Via Shacknews, we see some new shots of Rage from SIGGRAPH 2009, where a talk given by id Software senior programmer J.M.P. van Waveren included a whole bunch of stuff about the “virtual texturing” in the new engine. There’s a handful of environment shots on there, and they look incredimentary. This could well be the next game you build a new PC for. The full PDF is here.
Oh, and in case you’ve not seen it, there’s a big old Rage teaser site here.
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When did this Games=Story attitude appear? Since when has story been a crucial part of the gaming landscape? Sure, games can do story magnificently and many of my favourite games are very story heavy – but that doesn’t mean that games must all have a compelling story, or even should. Let’s let id do what they want to do, and see what they come up with.
“Doom 3 was bad … Doom was Doom, Quake was brilliant, Quake 2 was okay, Quake III was sensationally good”
Agreed. And to note:
Doom 1 & 2 = virtually no story
Quake = no story
Quake 2 = some story
Quake 3 = no story
Doom 3 = some story
I like games with story and empathy, the Half-Lives and Grim Fandangos and Fallouts. But I like even more when developers know what they do best, and focus on making a great game their own way. ID caters to a very specific niche, and to expect them to do differently is naive.
I only played the opening section of Doom 3, but it’s Half-Life/System Shock 2 style of starting with no fighting but lots of ominous dialog and audio recordings bored me silly. Why wasn’t I shooting monsters within seconds of booting up the game? Because of all you “story and empathy not graphics and gameplay” people.
@Paul
The problem isn’t when a game has little to no story, it’s when it tries to force a shitty story down out throats.
YES, YES, I GET IT. MR. SPACE MARINE IS VERY UPSET ABOUT THE DEMONS.
Hmmm … wish we still had the edit function, that last sentence of mine reads more antagonistic than I intended. It also was less focused on any specific person in this thread, and more at the ” today’s gamers” that Maykael noted Carmack needs to placate.
This article was fascinating.
So fascinating, in fact, that I am quite mortified by the iD-bashing antics within this thread.
It makes me sad.
RPS should probably not post things like this. Its not their strong point, and they don’t have the background to evaluate it. In this case, there’s really nothing new presented here. Wikipedia suggests id Tech 5 has fully dynamic world content, rendering improvements, and better tools, but these aren’t discussed in this PDF.
Apologies for the rant. I didn’t sleep much last night.
I’ve skimmed through the presentation, and while it’s all technically sound as usual per id Software, it’s also terribly boringly predictable. I’m afraid that since rocketry has overtaken games as Carmack’s primary interest, that’s where his brainpower is focused and all his best ideas will be. Van Waveren & co are clearly up to the task of executing this, but there is no technological vision here, only just keeping up with hardware trends and development costs.
Virtual texture management is a great technology, but I think using pre-authored fully unique texturing everywhere was a bad decision. ETQW maps were very big (3.15 GB for the original set of 12), and while community made maps eventually came around, it was too little too late, and too much to download when you just want to jump into a game. I’m sure it is great for artist productivity and keeping down the cost of high fidelity content, but it really hurts when your multiplayer community is locked into a 12-map base set for so long.
The worst part of it was that the unique texturing didn’t really stand out at all in ETQW (I didn’t play Quake 4). It might as well have been repeating or run-time blended textures for all the difference it made to the game look. The consistently bland color palette didn’t help either. The size tradeoff is just too extreme for the art quality, and it ultimately made little difference. I hope id can top Splash Damage and overcome this trend with RAGE, but I’m not optimistic.
To make a pure numbers comparison, how many games used id Tech 4? Wikipedia lists Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey, ETQW, and the upcoming Wolfenstein and Brink, and there may well be others unannounced. To contrast, Epic’s Unreal Engine 3+ has a gazillion licensees. id is no longer a lead technology driver, mainstream license leader, top game seller, or even an independent now. I definitely appreciate that they want to focus on their own games, but it saddens me to see such a fundamental favorite fall by the wayside.
