Rage Gives You the Power

[Smooth Operator]

Actually on PC shit still isn't ironed out, but it sure was top tech for consoles.

I can't really see this going far because you actually need a large community to pick up on this, which the game didn't get, and then you add the 35G just for mod tools plus 25 or so for the game and that isn't even unpacked assets... most likely meaning you need one hell of a rig just to set things up, this just isn't adding up to a prosperous modding community.
But hey it's nice that they did release it.

 

[mattaui]

Would be nice for someone else to actually make a game out of this worth playing. It was one of the last games I bought at release for full price, for a very good reason.

 

[ksn0va]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I remember the same Rage as you. It was incredibly buggy to say the absoloute least. A real pain in the to keep working for such a poor title.

Also it's lack of dynamic shadows.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I remember the same version as you. It just plain didn't work on PC, and loaded extremely poorly on consoles. Everything was buggy with texture pop in up the ass, the whole thing was a mess. I bought Rage, played it for about 2 hours, then couldn't stand it anymore and haven't touched it since. It was pretty, sure, when you stood still for a while and let the game load, but that's really the only praise I can give the title. Maybe modders will be able to do something halfway decent with it, because id definitely couldn't.

 

[LordMonty]

Cool wasn't terrible hopefully the next doom is better

 

[Zer_]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I believe that's where the "after a few good patches" caveat comes in. The release client of Rage was bugged to its eyeballs, barely compatible with vanilla-flavoured DirectX, and featured a distinct lack of any graphical options whatsoever.

Most of this was fixed through patches, and once the snags were ironed out, the tech indeed is pretty impressive.

Rage doesn't use DirectX, it's an OpenGL game. DirectX has nothing to do with what happened when Rage was released. It's nVidia and AMD's drivers that caused problems. Naturally, OpenGL isn't the most widely used API for video games, and as a consequence, nVidia and AMD's OpenGL drivers aren't kept up to date as often as DirectX. Now that's not to say that id wasn't at least partially at fault either.

id Software had already fixed the compatibility issues with OpenGL by the time Rage was released. The specifications for the driver update needed to run Rage properly had already been sent to nVidia and AMD when the game was released. nVidia was ahead of the game slightly, they already had beta drivers that fixed most of those issues. AMD wasn't so quick, it took them a week to get things running fine. Naturally, these issues should have been ironed out months before the game was released, so id's failure in this scheme is the fact that they may not have given the OpenGL fixes to the card manufacturers fast enough, or it could be that it was simply the card manufacturers that took their sweet time.

I won't presume to know what went on behind the scenes, but people like to pin the all the blame on id Software when the reality is that the card manufacturers must hold some of the blame as well.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Lot of hate for Rage. I bought it on whim for $20 and liked it...

 

[DracoSuave]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I believe that's where the "after a few good patches" caveat comes in. The release client of Rage was bugged to its eyeballs, barely compatible with vanilla-flavoured DirectX, and featured a distinct lack of any graphical options whatsoever.

Most of this was fixed through patches, and once the snags were ironed out, the tech indeed is pretty impressive.

Rage doesn't use DirectX, it's an OpenGL game. DirectX has nothing to do with what happened when Rage was released. It's nVidia and AMD's drivers that caused problems. Naturally, OpenGL isn't the most widely used API for video games, and as a consequence, nVidia and AMD's OpenGL drivers aren't kept up to date as often as DirectX. Now that's not to say that id wasn't at least partially at fault either.

id Software had already fixed the compatibility issues with OpenGL by the time Rage was released. The specifications for the driver update needed to run Rage properly had already been sent to nVidia and AMD when the game was released. nVidia was ahead of the game slightly, they already had beta drivers that fixed most of those issues. AMD wasn't so quick, it took them a week to get things running fine. Naturally, these issues should have been ironed out months before the game was released, so id's failure in this scheme is the fact that they may not have given the OpenGL fixes to the card manufacturers fast enough, or it could be that it was simply the card manufacturers that took their sweet time.

I won't presume to know what went on behind the scenes, but people like to pin the all the blame on id Software when the reality is that the card manufacturers must hold some of the blame as well.

You're not doing a very good job at all on selling anyone that this is anything bot id's fault here.

Choosing to use technology in a way that doesn't work for the two most common pieces of hardware is a deliberate fail, rather than a nondeliberate fail. How is it the card manufacturer's fault that id CHOSE to implement OpenGL in a way they KNEW was non-functional?

 

[WaysideMaze]

Lot of hate for Rage. I bought it on whim for $20 and liked it...

For those of us that were looking forward to the game and pre-ordered it, it left a very bitter taste in our mouths.

