RAGE Gameplay Performance and Image Quality @ [H]

[Shalafi]

On a similar note, whatever happened to releasing playable demos? Instead of pissing people off after they dump $60 on a game they ultimately won't play and leaving a bad taste in their mouth, why not let them try it and then decide. Even if they decide the game sucks at least you won't be building a legion of haters that feel robbed.

/Shrug. Business is business I guess. Gotta get dat money.

Edit: Hell if you're really looking at milking cash from the consumers, let people pay a little for a piece of the game and then buy the rest if they want it? There has to be a better way than what they're doing now.

It's all about the money, that's why demos don't tend to be released for bad games. I don't believe in pirating either, simply because if it isn't worth buying, then it's not worth pirating. If it's worth buying, then you buy it rather than pirate it. Piracy solves nothing.

Demos are out of fashion. If you make a shit game and release a demo, people will realise it's bad and not buy it. When you know a game is likely to bomb you don't advertise that fact.

Bingo.

 

[illram]

So first, the good: I think the game is sort of fun, nothing too revolutionary, and some of the driving games are kind of an interesting diversion. When textures are not popping in and when I am not right next to a wall or other object, a lot of stuff in the game does look really nice. The character animations are cool and I think generally the NPCs look fairly unique, natural, and there is not the repeating faces and shapes common in a lot of these games.

And now the bad: with that said... the technical issues are unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I have been playing FPSs since Wolfenstein and I am used to driver issues, little incompatibilities, etc. etc. I was not under the mistaken impression that RAGE was going to be some sort of revolution in gaming. But this is one of the biggest technical flops on release I can remember. You are either 1) the lucky owner of an extremely expensive and fast system that is capable of simply powering through the issues of this game or 2) you are the majority (the 99%, haha) who have a low to mid system faced with the hobson's choice of either messing with your config files or waiting a month or two for a patch and new non-beta drivers that won't ruin other games.

Downloading drivers to make minor tweaks or fix some minor issues is normal on the PC. Having to manually fiddle with config files and wait for new drivers for a month to fix gamebreaking (literally) issues is not. (If they even will fix anything? Stay tuned...)

 

[travbrad]

Kyle's Thoughts

I want my damn money back.

I LOLed

 

[ktk]

Kyle's Thoughts

I want my damn money back.

ROFLMAO~ XDDD

 

[Macross]

A part of my PC enthusiasm died with this title as for me DOOM 3 was the game that really launched me into pc gaming I remember just seeing all the hype for the game and how good it was going to look I went out and brought a 9700 pro for it and upgraded all my other parts just to play it. Now not even decade later they just come out with a really bad iteration for the PC version and then just want to pass the buck off as its our fault for expecting too much. Its a sad day when Crytek looks like a knight a in shining armor compared to ID. Well I least its only few days until BF3 release.

 

[GMcDougal]

Kyles response was classic...I only needed to read that one line to know that this game was a dud.

 

[Damar]

Demos are out of fashion. If you make a shit game and release a demo, people will realise it's bad and not buy it. When you know a game is likely to bomb you don't advertise that fact.

This is why I don't pre-order any game that doesn't have a demo available for me to try out before spending my hard earned money. (Esp while jobless atm)

Most companies don't put out demo's now, because if they did, we all know they'd never sell half the copies they do to people who pre-order or buy blindly based on the hype.

I miss the days of solid gameplay, but alas, my old C64 is long gone.

 

[AceGoober]

There is a picture of John Carmac drinking some liquid substance from a wine glass with the rest of the id software team at launch of the game. They celebrated way too soon.

Thanks [H]. The review was awesome and clearly shows that RAGE is not worth most people's money.

 

[DualOwn]

whats with the "low fps" with amd cards?

 

[BladeVenom]

Unfortunately, developing for PCs means catering to the lowest common denominator as well. Not everyone has a Radeon 6000 series (or even an nVidia 8800). Some PCs have single-core, many dual-core, and many quad-core. Some have 2GB RAM, others have 12. Most are laptops.

The lowest common denominator for PCs would be integrated graphics. There are plenty of games that won't run on integrated graphics.

BF3 won't run on XP.

 

[Gorankar]

Screw Carmack for writing another game engine for Nvidia cards only. Money back for AMD GPU users campaign, INITIATE!

I suspect, his people wrote this game engine primarily for the consoles. Cuda merely helped get them around certain x86 processing hurdles, that are not a problem on the console due to the type of processors used in the 360/PS3..

Megatextures looks more and more like a console centric tech. It certainly was not well executed on the PC.

I'm just passing gas, don't take it too seriously.

 

[samuelmorris]

whats with the "low fps" with amd cards?

The game runs in OpenGL, that should say enough. It is also designed with exclusively geforces in mind, such is the will of id software (and has been even prior to Doom 3's release).