Procedural content with authored details or hand picked generation functions are a much better direction for the industry to go in. Spore (gameplay aside) aptly demonstrates that this can succeed. This will be even more important as downloads replace physical distribution: will anyone want to download a 100GB or 1TB game soon? Indie devs especially can not afford to follow such a trend, neither for download sizes nor the cost of content creation. Generative content is still the future (and when we’re lucky, sometimes it succeeds in the present).
The top of my content technology wishlist is physically modeled processes where the shapes and textures are all really just side effects of how the models are created (their engineering, materials, history of interactions, etc). This ultimately requires a move towards worlds modeled as working systems rather than “man behind the curtain” facades and trickery. Physics in games does not replace game design, but it will significantly augment development when it matures (which is another huge topic).
Oops: Quake 4 predates the Megatexture tech anyway, so I guess it did first appear in Quake Wars. I just presumed it was there since I didn’t play Q4.
We can post whatever we darn well like, mister man. If it’s something we’re interested in, we do.
Doom3 was in fact a game where they hyped the “game” part of it considerably. There was plenty of talk about the “professional” writer they had hired for the story, how they were concentrating so much on building atmosphere, etc. I bought it because the first demo way back at that MacWorld keynote blew my mind, and I had to see how it all turned out. The tech delivered on its promises, the rest did not. (Didn’t help that HL2 was right there waiting to blow it away either.)
Howard is right, incidentally, in that it was the Doom3 engine that had the “Ultra” settings that couldn’t be played on the hardware at time of release.
This past winter I played through Quake 2 and Quake 4 again. I have to say that 2 was way more fun. Though the story/characters/setting were way more developed in 4, none of those elements were all that good, and they certainly weren’t compelling enough (IMO) to make up for gameplay that had become much more plodding compared to its predecessor (again, IMO, your mileage, etc.). I know that Q4 wasn’t id’s doing, but given Doom3 as another example, I would much rather see them sticking to what they do best – glorious tech-demo action-fests with little to no brains. Valve and others will be around to deliver the brilliant atmosphere, I’m happy with id providing eye-candy and rocket launchers.
Lucas: Besides, if I hadn’t posted it, you wouldn’t have been able to share your own analysis with us.
So, uh, duh.
Yeah, it’s sad when a company like id Software (which name most here don’t even write correctly) gets bashed, a company that’s done more for modern PC gaming than any other, pushed so many boundaries, and practically made PC gaming what it is today. And all the way till now staying independent, now they’ve too succumbed to the financial state of the gaming industry.
Most people who’s on the too-much-focus-on-graphics train don’t know how a game is built and no nothing of technology, the major reason for pushing gaming technology isn’t just to make it look pretty or realistic, the point is creating a believeable gaming environment. And don’t just think shiny textures, think physics, and then think interactivity.
As for story, I don’t know how you kids today play your games, but if it was anything like when I was a kid, it wasn’t anything like reading a book, and it sure as shit wasn’t anything like watching (that’s right, not playing) a game like Metal Gear Solid. Playing a game, I want to immersed, and to be that I need to actually play, if I want to read, I’ll pick up a book, if I want to just watch, I’ll put on a movie.
There’s all types of games, and the games I’ve personally had the most fun with is the kinds id Software has made, where you need to be involed and focused all the time while playing, you need to be in the zone, and the last thing you’re thinking about then is story.
Oh, and car games. 100% focus mode, can’t make even one bad corner or you’ll loose the race.
@ Jim “lollo” Rossignol: “Spending £2000 on a PC would be awesome”
It’s not because then a month later NEW COMPUTER THING X comes out and you just think “If only I’d waited a month”. And then you keep spending because you think “Well I built it to be a cutting edge gaming PC so I need to keep it that way” and then it becomes a bottomless money sink and no matter how good the performance is you’ll never be happy with it.
Or maybe that’s just me…
“the point is creating a believeable gaming environment.”
And that’s why I criticised Doom 3 pudding faces.
“And don’t just think shiny textures, think physics, and then think interactivity.”
Doom 3 originally did absolutely with its physics. There weren’t even any Max Payne 2 style cool explosions. They slapped on a gravity gun in a later expansion only after seeing HL2’s coolness.