 

[Zer_]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I believe that's where the "after a few good patches" caveat comes in. The release client of Rage was bugged to its eyeballs, barely compatible with vanilla-flavoured DirectX, and featured a distinct lack of any graphical options whatsoever.

Most of this was fixed through patches, and once the snags were ironed out, the tech indeed is pretty impressive.

Rage doesn't use DirectX, it's an OpenGL game. DirectX has nothing to do with what happened when Rage was released. It's nVidia and AMD's drivers that caused problems. Naturally, OpenGL isn't the most widely used API for video games, and as a consequence, nVidia and AMD's OpenGL drivers aren't kept up to date as often as DirectX. Now that's not to say that id wasn't at least partially at fault either.

id Software had already fixed the compatibility issues with OpenGL by the time Rage was released. The specifications for the driver update needed to run Rage properly had already been sent to nVidia and AMD when the game was released. nVidia was ahead of the game slightly, they already had beta drivers that fixed most of those issues. AMD wasn't so quick, it took them a week to get things running fine. Naturally, these issues should have been ironed out months before the game was released, so id's failure in this scheme is the fact that they may not have given the OpenGL fixes to the card manufacturers fast enough, or it could be that it was simply the card manufacturers that took their sweet time.

I won't presume to know what went on behind the scenes, but people like to pin the all the blame on id Software when the reality is that the card manufacturers must hold some of the blame as well.

You're not doing a very good job at all on selling anyone that this is anything bot id's fault here.

Choosing to use technology in a way that doesn't work for the two most common pieces of hardware is a deliberate fail, rather than a nondeliberate fail. How is it the card manufacturer's fault that id CHOSE to implement OpenGL in a way they KNEW was non-functional?

You have no idea how this stuff works, do you? It's not uncommon for a developer to create a game (especially when using a new engine), and basically tell card manufacturers "Hey, this is how our engine works, and here are the tweaks that need to be made to make it run well on your hardware." On id's side, they already had a working set of drivers that ran the game smoothly. The problem is that these drivers were not ready in time for the game's release. Whether or not that is id's fault, or the card manufacturers is anyone's guess. Personally, I'll split the blame between id and the card manufacturers.

If you honestly believe that developing a new game engine with new rendering methods would run perfectly without a proper driver update to better support the engine, then you'd be wrong. It doesn't matter whether id used OpenGL or DirectX in this case, both APIs would have needed an update.

id's choice to use OpenGL is a simple one, it's better than DirectX 9. At the time, Carmack was familiar with DirectX 9 and OpenGL. When you compare the two, OpenGL was flat out superior. Now, more recently, Carmack has admitted that DirectX 10 and 11 are excellent graphics APIs. Microsoft went ahead and recoded the entire API to be much cleaner and far more efficient, something that Carmack admitted himself. At the time of Rage's conception, the choices were OpenGL, DirectX 9, and DirectX 10. It didn't make much sense for id to use DirectX 10 since most people didn't even own cards that could use it.

You should read up on the history of DirectX and OpenGL to better understand Carmack's choice in using OpenGL over DirectX.

 

[Twilight_guy]

The Power?
What power?
The power of voodoo!

As with every other mod kit of engine ever, a handful of people will come up with something good and hundreds will start trying to do something great and then realize how much they suck and eventually give up.

 

[Kargathia]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I believe that's where the "after a few good patches" caveat comes in. The release client of Rage was bugged to its eyeballs, barely compatible with vanilla-flavoured DirectX, and featured a distinct lack of any graphical options whatsoever.

Most of this was fixed through patches, and once the snags were ironed out, the tech indeed is pretty impressive.

Rage doesn't use DirectX, it's an OpenGL game. DirectX has nothing to do with what happened when Rage was released. It's nVidia and AMD's drivers that caused problems. Naturally, OpenGL isn't the most widely used API for video games, and as a consequence, nVidia and AMD's OpenGL drivers aren't kept up to date as often as DirectX. Now that's not to say that id wasn't at least partially at fault either.

id Software had already fixed the compatibility issues with OpenGL by the time Rage was released. The specifications for the driver update needed to run Rage properly had already been sent to nVidia and AMD when the game was released. nVidia was ahead of the game slightly, they already had beta drivers that fixed most of those issues. AMD wasn't so quick, it took them a week to get things running fine. Naturally, these issues should have been ironed out months before the game was released, so id's failure in this scheme is the fact that they may not have given the OpenGL fixes to the card manufacturers fast enough, or it could be that it was simply the card manufacturers that took their sweet time.

