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[bloodforge]

OK, now that I'm in wellspring I'm running into issues, this time with the characters in game. They keep flickering in and out like they're barely in the world. Sometimes they'll just flicker in and out and sometimes it looks like the game is flickering between two different animation states - so I'll see somebody with their arms folded flickering with another image of them arms apart. I usually get hitches around these times too.

I took out the rageconfig file but it didn't make a difference. AA settings don't matter either. Now I'm at a loss.

I think this is just a bug that is going to have to be patched to fix, does it to me as well only in Wellspring. It seems to have stopped for me after doing a few missions.

 

[subversus]

Why the fuck there is no technical thread for Rage?? Should I make one??

 

[Deleted member 17706]

I just did two hours and made it Wellspring. What an amazing looking town. It's really quite incredible. I gotta say, the visuals in this game are spectacular as long as you never stop to smell the flowers. As soon as you try to get a closer look at, well, just about anything that isn't an NPC, it all falls apart.

I hope someday we can get a high-res texture pack from id.

Anyway, the actual shooting bandits part of the game is a whole lot of fun. The second 'instance' (the garage area), had quite a few really awesome shoot outs. I'm playing on Hard and certainly glad for it.

I can't wait to play more tomorrow, but it's off to bed. I'm really happy that the new ATI drivers and the config file tweak sorted out all of the technical issues I had.

 

[MisterAnderson]

Couldn't use the 16K textures so I dropped it down to 8K. Great job, I can barely catch the pop in now. Using 850MB of VRAM, probably couldn't use the 16Ks because I only have 1.2gbs of VRAM.

I'm a tad behind on the thread's updates with texture pop-in fixes. What kind of tweaks are being done to eliminate it? (I have a GTX 580 and the game runs great aside from pop-ins on the edges of my screen; quick pop-ins but distracting nonetheless) And has there been a fix to the ugly ass green tint that I noticed in the first in-door areas of the first mutant mission?

 

[subversus]

I made the thread - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=31542381#post31542381

I hope we can discuss the game now here.

 

[pa22word]

Well then, I really enjoyed everything up to the first boss. It's a great FIRST PERSON SHOOTER. Level design has been solid, shooting feels awesome, animation is sick, etc.

 

[Deleted member 17706]

I made the thread - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=31542381#post31542381

I hope we can discuss the game now here.

It's fun to shoot and otherwise harm enemies. Right now my favorite weapons are the wingblade, the normal shotgun, and the sniper rifle. So satisfying!

With that said, I don't think megatexturing is a particularly great technology, as far as it's implemented in this game. Sure everything looks pretty amazing at a distance and the variety in the textures is second to none, but that seems to come at the cost of lacking any kind of dynamic lighting, any interactivity with objects and the environment, and any real physics to speak of. It's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

I suppose that's fine, if all you want to do is pain a pretty picture, but I think I prefer a more standard approach. If you never stop to take a close look at anything, the game is pretty damn pretty, all while running silky smooth. Definitely a great achievement, there.

 

[jaundicejuice]

I find that Rage gets off to a slow burn in the beginning where you're running errands for Hagar/Goodman, but once you've unlocked some of the preliminary gear and make your way to Wellsping things start to pick up.

 

[subversus]

It's fun to shoot and otherwise harm enemies. Right now my favorite weapons are the wingblade, the normal shotgun, and the sniper rifle. So satisfying!

With that said, I don't think megatexturing is a particularly great technology, as far as it's implemented in this game. Sure everything looks pretty amazing at a distance and the variety in the textures is second to none, but that seems to come at the cost of lacking any kind of dynamic lighting, any interactivity with objects and the environment, and any real physics to speak of. It's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors.

I suppose that's fine, if all you want to do is pain a pretty picture, but I think I prefer a more standard approach. If you never stop to take a close look at anything, the game is pretty damn pretty, all while running silky smooth. Definitely a great achievement, there.

I remember reading somewhere that Carmack didn't think that ragdoll is particularly important and some junior programmer ended up implementing it in Doom 3 in his spare time. It seems that Carmack is more about eye-candy than interactivity. His voxel virtualizaton technology won't allow full-scale desruction (as it seems for now).

as for gameplay this seems to be pretty much in line with my expectations of the game. Fun shooting, that's all. I didn't expect it to be a deep RPG or something like that.

Are there any great setpieces yet? Has somebody encountered BIG MUTANTS?

 

[54-46!]

I'm even more hyped after watching that GB quick look, the gunplay looks so goddamn satisfying - the sound, the way enemies animate when you hit them and the kickback from the weapons, good stuff.