“need to actually play, if I want to read, I’ll pick up a book”
Oh right, since it’s impossible to tell a story or convey emotion without getting the player to read pages of text.
I give up.
P.
“which name most here don’t even write correctly”
probably due to not really caring enough to bother than anything else.
Mr. P, it looks like you think my comments regarding graphics/story were about Doom 3, they were not, they were in fact comments about games in general.
BTW: Physics in a game goes beyond the mere throwing, stacking and movement of crates as you speak so highly of in regards to HL2.
l1ddl3monkey: I was being sarcastic. Spending £2000 on a PC would be ludicrous.
Also: the PC tech market has slowed enormously, so the “new thing each month” factor is no longer true. We’ve barely had any significant shift in tech for two years.
(Although I guess that could change with DX11 incoming, or if games like Rage take advantage of enormo-gfx cards.)
My PC cost about £600 over 2 years ago and it is, with the addition of another 2 gig of ram, still able to run EVERY single game out now at maximum details (well, bar ARMA2 but hey).
This myth, this fantasy that a good gaming rig is a continuous technology race is WRONG.
“Oh right, since it’s impossible to tell a story or convey emotion without getting the player to read pages of text.”
Do you mean like Metal Gear Solid then, where they have you sit through hours of subtitled radio chatter, or watch 10 hours of cut-scenes? Oh yeah, that’s much better.
“Do you mean like Metal Gear Solid then, where they have you sit through hours of subtitled radio chatter, or watch 10 hours of cut-scenes? Oh yeah, that’s much better”#
Never played MGS so can’t comment specifically, but lengthy cutscenes are just as bad in my mind.
P.
So which games do you have in mind that’s real good at telling a story then? Without interfering with the actual, you know, playing.
The idea behind virtual texturing is, that you only load in the parts of the texture you need, at the detail level you need. So if something is very far in the distance, or very small on screen, you only load a low resolution version of the texture, so that it doesn’t take up much memory.
With this, they can put as much detail as they want on their textures, and it won’t fill up the memory, because they only actually load that detail when it is needed. And since you only have so many pixels on screen, you can calculate that you will never need more than X texture memory, no matter how large the textures actually are.
Another amazing thing is, that they also want to use a similar for geometry. Here is a video demonstating the tech. This currently only works for static geometry, which isn’t animated or moving. But this means, that you can have as complex geometry as you want. Here is a video showing infinite rows of statues running in real time. The graphics card only renders all of those statues at the level of detail that is needed, so you could make them as complex as you want, and it simply wouldn’t matter.
Once this tech is introduced (id tech 6 probably) the race for better graphics cards is almost over. The only unsolved problem after that will probably be real-time global illumination, to get realistic lighting. But that isn’t too far in the future, either. And then you will buy your last graphics card ever, because at that point you can render anything you want, with lighting that is indistinguishable from real life. (Obviously you won’t really buy your last graphics card ever. Once you can render realistically in real time, they will need more power to compute fluid physics and hair physics and stuff. It will never end.)
Here is my opinion, all is true:
Games are 90% about technology and 10% art.
Games are 10% about technology and 90% art. [2]
A good game is 90% eyecandy, 10% braincandy.
A good game is 10% eyecandy, 90% braincandy.[2]
Unreal Engine is the best engine out here.
Unreal Engine is the worst engine out here[1]
id Software is the lead of the technologies on gamming Engines.
Epic Games (unreal) are the lead of technologies on gamming Engines. [3]
A game is not about technology.
A videogame is video game.
Without technology, theres no videogames.
Technology is a habilitator. It define what is possible.[4]
Art is a habilitator. It define what is posisible.
Technology made dreams possible.
Art made dreams.
[1] I don’t like it. I want technology to move forward. Because technology define what is possible.
[2] It may varie from game to game. But saying 50% is probably the wrong image, is not usefull.
[3] id Software is still respected, but most people seems to chose Unreal for his games.
[4] Everyone that think graphics advances are not important is wrong. Better graphics able things where imposible before.