I won't presume to know what went on behind the scenes, but people like to pin the all the blame on id Software when the reality is that the card manufacturers must hold some of the blame as well.

Derp. My mistake there. I knew quite a lot of the initial problems were caused by driver issues, and sort of autohabitually typed "DirectX".
If I recall correctly there still needed to be additional work done on drivers (possibly even at time of release), as id was internally running a homecooked driver version, which was unsuitable for general release, as it'd create all sorts of problems with other games.

On the whole it's probably close to irrelevant to figure out whom to assign blame to. Things went haywire, and as a direct result Rage bombed.

 

[Happiness Assassin]

Damn it, I came into this thread expecting something related to the Hulk. Now I am just sad.

 

[RA92]

35GB for your delicious baked textures!

Seeing the recent UE4 tech, gotta wonder what the hell id's been up to.

 

[DracoSuave]

its technology was universally praised.

Really? You and I remember very different versions of Rage. Considering the tech didn't work on PC for quite some time. I remember it got panned fairly universally rather than praised.

I believe that's where the "after a few good patches" caveat comes in. The release client of Rage was bugged to its eyeballs, barely compatible with vanilla-flavoured DirectX, and featured a distinct lack of any graphical options whatsoever.

Most of this was fixed through patches, and once the snags were ironed out, the tech indeed is pretty impressive.

Rage doesn't use DirectX, it's an OpenGL game. DirectX has nothing to do with what happened when Rage was released. It's nVidia and AMD's drivers that caused problems. Naturally, OpenGL isn't the most widely used API for video games, and as a consequence, nVidia and AMD's OpenGL drivers aren't kept up to date as often as DirectX. Now that's not to say that id wasn't at least partially at fault either.

id Software had already fixed the compatibility issues with OpenGL by the time Rage was released. The specifications for the driver update needed to run Rage properly had already been sent to nVidia and AMD when the game was released. nVidia was ahead of the game slightly, they already had beta drivers that fixed most of those issues. AMD wasn't so quick, it took them a week to get things running fine. Naturally, these issues should have been ironed out months before the game was released, so id's failure in this scheme is the fact that they may not have given the OpenGL fixes to the card manufacturers fast enough, or it could be that it was simply the card manufacturers that took their sweet time.

I won't presume to know what went on behind the scenes, but people like to pin the all the blame on id Software when the reality is that the card manufacturers must hold some of the blame as well.

You're not doing a very good job at all on selling anyone that this is anything bot id's fault here.

Choosing to use technology in a way that doesn't work for the two most common pieces of hardware is a deliberate fail, rather than a nondeliberate fail. How is it the card manufacturer's fault that id CHOSE to implement OpenGL in a way they KNEW was non-functional?

You have no idea how this stuff works, do you? It's not uncommon for a developer to create a game (especially when using a new engine), and basically tell card manufacturers "Hey, this is how our engine works, and here are the tweaks that need to be made to make it run well on your hardware." On id's side, they already had a working set of drivers that ran the game smoothly. The problem is that these drivers were not ready in time for the game's release. Whether or not that is id's fault, or the card manufacturers is anyone's guess. Personally, I'll split the blame between id and the card manufacturers.

So let me see then.

id decided to tweak drivers for their cards.
id decided to send those tweaks to them, while continuing to base their engine on the tweaked versions and not the actual release versions, versions might not have worked well with other products not released by id.
id decided to release their game, before drivers could be mass-released by the card companies that could work both with Rage AND existing products.

And... id's not to blame why?

If you honestly believe that developing a new game engine with new rendering methods would run perfectly without a proper driver update to better support the engine, then you'd be wrong.

And so releasing it before those 'proper driver updates' could be released to the public is a smart move, why?

It doesn't matter whether id used OpenGL or DirectX in this case, both APIs would have needed an update.

Don't care, this is actually completely inconsequential.

id's choice to use OpenGL is a simple one, it's better than DirectX 9. At the time, Carmack was familiar with DirectX 9 and OpenGL. When you compare the two, OpenGL was flat out superior. Now, more recently, Carmack has admitted that DirectX 10 and 11 are excellent graphics APIs. Microsoft went ahead and recoded the entire API to be much cleaner and far more efficient, something that Carmack admitted himself. At the time of Rage's conception, the choices were OpenGL, DirectX 9, and DirectX 10. It didn't make much sense for id to use DirectX 10 since most people didn't even own cards that could use it.

Doesn't matter.

You should read up on the history of DirectX and OpenGL to better understand Carmack's choice in using OpenGL over DirectX.