 

[Sharps97]

Just thought I'd add a few thoughts aside from the technical discussions going on in here.

As a note my experience is based on playing the game on an i7 2600k @ 4.3 Ghz, 8 GB RAM, SSD HD, 6950 2 GB @ stock speeds with crossfire disabled on Win 7 64-bit.

On launch day I had the same texture issues all other ATI users had due to the busted driver update. That was quickly addressed and use of the Rage configuration file settings resolved all major issues I was experiencing.

When the first patch released, I wound up with significant stuttering. Deleting the Rage configuration file solve this problem and I haven seen texture pop since...

As for the game itself, I found it to be enjoyable. I spent time going through all of the side quests and most of the races. Consequently my first run through took about 18 hours, which I consider to be a fair amount of time for a game like this.

I enjoyed the pace at which I was able to find and upgrade weapons and armor. I like the monetary aspect of the game, having to purchase ammunition made it feel more meaningful.

I'd also felt comfortable with the overall size of the world, coincidentally probably the best visuals in the game come from driving around. Moving along at a solid 60 fps clip certainly has its perks.

What I didn't like - the game is good, but it is not $60 good for the quality of the finished product. It felt like a cheap port due to the texture quality issues and significant launch day bugs. The ending was frankly horrendous, it felt like they just stopped when they hit a certain milestone and sent it out the door. Again, an "incomplete" product is not worth $60.

I also found it puzzling that the engine "breaks" with more than 4x AF, though this is probably a trade-off to ensure the frame rate stays steady. Still, I initially thought those grid lines were part of mega texturing, until I happened to change a setting and the problem went away.

Speaking of mega texture, feels like this is a solution in need of a problem. Seriously, what is wrong with taking a big source texture, dividing into smaller "chunks", and the re-tiling the parts back together again? The basic concept goes back to the first Unreal engine. So do animated skyboxes...

Not sure exactly what problem JC was really trying to solve, but I don't think this was his crowning technical achievement.

 

[samuelmorris]

It breaks beyond 4xAA as well it seems, in addition to 4xAF... I suspect I'll give the game a try though

 

[xorbe]

Speaking of mega texture, feels like this is a solution in need of a problem. Seriously, what is wrong with taking a big source texture, dividing into smaller "chunks", and the re-tiling the parts back together again?

I thought mega-texture just referred to a ton of unique textures in this case. Not that the textures themselves were abnormally large as sent to the video card.

 

[IAMEVIL]

I am enjoying the game overall. Not having any texture pop in or poor performance either on my ATI card. Sure they screwed up pretty badly for PC and some textures are plain bad. But technicals aside the overall visuals and atmosphere are top notch. There are so many areas that looks like pure art. Carefully handcrafted and detailed compared to other titles generic titles that has boring levels made from the same old bunch of game assets and textures thrown in. It really shows how much time and creative effort they put in to generate this kind of look they want. In view of this, I don't think this game deserve the kind of bad rap it has been getting.

 

[kcthebrewer]

There is a picture of John Carmac drinking some liquid substance from a wine glass with the rest of the id software team at launch of the game. They celebrated way too soon.

Really? http://beefjack.com/news/rage-xbox-360-game-sales-figures/

"It’s been revealed that id Software’s latest, Rage, sold almost half a million copies in its opening week for Xbox 360 alone. The game – the company’s first new IP since Quake and its first in-house development since Doom 3 – received strong but not exceptional reviews and scores, with the Xbox 360 version currently sitting on an 82 Metacritic rating, and BeefJack’s own review awarding 7.3 out of 10.

On PlayStation 3, around quarter of a million people took home a copy. Fewer than 60,000 players picked the game up on PC in its opening week – perhaps, in part, due to the widely-reported technical problems that made the game unplayable for many until a later patch was released."

Just the first week sales:
Xbox 360 - ~500k sold
PS3 - ~250k sold
PC - ~60k sold

I sure as hell am not defending them but god damn.

Also, just 1 rage torrent has almost 9k pc users downloading it right this second. Thats over 10% of the actual pc sales...

 

[Lord_Exodia]

Really? http://beefjack.com/news/rage-xbox-360-game-sales-figures/

"It’s been revealed that id Software’s latest, Rage, sold almost half a million copies in its opening week for Xbox 360 alone. The game – the company’s first new IP since Quake and its first in-house development since Doom 3 – received strong but not exceptional reviews and scores, with the Xbox 360 version currently sitting on an 82 Metacritic rating, and BeefJack’s own review awarding 7.3 out of 10.

On PlayStation 3, around quarter of a million people took home a copy. Fewer than 60,000 players picked the game up on PC in its opening week – perhaps, in part, due to the widely-reported technical problems that made the game unplayable for many until a later patch was released."