[*] I don’t know if the right english word is “habilitator”, if that word exist in english. It seems “facilitator” exist, but is just “facilite” it. A habilitator “make things possible what where imposible before”. Graphics are habilitators.
@wien:
I think your comment is a bit misaimed ;) If you look above the comment of mine you replied to, my first comment was squeeing about iD’s SIGGRAPH talk from 2008. Which, as Sagan expanded on, is a genuinely very interesting talk, since “gigavoxel” rendering might be The Future of graphics.
Just thought I’d come to id’s defence a tad and and paste the following from Wikipedia:
“Although Half-Life 2 was the first game released to feature a gravity gun, id Software had previously conceived a similar idea during the development of the earlier title Doom 3. id Software designer Matt Hooper noted that “we actually used it as a tool throughout development where we’d grab physics objects and place them around the world”. The tool was used to create “damaged” rooms in Doom 3; instead of constructing a ruined room, the designers would code a pristine room and use the device to “damage” it realistically. “
Also, @tei:
The word you want is “enabler”.
I don’t think it’s about “hating graphics”. That’s a ludicrous concept. What i lament is the emphasis on graphics.
When an ancient beardy game like Thief still stands out for doing more interesting things with audio in the gameplay space than modern titles, something is very wrong.
Frankly, graphics are such artifacts of time. Whatever tech5 does now will be meh in 5 years. Shodan’s (and others) voice effects in Shock 2 are still fantastic and will continue to be so.
Hell, go play Undying again. That game has an absolutely stellar presentation and 90% of it is sound. Dead Space too will stand out for its sound work. Bioshock as well.
It seems ridiculous to talk about sound in an IDtech related post, but on the topic of graphics whoring, they are at the vanguard, and i would love to hear something about engines that offer new and exciting things to DO rather than potentially prettier assets to look at.
Yes, but is the game fun?
They certainly look stunning
Tech5 does look awesome, but I’m still in awe of Project Offset: http://www.projectoffset.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=58&Itemid=12
@oceanclub
“they get excited about the tech, the actual _game_ – that is, setting/plot – seem to come across as an afterthought.”
If you think the setting/plot is the ‘point’ of computer games you’re doing it horribly wrong. id’s games are about providing experiences. Doom3 is what it was intended to be – a spooky ghost train, not a two-fisted version of System Shock.
Half-Life and its sequels really made it clear that a lot of PC gamers just want a passive story with a win button. No strategic thought, no challenge, no replayability. I assume there’s a lot of overlap with the people who are astonished each time Nintendo bring out a new Zelda game and it’s still not an Elder Scrolls clone.
I get tired of the cliched id-bashing. The company has taken some astonishing risks over the years. They could’ve just ‘done a Capcom’ and kept pumping out Doom level packs, but instead they basically laid out the blueprint for modern PC games with Quake. Even ETQW, which was mired in various problems and Carmack seems to view as a damp squib, is a really fun game which wouldn’t have been possible without the technical backing and the willingness to experiment with such a risky and ambitious design.
@Robin:
I sort-of-agree, with the caveat that their initial plan for Quake was much more risky (and much more interesting), and that whilst Doom 3 was “what it was intended to be”, that thing wasn’t actually a) what people wanted, b) as good as it could have been at what it was trying to do (partly because the human models were horrible, and partly because it got too predictable).
Commander Keen was awesome. Definitely good gameplay and engaging story there.
Quake 3 – still the best online fps ever!
You see the sand dunes piled up to that building.
I want to take my car over that dune and have the sand slip down the dune and change it’s profile.
Like real sand.
As pretty as it looks standing still that sand dune is probably still a static boxy obstacle as opposed to..you know… sand.
And I’m ALREADY bored about Rage.
I race, I shoot and what else? Interact? Id and story interaction; great pedigree. [sarcasm]
You shoot and race at the same time?
And build devices. And mind control people with crossbows. Or so says this: http://www.shacknews.com/featuredarticle.x?id=1167
I like to look at beautiful images and marvel at technology as much as the next man, but speaking of graphics fidelity as the most important part of gaming seems absurd.
