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MMO Burnout: A week with id Software's Rage
So I've been dabbing in id Software's RAGE over the last little while. Actually, I'm not sure whether the late-2011 shooter is called RAGE or simply Rage, but either way, it has the worst (or perhaps least descriptive) video game name of all time. Also, yes, I know it's not an MMO. This is MMO Burnout and I thought we were past that already. Anyhow, I'm afraid I'm going to have to recommend the title to burned-out MMO gamers for several reasons. It's quite beautiful, quite fun, and it's the perfect getaway from the typical massively multiplayer grind.%Gallery-176557%
PSA: Rage is having issues on PC, fixes incoming
Those of you who play vidya games primarily on consoles may have insulated yourself from an increasingly common scourge facing your PC gaming brethren: problematic PC ports. While we're sorry to say that Rage is suffering from some launch-day issues, the PC gaming godfathers at id Software aren't abandoning the platform. So put down those pitchforks. And torches. The above video is a good example of the issue: textures pop-in every time the camera moves. It would appear the high-res MegaTextures that id's John Carmack has been talking about for years are being dropped from memory immediately and not streaming in quickly enough. The Xbox 360 release, underpowered relative to the gaming PC in this video, exhibits very little if any texture pop-in which sort of puts the blame purely on your friend and ours: graphics card drivers! Bethesda Blog says that, in addition to the texture issues, there are also screen tearing problems but insists that both problems "can be attributed to driver issues" which id Software is "currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve [...] as quickly as possible." For AMD graphics card users, "you should not use" the beta driver that Bethesda shared yesterday. The Battlefield 3 beta drivers will crash to desktop "100% with those drivers," and Beth Blog recommends updating "to the most recent driver when AMD updates, which we're told will be in a few hours." Nvidia users "should try updating Rage to the current beta driver" and Beth Blog will let everyone know when that's available. Be patient, PC gamer. It's been seven years since the last internally developed id Software game; another day or so isn't going to kill you.
Rage gameplay footage features murderous bots, volatile vehicles
Sure, you'll be doing a lot of shooting in id Software's Rage, but did you know that you'll also be piloting an explosive RC car, or sending out a spider-like robot to eliminate enemies? See those gadgets in action in the new trailer after the break.
Rage preview: Doomed down
Despite sporting the enhancements of id Tech 5, Rage seemed to be lagging behind at Bethesda's BFG 2011 media event last week. Its generic, post-apocalyptic wasteland setting has become a familiar one in recent years, but it's the simplistic and overly linear shootfest within that's the most dated element of the game. Nonetheless, the team at id Software seems to be aware that a glossy throwback shooter isn't going to cut it in today's over-saturated FPS market and has challenged itself to set Rage apart. The most obvious sign of id stepping out of its comfort zone is in the game's multiplayer design. Believe it or not, there's no deathmatch in the classic Doom sense. In its place is a fine-tuned vehicle-based mode, implementing the game's dune buggies. Multiplayer is expected to be a fairly compact experience, with up to six players able to take part in a few gametypes on a sparse offering of five maps. "If you add game variations just to add game variations it confuses people," said one of the designers during the hands-off multiplayer presentation. "People don't know what to play." %Gallery-121461%
Rage: Mutant Bash TV now available in App Store, in 'HD' and 'SD'
As promised, Rage: Mutant Bash TV is now up for sale in the App Store [iTunes app link] as just "Rage," and it's offered in two resolutions: a standard edition (call it "SD") for $1 and an HD version for $2. Mutant Bash TV is an on-rails shooter based in the same world -- and built from the same id Tech 5 engine -- as id Software's in-development Rage game for PC and HD consoles. Both the SD and HD versions of Mutant Bash TV contain the same basic content and both are compatible with most iPhones, iPod Touches and the iPad (the platform specifics can be found after the break). Take note: Weighing in at 537MB, even the SD version isn't "light," while the HD iteration fills up a hearty 743MB of space -- that's a whole lot of angry, angry mutant polygons! %Gallery-107754%
Rage: Mutant Bash TV 'should' hit App Store tomorrow
id Software head John Carmack has at least one very important trait in common with gangsta rap star (and gaming magnate) Ice-T: he's really fun to follow on Twitter. When he's not dropping enigmatic missives like, "Closed myself in a 1600 gallon tank for an hour. CO2 rose to 3430 ppm, humidity rose to 71%. No discomfort," he's giving his followers a taste of news before it hits anywhere else. "Rage mobile has been approved," he let his followers know this morning. "It should be on the App Store tomorrow morning!" Rather than directly port the forthcoming FPS, Rage: Mutant Bash TV is an on-rails shooter set in the world of Rage. No price has been set for the game, but id's most expensive iPhone game to date has been the $7 Doom: Resurrection -- another on-rails shooter.