That's all I need to see, this is an id game indeed.

 

[scitek]

Holy shit, I'm playing with a Radeon 6950 and the RAGE performance driver from AMD, and I keep getting freezing for about 4 seconds, then it moves for a second, then it freezes another 4 seconds, then moves, then freezes...one of the most annoying things I've ever seen.

 

[EvilDick34]

Mission after mission is a blast, had a great time in Dead City and now in the Shrouded mission to. I fucked myself over though because i was so immersed/looking for collectors cards that i forgot to save and i died and i had to start outside their hideout again, DANG.

 

[subversus]

Holy shit, I'm playing with a Radeon 6950 and the RAGE performance driver from AMD, and I keep getting freezing for about 4 seconds, then it moves for a second, then it freezes another 4 seconds, then moves, then freezes...one of the most annoying things I've ever seen.

.

I made the thread - http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?p=31542381#post31542381

I hope we can discuss the game now here.

 

[Doc Holliday]

Wow...What a difference new drivers made. Onething RAGE proves to me is that FPS >> IQ. I will ignore a lot of artifacts because of how smooth this thing is running. It so fucking awesome. Carmack give me Quake 5 Arena with this thing!!

 

[Claytron]

-edit- moved to performance thread.

 

[Rukes]

For those with crashing issues (namely going from the Wasteland to any sub-area, since it doesn't seem to crash when you leave a sub-area to the Wasteland):

Go right up to the door/entrance of a new area, so the "press E" prompt comes up. Quick Save. Then Load up that save, and the very second the game loads, immediately hit E to enter (or just feel free to hit E like a madman). This will probably be before most of the textures and even UI load.

Voila, the loading screen won't crash this time. Just remember you will have to keep doing this whenever you go into a doorway that goes to a loading screen FROM the Wasteland. Exiting a building or sewer to the Wasteland should work fine.

Doesn't seem to work 100% but pretty close, I have noticed a few times I still crash on a few loading screens, but this seems to be a good workaround for most.

 

[EvilDick34]

.

Dude, stop being the mod in the thread. There is nothing wrong with posting tech talk in this thread.

 

[canadian crowe]

Mechanically, this has to be the best playing shooter this gen. Everything is so smooth.

 

[elguerosinfe]

2 hours in. 360 installed: total disappointment

I bought this game for the graphics and world, not expecting much from ID in the story/gameplay department. And while the story and the gameplay are total letdowns, so are the graphics in many ways. The bigger outdoor vistas are amazing, but a lot of the up-close indoor textures are horrible and some of the minor elements like the buggy are poorly textured and animated.

Other stuff:

• The world has no scale. You drive for 10 seconds and you're in another camp; you could have just walked there in 30 seconds!

• The sound in the game is unsophisticated everything blasts out at you from a megaphone.

• The missions ALREADY seem repetitive; in just the first chunk of the game I've been told to go right back to the place I just came from do basically do the same thing.

Not done with this by any means, but first impressions are not encouraging.

 

[subversus]

Dude, stop being the mod in the thread. There is nothing wrong with posting tech talk in this thread.

I'm not trying being the mod, I'm just tired of browsing through pages of posts to find actual impressions (and make a decision if I should get the game or not).

 

[54-46!]

Dude, stop being the mod in the thread. There is nothing wrong with posting tech talk in this thread.

There are 30 pages of people discussing technical issues, let's talk about the game for a bit.

 

[JRW]

They look pretty much identical. Try to take some FRAPS screenies.
But looking good nonetheless.

Ok I made a quick .GIF comparing default Rage (no rageconfig) vs. angular graphics 8192 rageconfig.cfg settings. Things are definitely sharper with his settings (especially when they're further away in the distance).

 

[Rewmac]

Alright that's it I won't mess around with creating configs updating drivers messing around with other softwares when I can just buy it for the Xbox put it in and play it. Sure I might get lowered graphics which still beats looking at pops, freezes and crashes. Something for something. I can't believe I bought a PC and yet I'm so disappointed in PC gaming.

 

[THE-Pink-Dagger]

WTF! I keep looking for the game on digital download websites, nothing on Greenmangaming, and I saw it this morning on Direct2Drive, and here what it shows on the page (haven't seen this for another game yet): This product will be available for purchase in the United Kingdom.