If you get so disturbed that it detracts from your gaming experience by how the pixel shaders on a nearby rhododendron don’t reflect light in a natural way or that water physics don’t match those in the real world then maybe you should take up a hobby that facilitates those needs, like film making or photography.
Surely the important thing in gaming is that the game part of it is fun, whether that’s brain gymnastics, exploring an environment, a story or blowing shit up. Rendering improvements are only valuable in terms of game play when they let you do and experience new and exciting things, obviously marvelling at the gorgeous scenery counts as such, but claiming it’s the most fundamental part of gaming as a whole is pure silly.
After twenty years, I’m done building a new PC just for a game and there are not enough quality PC games any longer to really focus on it. I feel awful for saying that. It eats my soul to say it… but the fact is, PC gaming is pretty much dead. Less variety, poor ports from console-first products… I probably wouldn’t even build a new box for a Civilization game if it required it. I’ve simply given up and faced the facts.
@no I feel exactly the same way.
My pc is in need of an upgrade but I can buy 2 ps3s and games or 3 360s for the same cost.
And the thing with the consoles is that any game I buy I KNOW will look like the screenshots when I stick it in the machine.
Unless the game comes free with a new gfx card I don’t see the point.
The point is that games on the PC have never been about graphics. They’ve been about the fact that everyone can make and play them, about the fact that games STARTED here, and about the fact that you learn useful stuff while playing. Console users like trash, and with the rise of consoles we’ve seen a rise in trash. The way out isn’t to play the same trash console games but on the PC, it’s to play good games, and these are only available on the PC.
@No
While I’ve diligently upgraded my computers over the years, I’ve never did a major overhaul just for one game. Whatever game that would be just screams “tech demo,” and considering we’re talking an id software game, the klaxons: they are a-ringing.
Indeed, it sounds like you’re burned out to gaming. You’ve progressed, games stayed (largely) the same. Proof that, eventually, one can outgrow the industry.
I have to concur that it seems gaming evolution has stagnated in key areas. We’re seeing better physics in gameplay, but where’s the better AI? Better writing? Better characterization? I’d certainly like to see better thinking from NPCs other than hiding behind the nearest low wall/barrel. I long for better people to interact with than Moira Brown.
Then again, are Minsc or Manny Calavera more compelling characters because they were better written or because they came first, before we became jaded?
PC-specific games have diminished, true, but I’m far from giving up on PC gaming because of a few shoddy ports. Partly it’s the way I play games: adding my own soundtracks, taking screenshots or Fraps movies, alt-tabbing out to talk to people on IM, or browse the web. Games are just another desktop information feed – so many of which are cut off from me at a console.
I’m in the slightly advantageous position of having a high end gaming PC and the current-gen consoles, and there’s a few games I sit down at the 360 to play, but on the whole I play games on a PC, where the image fidelity is better, where I have access to more options, and where there’s always some patch, mod, app, or extra to make the experience a little more entertaining.
Not to mention RTS games.
And yes, I do take great pleasure in high end visuals. The current gen consoles can’t produce something like Stalker: Clear Sky at maximal settings, and I expect they’ll look pretty shonky next to a high end PC running Rage, too. HD is, after all, low-res on a PC.
Just look at Pitchford on Borderlands: it’ll look better, and mouse-keyboard is the way to play an FPS. I know where I’ll be playing it. And given the money I’ve saved on cheap PC games over the years, next to console price-gouging, well, a £100 3D card is okay.
I have a rule: I won’t buy hardware to play just one game. I wait for three that need it, and then I don’t spend more on each component than 100 1996 dollars (inflation adjust).
This goes for consoles- every once in a while, my PC falls a bit behind and I’m waiting for new releases. So then I spent ~$150 on a console, buy a bunch of new-to-me games for $10 each, and enjoy myself.
You really needn’t spend that much money on a gaming PC these days – and as Jim points out, you save a lot in cheaper games. Of course, games that are desigend around a controller don’t feel quite right on PC. BUt then I can’t imagine many statergy games, turn based or RTS that feel right on most consoles.