Just the first week sales:
Xbox 360 - ~500k sold
PS3 - ~250k sold
PC - ~60k sold

I sure as hell am not defending them but god damn.

Also, just 1 rage torrent has almost 9k pc users downloading it right this second. Thats over 10% of the actual pc sales...

The torrent to sale ratio is horrible. I'm worried about PC gaming and I hope that this is because of the bad press the game is getting. If that happens to developers who pour their heart and soul into a game then to be honest I can't blame developers for jumping ship. PC gamers are killing PC gaming. Not everyone is guilty but damn.

 

[kcthebrewer]

The torrent to sale ratio is horrible.

Unfortunately

That is just 1 specific torrent (not anywhere close to all of them) and the current number of people downloading it right this second not an overall. I wouldn't doubt that it has over 75% piracy

 

[Lord_Exodia]

You don't understand, that is just 1 specific torrent (not anywhere close to all of them) and the current number of people downloading it right this second not an overall. I wouldn't doubt that it has over 75% piracy.

Yeah I figured as much. There are many torrent sites and many torrents of each game/movie/file. In that instance alone it's 15% piracy. I really hope this is because of the bad press and spit in the face many including myself feel id did by releasing the game in it's current form for the pc. Developers who pour their heart into their game and give pc gamers what they deserve, definitely don't deserve this.

 

[Killa|3yte]

Having played both RAGE and Crysis 2, I thought that [H]'s reaction to Crysis 2 was a bit harsh. Sure, the textures were not as crisp as the original's, but the game still looked great on PC overall, maybe even cutting edge.

RAGE, on the other hand, was a huge disappointment for me. id tech 5 brings absolutely nothing new to the table, and while the tech behind MegaTexture may be good on paper, it seems to have been a bad idea in retrospect. Did you guys play the Battlefield 3 beta? That's how a 2011 game is supposed to look, and I never once thought to myself "if only the textures didn't tile". Oh, and BF3 is cross platform, so apparently it can be done! I think JC's comments about missing design points is a bunch of garbage.

At any rate, I can't even remember what we were upset about RE: Crysis 2 after having experienced RAGE.

 

[xcalibur2k]

The grid lines you guys got in game are artifacts from forcing Anisotropic filtering in driver.
The maximum the engine can support is 4x aniso.
I had been getting the same artifacts after forcing settings in NV Inspector. The game looks much better minus the grid lines.

 

[samuelmorris]

Unfortunately

That is just 1 specific torrent (not anywhere close to all of them) and the current number of people downloading it right this second not an overall. I wouldn't doubt that it has over 75% piracy

You have to remember though, all these people pirating the game are not necessarily people that would buy the game if the option to pirate it did not exist. Granted, there are a lot of people out there that are perfectly able to pay for the game, and get enjoyment out of the pirate version and therefore should be buying it. However, there are also many others that would not be buying the game regardless - so using number of pirate downloads as a measure of lost revenue is a fallacy. This situation is even worse for music and film, games get a relatively easy ride (because often [not always] they're more deserving of the price they set). A lot of it has to do with pricing point - people who still wouldn't buy the game regardless at full price could still be likely to buy it with a price drop - Valve software's survey with game sales discovered that every time you drop the price from 100% MSRP, to 75%, to 50% and even down to 25% - the sales increase is so large, you make a higher gross income every time - with essentially no per-unit cost with downloadable games, this is a no-brainer.

 

[MrWizard6600]

So, can somebody clear this up for me:

Why not do the texture scaling on the fly anyways? You've got the matrix that describes its location, so why not just take the determinate (which will function as a distance) and divide a texture sampling rate by it? Is the problem really that your textures cant fit in typically about a gig of video memory?

 

[Gorankar]

So, can somebody clear this up for me:

Why not do the texture scaling on the fly anyways? You've got the matrix that describes its location, so why not just take the determinate (which will function as a distance) and divide a texture sampling rate by it? Is the problem really that your textures cant fit in typically about a gig of video memory?

Think console, not PC.

 

[badpool]

But you have to ask why so many games use the same engines. I'm not arguing the fact that it makes a lot of sense from a purely business perspective to keep cranking out Modern Warfare games (as just one example) on an engine that has barely advanced at all in years. There's still a lot of money to be made without needing to invest in new technology. I get it.

I simply believe that an alternative business strategy that could be just as, if not more successful than that, would be to actually make that investment in furthering the tech, and spurring the entire industry forward at the same time. I mean instead of needing to replace my 360 on three separate occasions now (because they keep dying), just to stream Netflix on it at this point... I'd much rather have been on my second Xbox 720 at this point and be playing games on it for the past 2 years that look just as good if not better than BF3... while also playing games on my PC that would make PC BF3 look like... well, release day RAGE being played through VNC on my old Droid X.