Jesus christ, wtf is this, are they region locking the game or what?! (I'm in France btw). I hope they're gonna fix this shi t, or they're just pushing for every EU gamer to buy it at 50 fu cking euros on Steam (I tried to buy on D2D btw, didnt work)

 

[Rewmac]

Put these in the config file as well:

vt_maxaniso 4
image_anisotropy 4

In that order:

vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 8192
vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly 8192
vt_pageimagesizeunique 8192
vt_pageimagesizevmtr 8192
vt_maxaniso 4
vt_restart
image_anisotropy 4

Don't put it higher than 4x because seaming lines appear on the ground etc (I think even at 4x there are some very faint ones, but I am not sure) and id says megatextures aren't compatible with higher levels of AF.

Could you please upload this config file you use? Because I'm not an expert when it comes to PC gaming. I also use a radeon card will this amp that up as well? With this config how much texture popping will I see? Thanks for any kind of help.

 

[samus4ever]

Any way to select a quest on the PS3 version? I can't seem to figure out how to change quests.

 

[Hanzou]

Any way to select a quest on the PS3 version? I can't seem to figure out how to change quests.

press select and go to the quests tab, select a quest from thee.

 

[samus4ever]

press select and go to the quests tab, select a quest from thee.

I go to the quest screen. I can bring it up but I can only scroll the text of my current quest. Any special button you can press to get it to tab over right to select from the list on that page? Sorry for sounding stupid, I'm doing double duty with Rage and put 4 hours into Dark Souls tonight too.

 

[CoilShot]

There are 30 pages of people discussing technical issues, let's talk about the game for a bit.

This

 

[skullwolfgp]

If rage had sharper textures the install size would have been 30gigs or more.

I played about an hour of Rage on PC so far, and this kind of got me thinking.

I totally appreciate the iDTech5/Megatexture engine, and what it does for asset creation. I get that the file sizes are an issue with something like the 360, where you have to ship on several DVDs. And on the PS3, I understand that there are pretty severe memory and output resolution restrictions that would make anything more detailed than the current texture assets unnecessary.

But on PC, none of those restrictions really matter, save one "imaginary" restriction. I, and probably many other PC gamers, would have been totally fine with an install size of 30GB or more on PC; Hard drive space like that is cheap these days. The problem then comes down to delivering that 30+GB game to players.

That "imaginary" restriction is that PC games are still developed with DVDs in mind. Blu-ray drives are $60 on Newegg, which is probably near the relative price-point where the CD-to-DVD shift happened with PC games (around 2005, see Farcry or BF2). Digital distribution further trivializes these size restrictions. If companies like iD are building engines that are really justifying Blu-ray level storage capacities, why aren't we seeing a push toward that paradigm/medium for PC games? My guess is because most high-profile games are multiplatform PC/PS3/360 releases, so the lowest common denominator wins.

 

[Grayman]

Played the first mission and sewers on nightmare. Really liking the action so far. The sewer threw so many guys at me at once I finished with 3 bullets, and I was punching when I started!

There seems to be something to strafe jumping but the environments don't lend them shelves to it well yet and jump is no longer hold to jump immediately.

I played about an hour of Rage on PC so far, and this kind of got me thinking.

I totally appreciate the iDTech5/Megatexture engine, and what it does for asset creation. I get that the file sizes are an issue with something like the 360, where you have to ship on several DVDs. And on the PS3, I understand that there are pretty severe memory and output resolution restrictions that would make anything more detailed than the current texture assets unnecessary.

But on PC, none of those restrictions really matter, save one "imaginary" restriction. I, and probably many other PC gamers, would have been totally fine with an install size of 30GB or more on PC; Hard drive space like that is cheap these days. The problem then comes down to delivering that 30+GB game to players.

That "imaginary" restriction is that PC games are still developed with DVDs in mind. Blu-ray drives are $60 on Newegg, which is probably near the relative price-point where the CD-to-DVD shift happened with PC games (around 2005, see Farcry or BF2). Digital distribution further trivializes these size restrictions. If companies like iD are building engines that are really justifying Blu-ray level storage capacities, why aren't we seeing a push toward that paradigm/medium for PC games? My guess is because most high-profile games are multiplatform PC/PS3/360 releases, so the lowest common denominator wins.

Years ago there was talk of a blu ray for rage like maybe we will do it but I do not see it happening so soon. I think a lot of PC gamers buying games like Rage are leaving physical media behind. I don't know if blu-ray has a clear destination to every PC ever like DVD did, and even when the switch started occuring for it games came out on CD still. I think even going 1 dvd = 1/4 of a game and force people to get the rest downloaded is more likely for the next 2-3 years.

 

[TUROK]

I think people misunderstand what "Megatextures" are.


Megatexture has nothing to do with texture resolution. It's a tool that makes it infinitly easier to map textures to polygons. Normally a artist would have to paint hundreds and thousands of individual textures then one by one map it to the polygons. This is tedious and time consuming.