Why? What difference does it make?

id decided to release a product relying on drivers that it KNEW did not exist in the general public yet. It doesn't matter if id got to make their own tweaks to the drivers that worked for them... that's the PROBLEM ISN'T IT!?!

They designed the game for non-existant firmware, and released it for non-existant firmware, and now you're blaming the card companies for id jumping the gun and not waiting for non-existant firmware to become existant firmware.

That's ENTIRELY id's fault. One. Hundred. Percent.

'We delayed Rage so that the firmware for nVidia and AMD's graphics cards would be capable of rendering our product. With the new technology we are using, you will agree it is worth the wait.'


Sorry, if you release a product you KNOW won't work, you're 100% at fault.

 

[JEBWrench]

How's that unexpected of Zenimax? This is what they usually do (see: GECK, Doom 3's Source Code, Elder Scrolls Toolkit)

I"m guilty of spreading a bit of misinformation. I thought the Doom 3 source code was before the acquisition, and was unaware that the Fallout/Elder Scrolls modding kits were as expansive as id's efforts. I thought including all of the art assets and dev tools was above what things like GECK offered. My apologies.

No worries; it's rare that any company is routinely generous with modding tools.

EDIT: Some neat real information. The uncompressed artwork/textures total a little over 1 TB. I think this engine was meant as a "future-proof" concept like the original Cryengine was. I think with all the streaming that there was hope that id/Zenimax would be able to shop out tech 5 the way Epic does with UE3. It just...doesn't work as intended and needed even more time than the near decade it was given. There's so much texture work that isn't seen, and when it is it's amidst a hodge-podge of textures of varying quality.

If you read the patch notes, id recommends a 6-core processor at a minimum just to provide a sampling filter over the textures so that they aren't blurry up close. When I look at the "outside wasteland" in the game, it is certainly pretty but I don't think it's worth this. The game is proof that devs need to focus on the mechanics and rules, and the fun, because all those years, all that work, and all the power required represents an extreme amount of bloat in the race towards emulating realism.

All of that makes me kinda wonder what they were thinking when they decided to both push technological limits, while also releasing on consoles.

 

[Strazdas]

Rage was good and now it is made better, this makes the community happy i guess.
Its always funny as people come screaming that "its ull of bugs and it doesnt work" and when your copy work perfectly they all look like whining kids. bug i guess statistically it was pretty bugged.
But the again, so was Civilization 4.

Rage[/s] still doesn't run at a playable level on my ATI card. Hopefully, someone in the community will make a mod that changes this. I hope they can, because all I saw when I looked at the game was lost potential.

but thats the problem, you got ATI card.
now go back and complain when you get a video card.

 

[Coffeejack]

Rage was good and now it is made better, this makes the community happy i guess.
Its always funny as people come screaming that "its ull of bugs and it doesnt work" and when your copy work perfectly they all look like whining kids. bug i guess statistically it was pretty bugged.
But the again, so was Civilization 4.

Rage[/s] still doesn't run at a playable level on my ATI card. Hopefully, someone in the community will make a mod that changes this. I hope they can, because all I saw when I looked at the game was lost potential.

but thats the problem, you got ATI card.
now go back and complain when you get a video card.

I use an ATI Radeon HD5850. ATI released a faulty update for Rage, in which they mistakenly packaged outdated hardware. Since the game was released and ATI corrected their mistake, some minor improvements were made, but a lot of textures still load as you look at them and the game still runs quite slowly for a lot of people.

I don't know to what extent iD is to blame for the problems, but John Carmack has apparently apologised for its PC release.

 

[Strazdas]

Rage was good and now it is made better, this makes the community happy i guess.
Its always funny as people come screaming that "its ull of bugs and it doesnt work" and when your copy work perfectly they all look like whining kids. bug i guess statistically it was pretty bugged.
But the again, so was Civilization 4.

Rage[/s] still doesn't run at a playable level on my ATI card. Hopefully, someone in the community will make a mod that changes this. I hope they can, because all I saw when I looked at the game was lost potential.

but thats the problem, you got ATI card.
now go back and complain when you get a video card.

Do you know what a graphics card is?

Edit: It's an ATI Radeon HD5850. ATI released a faulty update for Rage, in which they mistakenly packaged outdated hardware. Since the game was released and ATI corrected their mistake, some minor improvements were made, but a lot of textures still load as you look at them and the game still runs quite slowly for a lot of people.

Yes. If you have Radeon, say its a Radeon, even if its owned by ATI, because there are "graphic cards" that are just ATI (before radeon) and those do not deserve to be named as graphic cards. I uess this was a misunderstanding by me thinking you mean an ATI card and not a Radeon card.