Cool. I get it. I believe there will always be cutting-edge games on PC, just not many of them. Crysis was one, and BF3 (so far) looks to be a nice step up. One thing I've learned, where there is hardware, there are developers willing to take advantage of it. The only question is "how many?".

 

[badpool]

The lowest common denominator for PCs would be integrated graphics. There are plenty of games that won't run on integrated graphics.

BF3 won't run on XP.

Exactly. And why? Because we have consoles setting the bar higher than that. Without this massive market with DX9-level GPUs and 3GHz CPUs, developers would likely have to cater to even lower specs in order to meet sales expectations.

 

[badpool]

Unfortunately

That is just 1 specific torrent (not anywhere close to all of them) and the current number of people downloading it right this second not an overall. I wouldn't doubt that it has over 75% piracy

Remember, a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. Still, the piracy is very disappointing.

 

[kcthebrewer]

You have to remember though, all these people pirating the game are not necessarily people that would buy the game if the option to pirate it did not exist.

This is true. I was just pointing out that to id, as a developer, PC gamers are doing everything in their power to push them to develop only for consoles. Yes console players do pirate - but the sales to piracy level of console games is no where even close to pc. In addition, the fact that less than 10% of overall sales are for the pc (id was pretty sure sales would be equal between pc and consoles - http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/...-will-be-split-evenly-on-consoles-and-pc.aspx ), it makes a strong argument against taking the time to develop it to work with the pc at all. If they take the time to release a high def patch for the pc there is no reason other than their love of pc gamers because it really makes no financial sense from a business standpoint.

 

[samuelmorris]

Thing is though, I think I'm fairly safe in saying PC game buyers are a lot more discerning than console game buyers - if the PC version had not been a sack of aids, a lot more people would have bought it, and it would have been more successful.

 

[crashbox]

ive said this a couple of times.... the only developer left that still holds true for us pc gamers is Blizzard

 

[samuelmorris]

Valve?

 

[kcthebrewer]

Valve has been making ports since HL2 (Source engine was designed to be multi-platform). And Blizzard is moving to consoles (Diablo 3). Heck even PC exclusives (such as the Witcher 2) are getting ported to consoles. There is just too much money for a developer not to do it. Really the only genre that doesn't work on consoles right now is RTS and that is just an official keyboard/mouse implementation away.

This isn't about pc gaming dying. It is just that developers want to make money so they are going to make games that do so. Unfortunately, for the most part, it is at the expense of pc gamers that this is being done.

 

[samuelmorris]

Just because they are not PC-exclusive does not mean that they are not PC games developers at heart. Valve have always gone from the PC-down approach, rather than the console-up approach id have used here. Hence, I support Valve software as much as I can. Very few companies do I own almost their entire catalog of, but Valve is one of them.

 

[Zero82z]

(Source engine was designed to be multi-platform)

No, it wasn't. The first console version of HL2 was released a year after the PC version, and it wasn't even ported by Valve.

 

[kcthebrewer]

No, it wasn't. The first console version of HL2 was released a year after the PC version, and it wasn't even ported by Valve.

Sorry I meant HL2 Ep 2 and quoting from wiki because I did not have a specific date - In 2007 Valve created the Xbox 360 release of The Orange Box in-house, and support for the console, unlike support for the PlayStation 3, is fully integrated into the main engine codeline. It includes asset converters, cross-platform play and Xbox Live integration.[22] Program code can be ported from PC to Xbox 360 simply by recompiling it.

 

[samuelmorris]

Program code can be ported from PC to Xbox 360

Note which way round it is. This is acceptable. The reverse? not so much.

 

[kcthebrewer]

Note which way round it is. This is acceptable. The reverse? not so much.

So you are fine with a developer making a sub standard (graphically) game for pc because of console limitations and then recompiling it for consoles? I personally am not 'ok' with it but that is all that is available currently (there are exceptions such as metro). I am not against Valve, I am actually a large supported of them, but they haven't attempted to push forward pc gaming since they implemented HDR into the source engine back in 2005.

 

[samuelmorris]

Just because a game is also released on consoles doesn't mean the PC version is crippled because of it. If the game is developed first on the PC, this is rarely the case - PC gamers are primarily only subject to console limitations if the game is developed for the consoles first.

 

[kcthebrewer]

Just because a game is also released on consoles doesn't mean the PC version is crippled because of it.

Unfortunately it is more of an exception than a rule. I can't even name a recent game (that was released on PC and consoles at the same time) that I am positive wasn't held back from its full potential on pc because of consoles except for indie games. There is always a compromise during development.

Once new consoles are released (including the new Nintendo one) this should change for the better extremely quickly.