On the other subject, I’m in the (unusal) position of not having liked any id games other than the second Commander Keen trilogy (and to a lesser extent Keen Dreams). All their shooters left me pretty cold. However I do still admire Carmack’s ability and found Masters of Doom a fascinating book. I really hope there’s someone on Rage with a real vision and that id have the motivation and money to push it through to completion. It may again not be a game for me – but I’m sure it will be perfect for somebody.
Maybe someone knows, whatever happened to the more positive attitude toward peripheral buying (or at least, it seemed that way) that used to be around in the early 90’s? It was harder back then, since your pad or joystick wasn’t always compatible, or wasn’t always quite as good as another one, and you needed to install drivers and stuff. But now you can get an Xbox 360 controller, or an equivalent (Saitek do compatible ones, for instance), that’ll mean easier compatibility (don’t need drivers unless there are problems afaik, most games focus on X360 controller compat even if they’re not ports from consoles), and a controller that can be reused on a 360 if you have one. But it still seems as if many don’t realise if you get a controller for your PC, you’re still playing a PC game. There’s no shame in it.
What would be nice, of course, if connecting your PC to your TV could be done with a minimum of fuss, or even wirelessly. Then the “relaxing on the couch while gaming” faff can go away.
As for hardware, the problem is similar. It’s not that expensive, but half the battle is knowing what to buy. So that needs improving. The other half is knowing what to do with it afterwards if you’re not getting it built by someone else – it’s not that hard to build a PC yourself, but the first time is scary. So if component swapping, or even just the simple act of buying a PC pre-built and getting upgrades done for you, was easier if not cheaper then, you know…
It’ll never happen :(
Andy”, last night me and my mate played PES2009 with two xbox controllers on my pc. I say played, I just pressed buttons randomly and he went about scoring, but it was damn good fun.
It’s a piece of piss connecting his downstairs pc to his big mad TV, so we’ll do that maybe tonight. BTW, rFactor on a 40 inch TV is something to behold.
For now, I’m going to settle down to some ‘Highway to the Reich’ for the afternoon.
With PCs finally having an almost-standard joypad and easily connecting to big Tellies, you can take your consoles and shove them up your arse. PC’s can whip them at every turn.
@Rossignol that’s a great point.
I love the things that are routine whilst playing games on a pc that consoles aren’t even close to realising.
Where PC games shine for me is when they take advantage of the fact that games on the pc are so personal.
It’s one guy on one machine that’s tailored to him.
A console sits in the living room and tries to be all things to everyone in the house where even pausing the game ruins the enjoyment for anyone else in the room.
Talking about ports have you played Street Fighter 4 on the pc yet?
Capcom have really grasped what makes pc games special by allowing you to pretty much infinitely mod the game from movesets to clothes and soundtracks.
Whereas the core game is still fantastic on the console even tapping something as simple as a quick “gg” and giving out some playing tips is a chore.
Not to mention it runs awesomely on a laptop so I have sf4 pretty much ANYWHERE as everyone I know has a couple of usb gamepads lying around.
Back to this game; [Rage] seems to offer very little that isn’t done and done better in other older games.
/Another/ shooty huge world rpg?
Even without the rpg-ness is the shooty and drivey going to be as fun and varied as say…Far Cry 2?
Outside of the tech what else is innovating enough for me to be into this game?
@Andy – you know, I really should just go out and get a 360 controller.
Or maybe just a 360 with a duo of controllers actually, and drag the controller up to my PC when there’s a game that suits it. I still have my Gravis Gamepad after all, it’s just that PC gaming seemed to go through a phase (started round about 95 I guess) where controllers as peripherals didn’t seem important. But I guess quite a few of the indie games linked on here at least would really benefit from one.
@CMaster
“Of course, games that are desigend around a controller don’t feel quite right on PC.”
I can understand that for SF4, but a lot of the bestsellers on consoles are FPSs, which the PC does better without even trying.
@Rossignol
I certainly appreciate the fidelity, but the art direction leaves much to be desired.