Rage: Mutant Bash TV rail shoots id Tech 5 onto an iPhone
Bethesda's upcoming id Tech 5 engine has us pretty excited. It continues the long-standing rivalry between Epic's Unreal Engine and id's storied Doom and Quake engines. However, the battle is very different this time around -- as both engines vie to create the prettiest game for Apple's iPhone. John Carmack showed off a quick iOS prototype at QuakeCon earlier this year, but IGN has managed to secure video of actual gameplay. Rage: Mutant Bash TV is not an exact port of the console and PC shooter Rage. Instead, it's an arcade-styled rail shooter that has you shooting mutants with a variety of weapons. As you'll see in the video (embedded after the break), the game doesn't seem to offer much in terms of nuanced, thought-provoking gameplay. But, that's not really the point, is it? Mutant Bash TV is certainly pretty, an unbelievable accomplishment for cell phone gaming. Oddly, if you have a VGA cable, you'll be able to output the game to your TV and play it on the big screen. Nothing like playing a handheld port of a console game on a TV, right?
MachineGames developing under Bethesda, using id Tech 5
Mega-publisher ZeniMax Media made its acquisition of Swedish developer MachineGames official today, specifying that the studio would be working on multiplatform titles under ZeniMax's Bethesda banner. MachineGames' first unannounced project will be built using sibling studio id Software's id Tech 5 game engine. "Working with our new colleagues at id and the world class publisher, Bethesda Softworks, is a tremendous opportunity," said MachineGames CEO Jerk Gustafsso, who will serve as executive producer of the new game. Barely a year old, MachineGames has nothing to show for itself publicly, though the company was established by a gang of ex-Starbreeze founders, including Gustafsso, which is credited with critical darlings The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher's Bay (2004) / Assault on Dark Athena (2009) and The Darkness (2007). Legal documentation of the acquisition appeared to indicate that MachineGames would be re-branded "ZeniMax Sweden," but it seems the studio will retain its original name. Just two weeks ago, Zenimax made its acquisition of Shinji Mikami's Tango Gameworks official. Just this week, subsidiary Bethesda made its shipment of 5 million blatantly buggy copies of Fallout: New Vegas official -- hey, revenue's gotta come from something while these new studios get settled. [Pictured: id Software's Rage, built with id Tech 5]
id Tech 5 exclusive to Bethesda-published titles
What's the common thread between American McGee's Alice, Call of Duty and Quake 3? They were all powered by id Tech 3. Like Unreal Engine, id Tech was heavily licensed amongst third parties, used in a wide variety of console and PC games; however, it seems that id (and new parent company Bethesda) is no longer interested in pursuing the middleware market. In an interview with Eurogamer, id's Todd Hollenshead said that Rage's id Tech 5 is a "competitive advantage and we want to keep within games we publish." Certainly, the awards the game picked up at E3 -- including "Special Commendation for Graphics" -- provide testament to that claim. From Bethesda's perspective, the engine is simply too good for anyone else to use. "We're not going to license it to external parties," Hollenshead explained. "If you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing." By restricting id Tech 5 to Bethesda games, id has essentially exited the middleware market, which is largely dominated by Epic's Unreal Engine. "Epic's made a good business out of that so kudos to them," Hollenshead said. "But I wouldn't change the way we've done things."
Interview: Jason Kim talks RAGE
What does a video game producer do? Well, the brutally honest Jason Kim from id's RAGE summed it up for us. "I'm just a producer; I don't make anything that actually shows up in the game." So there you have it! Okay, we're kidding (slightly). It's a producer's task on a game to make sure everything is running smoothly, that schedules are being met, budgets being adhered to, all so that one day the game can end up on your system of choice. That's no small task. Kim has been working on RAGE at id for the past several years, and has seen the project move from EA, to being an internally developed project at id, and now on to Bethesda. He's definitely enthusiastic about the project (and the word megatexture), and you can read on beyond the break for the full interview with him were he talks about the game, and why a lot of developers seem to be using the post-apocalyptic realm as a backdrop.%Gallery-92198%
id Software maintains 'games first, licenses second' approach with idTech 5
Sure, id Tech 5 may be an impressive piece of middleware which manages to get 90% of game code working across PC, Mac and the more powerful consoles, but if you're going to be a licensee you have to be special. id Software's CEO, Tedd Hollenshead, has told Gamasutra that the company's "philosophy really hasn't changed from what it's always been, which is games first, licenses second." Rage and Doom 4 are currently id Software's top priority.In terms of licensing the engine out to developers id Software has been focusing on "targeting developers" and "working with them on an individual basis," rather than offering it out to anyone with a devkit. Hollenshead says the company's "philosophy on that has been that we'd rather have a small number of good-fit, high-quality developer licensees than a bunch that aren't really good fits." Makes perfect sense to us, and could save id Software some legal heartache in the long run.
