what book would you look at?

 

[HeXen]

My first impression of the game was that id bought the rights to some little kid's racing game and added their usual shotguns and monsters. However, on closer examination it seems like they threw everything but the kitchen sink into the game and stirred it until they got something that worked. Like I said, they kept the company small so they could do whatever they wanted and with Rage they wanted to do something really different.

Personally I think id really needed to explore new ideas. Along with improved graphics they needed to figure out some new basic dynamics or they risked the next versions of Doom and Quake starting to resemble a ray traced version of pong. Perhaps they over reached a bit, but hopefully they can take the lessons learned and apply them in the future.

There's a group at id now pushing for a return to the original Quake with all the monsters (which would look great with the id tech 5 engine). They could make a real classic if they do it right, or a real boner if they flub the plot, dialogue, and pacing. Its the same problem most AAA games face with the next generation consoles. As the graphics begin to approach cinematic quality audiences begin to expect cinematic quality dialogue and plot development. Just running down the corridor shooting everything in sight isn't enough anymore.

Supposedly their already working on Doom 4, unless maybe they got Splach damage doing it. I believe it was Carmack stating how it was going to be 4x's more detailed. Which tells me their back to small, confined corridoors.

but yes, needs to be done right. Problem with Rage was they were never doing anything different aside add racing, but it was like a bad version of Fallout 3 imo.

Level design plays a big part. you have to make the world interesting to look at. Thats where Doom 3 failed imo and where a game like Painkiller succeeded. Both are mindless shooting, slightly differ but weapons and design make a world of difference.

Frankly, i think Prey was better than anything ID has done in a very long time and it used the same engine.

 

[JSt0rm]

well doom 4's target fps is 30 and rage target was 60 so by cutting the fps in half they do get some power back. Im hoping for a more open world doom 4. I liked doom 3 with the closed corridors and it was scary as fuck but something a bit different would be nice.

 

[wuliheron]

Do you know what a concept artists is? Why would the overall design and color have anything to do with what you are talking about? The assets are made at the highest level. If you had a coffee table book at the highest resolution of the art of rage vs say the art of fallout 3 what book would you look at?

I have no idea which I'd rather look at because I have no clue whatsoever what fallout might look like without all the contortions they had to go through to make it playable. With Rage, I have a pretty good idea.

 

[wuliheron]

well doom 4's target fps is 30 and rage target was 60 so by cutting the fps in half they do get some power back. Im hoping for a more open world doom 4. I liked doom 3 with the closed corridors and it was scary as fuck but something a bit different would be nice.

Carmack has already stated that the id tech 5 would look like crap applied to an open world game and his goal with Doom 4 is to add more monsters.

 

[Bman123]

From what I've seen online the graphics look Damn nice

 

[wuliheron]

Supposedly their already working on Doom 4, unless maybe they got Splach damage doing it. I believe it was Carmack stating how it was going to be 4x's more detailed. Which tells me their back to small, confined corridoors.

but yes, needs to be done right. Problem with Rage was they were never doing anything different aside add racing, but it was like a bad version of Fallout 3 imo.

Level design plays a big part. you have to make the world interesting to look at. Thats where Doom 3 failed imo and where a game like Painkiller succeeded. Both are mindless shooting, slightly differ but weapons and design make a world of difference.

Frankly, i think Prey was better than anything ID has done in a very long time and it used the same engine.

I loved Prey and can't wait for the sequel and I agree Doom 3 was just too dark and cramped and the level design just wasn't anything to write home about. Rage has good level design and is nice and bright in most places and even when it is actually cramped they leave lots of open views that make the spaces look bigger.

If Doom 4 looks 4 times better then I suspect its because they've invested most of the effort into better looking monsters and a adding more special effects. The mutants and opponents in Rage are cartoons little better then Bugs Bunny. Nice cartoons, but hard to take seriously. The concept art for the Doom 4 monsters looks much more ambitious and there are people at id pushing for a return to the original monsters of Quake as well.

 

[HeXen]

From what I've seen online the graphics look Damn nice

Its the blurry textures that get ya. Much of the distance is static backdrop, but the lighting is superb and i really love the fire effects and overall is very detailed but there just isnt a whole lot of interesting stuff to look at. of course i've never been into post apocalyptic design.

One thing i did find somewhat refreshing is the AI will actually retreat..somewhat when under heavy attack and know their losing. but they only back off to the next hiding spot from what i've seen.
Some just run straight at you, something i always complained about.
I like enemies to know when their losing and not be all suicidal psycho.

The concept art for the Doom 4 monsters looks much more ambitious and there are people at id pushing for a return to the original monsters of Quake as well.

i'll have to check that out.
I do hope Doom 4 isnt all scripted n such. I don't like it when enemies sit static until you pass a trigger point for them to do a scripted attack. I would rather see monsters with vision and hearing and options to stealth cause well...i'm sure most of us in that situation would be hiding and sneaking a lot.

 

[Bman123]

Its the blurry textures that get ya. Much of the distance is static backdrop, but the lighting is superb and i really love the fire effects and overall is very detailed but there just isnt a whole lot of interesting stuff to look at.

it looks a lot better then new Vegas, I catch myself all the time sight seeing in that game.

 

[Bman123]

I don't even know if rage will run on my pc (rig in sig) at 1280x720 lol

 

[JSt0rm]

It will run. at 60fps too.

 

[Bman123]

Yeah right, my cpu and video card are the minimum requirements, wishful thinking

 

[wuliheron]

i'll have to check that out.
I do hope Doom 4 isnt all scripted n such. I don't like it when enemies sit static until you pass a trigger point for them to do a scripted attack. I would rather see monsters with vision and hearing and options to stealth cause well...i'm sure most of us in that situation would be hiding and sneaking a lot.

I doubt the AI will be significantly different from Rage. Id specializes in run-n-gun, not stealth and fancy AI. Almost nobody does fancy AI. The problem is as I understand it is that good AI and Physics tend to require about 80 to 300 streaming processors, not every computer has the necessary gpu compute functions yet, and it tends to lug the gpu which has other things to do. That leaves the AI running off the cpu for most games and rather limited.

If its any consolation sometime in the next decade I expect that to change as streaming processors are added to cpu. Some games may then start adding the option for advanced AI just like they do now for Nvidia physx.

 

[thujone]

so i played this game expecting it to be a massive shitstorm from all the stuff i've read online... and surprisingly i enjoyed the hell out of it. I really got into the idea of gearing out my car, doing quests, collecting bounty, scavenging for magic cards etc.



but right as the game started to hit it's stride... and seemed like it was going somewhere... it just ended. with a video.



if the game would have been about twice as long and had a better ending i would have given it a very very good rating. even though it felt like they were throwing everything they possibly could at you with this game... all of those elements felt very polished and well done. none of them really seemed like they were extra filler thrown in at the last minute.

 

[JSt0rm]

Yeah right, my cpu and video card are the minimum requirements, wishful thinking

Im serious. The game auto scales everything to make that 60fps marker.