Comments on: Id Talk Tech 5 At Siggraph

By: Kakksakkamaddafakka

Kakksakkamaddafakka — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 17:07:29 +0000

Oblivion was awesome? Are you people on acid?

About PC gaming being dead. Good riddance, I say. The part dying right now is the part I couldn’t care less about. Who cares if we stop getting the GoW-ports or whatever other shoddy games-for-kids that are out there. I’m not interested. If I want to play something while not using my brain I’ll fire up a 2D fighter, on my console; or I’ll play a racing game — yes, on my console. But gaming can be so much more, and it continues to be, in other forms. Let the braindead kids have the consoles, and let the rest of us revel in the new golden age of adventures. In the increasingly awesome indie movement. Generally, in games worth playing.

Fuck consoles, I say. Fuck them right in the ass. PC gaming is dead, long live PC gaming!

By: Bobby

Bobby — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 07:18:36 +0000

Regarding howard’s initial question: search for a document by hugh hoppe (I think) about clipmaps, it’s another virtual texture variant very close to carmack’s megatexture.

But basically it’s really an abstraction for texture addressing. Instead of the engine considering all the textures and materials as being in various files or produced by various algorithms it considers it all as a gigantic texture, and meshes simply store coordinates to this texture, and file loaders and texture generators are instructed to write to this texture.

The trick is, you never need to have a gigantic texture in memory, you’ll never see it whole because your resolution never is as high as the texture’s. when you’re far from it you’ll only see the coarser mipmaps, when you’re close you’ll only see tiny bits of the gigantically detailed mipmaps. So for each level of detail you only keep what you need in memory, and it turns out it’s more reasonably-sized.

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:12:05 +0000

I’m a complete sucker for open world games, so this looks intriguing. Here’s hoping it’s at least as entertaining as Far Cry 2.

By: Robin

Robin — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 02:04:56 +0000

@Radiant

“/Another/ shooty huge world rpg?”

It’s not an RPG.

“Even without the rpg-ness is the shooty and drivey going to be as fun and varied as say…Far Cry 2?”

Nearly every id game has shown technical advances allow for the implementation of new gameplay ideas, and unless Rage’s environment is a non-interactive skybox to a ratio that even Epic would blush at, it’s going to be considerably better realised than Far Cry 2′s. Not meaning that it’ll just look prettier (although atmosphere and variety will no doubt be greatly enhanced over games that use repeating textures*), but also allowing a more seamless, organic, richer sandbox. We’ve seen nothing to inform either way of the game structure, shooting or driving. However it works, rest assured a vocal minority will complain that it’s not enough like HL2 or Halo, or both. If it has a Doom-grade shotgun and lets you blast mutants to chunky bits, that will be a good start at least.

*With the possible exception of Stalker, which used sheer brute force.

By: Biz

Biz — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:18:38 +0000

game should be fun as long as they try to make it like their own games instead of like games that a different audience likes (half life 2, fallout 3, call of duty 4, etc.)

those other studios are much better at making games with bad shooting elements that cater to a huge mass of gamers. id should let id do shooting. they are the kings there.

By: joeblo

joeblo — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 18:19:32 +0000

that picture reminds me of the game full throttle, when you go down into the cave… off the highway

By: Nalano

Nalano — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 17:26:39 +0000

@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.

By: CMaster

CMaster — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:03:21 +0000

@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.

By: Radiant

Radiant — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:18:44 +0000

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?

By: Radiant

Radiant — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:12:54 +0000

@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.

By: Novotny

Novotny — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:33:16 +0000

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.

By: Andy``

Andy`` — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:10:39 +0000

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 :(