Carmack: Xbox 360 Rage 'a little blurry,' 'key scenes' same as PS3
How many DVDs does it take to screw in a light bulb? ... Are we talkin' a Mega Texture light bulb that casts penumbra shadowing?In an update to id Software's data dilemma, John Carmack tells Tom's Games, "We're pretty much resigned to the fact that we're going to make [Rage] fit onto two DVDs on the 360." In other words, Microsoft isn't about to write off the steep royalties that allegedly add up with each additional game disc. The good news is you'll only have to whine for mom to swap your Xbox 360 discs once. The bad news, as headlined last week, is that Rage for Xbox 360 will supposedly look worse than the PlayStation 3's Blu-ray version due to data compression. But how much worse?"All of the key scenes, the things anyone is going to take a screenshot of are going to look exactly the same on both platforms," Carmack explains. "They'll get the high quality compression. But if you go into some areas in the wasteland, like behind a fence where nobody will typically go and explore, this is where the 360 version may look a little blurry compared to the PS3." We hear id's been sweeping some artifacts under the rug too. And watch out for those jaggies hiding beneath the bed!
Rage trailer, now with EA logo
EA pimped its partnership with id Software today by debuting a (somewhat) new trailer for Rage, the first spawn of the id Tech 5 engine. This is only the second brief glimpse we've caught of the shooter-with-wheels (and the first in nearly a year!), so it's a bit disappointing to see some of the same imagery being recycled these many months later. But damn, when a game is dripping with this much butter, we don't really mind the double dips.
Electronic Arts and id Software form partnership
var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/Electronic_Arts_and_id_Software_form_partnership'; Id Software creator John Carmack just announced at Electronic Arts' press conference that it has partnered with the publisher. The Quake and Doom creator has long used Activision as a publisher, but we wonder if things got bitter after the travesty that was Quake Wars console ports. Id and EA? What a great ... idea?Update: The fruits of the partnership are beginning to bud as EA re-announces Rage, "an all-new take on the first person shooter" for the PS3, Xbox 360, PC and Mac. Note much else new is revealed about the game, which was named last August, but look for more info at QuakeCon.
John Carmack id tech 5 demo from WWDC
Here's the demo of id tech 5, id Software's new graphical engine, running on a Mac at the WWDC keynote. It looks very nice (it should, at 20gb of textures), and Carmack says the engine will allow programmers to come in and get the game right first, and then let their artists loose on it. Levels can be designed before anything else, and then artists can come and design the landscape and the colors around that.I'm not sure how well that works, but we'll see soon: Carmack also says he'll have this showing on both consoles and desktops (Mac and PC) at E3, as well as "another Mac related announcement" that he can't quite bring himself to tell us about at this point. Considering all of id's games are already available on OS X (released by Aspyr, who have to be shaking in their boots after all the announcements this week), we have no idea at all what that might be.
John Carmack of id Software unveils new ultra high detail game engine
Yesterday, during the keynote address at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, John Carmack revealed some footage of a new game engine. The video above is the best quality you're going to get for a little while. At least until id release some footage themselves. Despite this, however, it still looks stunning.Dubbed "id Tech 5," the new engine promises to almost completely remove any limitations on texture size, allowing "for the unique customization of the entire game world at the pixel level." Examples include changing material colours on the fly and etching fine detail, such as initials, into existing geometry. As the video says, the footage above uses over 20 gigabytes of texture files. Presumably, with their developments into new compression methods, we'll be seeing all this fit onto a 9 gigabyte DVD. It'll have to if they plan on releasing games that run on this engine onto the PC and Xbox 360. Games on the PS3, on the other hand, will be able to take advantage of the 50 gigabytes of storage on Blu-Ray discs, allowing for lower compression and, we assume, faster loading as a result.This is all just speculation for now, however. Other than the above video and the blurb that has been posted on the id Software official website, there's no specific information. We'll have to wait until E3 for that.[Via CVG and Engadget]