Megatextures is a tool created to allow the artist to bypass this by letting them paint directly on to the polygons. The entire world is one big texture for the artist to work on in real time. No need to paint a texture then map. The world is your canvas.

The only downside to this technique is the giant size of the texture. Even at low resolution the textures takes many gigs of space. If rage had sharper textures the install size would have been 30gigs or more.

Nope, you're well off the mark on this one. Megatextures has EVERYTHING to do with resolution. Familiarize yourself with the concept of virtual texturing.

 

[MisterAnderson]

So I'm confused...why wouldn't someone choose the "Crimson Elite" suit when it combines all the stats from the other suits?

Edit: Oh, it's a preorder bonus...well hmm now I kind of feel like I'd be cheating by picking the "best armor."

 

[AgentOtaku]

So Normal or Hard with first playthrough?

 

[Grayman]

on a laptop so I can't go upload my bmp screens somewhere good. what i saw as the point of megatexture is
http://steamcommunity.com/id/graysen/screenshot/595824610615824992

all those rocks on the right look very different. The very starting area had a good example of a cracked up rock too. Will have to see if this continues into areas of high action.

 

[Grayman]

My face lit up with glee when a ghost crawled around shooting when downed. It is the evolution of Quake 1 and 2's grunts with their fall and shoot attacks in certain health ranges.

So Normal or Hard with first playthrough?

Nothing seemed wrong with nightmare but I only did the tutorial mission and first sewer area.

 

[AgentOtaku]

My face lit up with glee when a ghost crawled around shooting when downed. It is the evolution of Quake 1 and 2's grunts with their fall and shoot attacks in certain health ranges.
Nothing seemed wrong with nightmare but I only did the tutorial mission and first sewer area.

thought I read/heard nightmare gets pretty brutal later on and not recommended for first playthrough.

 

[JaseC]

So Normal or Hard with first playthrough?

I'm playing through the game on Hard and I'm beginning to think I should have began on Nightmare.

 

[MisterAnderson]

So Normal or Hard with first playthrough?

I've been playing on hard and enjoying it so far. Rage's gunplay is a TON of fun, I just got to Wellspring and have been having a blast. The texture tweak in the config really helped with the texture pop-in. I still have this green tint issue though:

You can see how the colors of this room looks when I'm standing outside, and then when I move inside the doorway the tint comes in as my "eyes adjust" to the darker lighting:

And this is just like...so goddamn green it's nuts:

Surely this isn't as intended...is it? Everything else looks phenomenal aside from these random very green/shadowy areas.

 

[Rewmac]

The shadowy areas are due to the failure of the graphic engine color scale. Other than that I'm fed up with this. I spent hours here with you guys figuring out stuff and yet I decided I'm not going to bother with the PC version. I'm sad and annoyed at the same time. I bought a pretty strong rig and yet I feel I bought it for nothing, when actually I bought it to play on the PC coz of the graphics and leave to console games to console exclusives, yet I have to buy everything on one of my console. Ridiculous.

 

[Fxp]

OK, I've installed the latest RAGE performance drivers and can't get past intro CG - game stutters so much I decided to wait for some kind fix/patch from id or AMD.

 

[MazingerDUDE]

I use a SSD installed PS3, and I noticed that the SSD significantly reduces the texture pop-in.


Here're comparison videos. (sorry for the quality)


video 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJJlyZUWU0E&hd=1

HDD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsunRUJQpdc&hd=1

SSD


video 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Wjt1eCs5o&hd=1

HDD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY15YCcH7XM&hd=1

SSD


video 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4FuTq8c4E&hd=1

HDD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6fhc65C4AM&hd=1

SSD


Not sure how this will compare to fully installed 360 Rage.

 

[Wallach]

That's how it is for everyone, MisterAnderson. Why that tint is used exactly I'm not sure.

 

[Metal-Geo]

Surely this isn't as intended...is it? Everything else looks phenomenal aside from these random very green/shadowy areas.

Brink has this as well on several maps. I guess it's an id Tech # thingamajig. It can be quite ugly at times, as it kills the contrast.

 

[plagiarize]

That's how it is for everyone, MisterAnderson. Why that tint is used exactly I'm not sure.

i'm pretty sure it's intentional. colour grading for stylistic reasons. i've seen it in lots of games. it's an artistic choice, not one anyone has to like, but there you go. it's not a limitation of the engine, it's an actual a feature of the engine that lets them adjust the mood of an atmosphere. it's a pretty common feature in game engines these days.

it's a just a bit over done here, and there are spots like that office where it's a bit obvious when you go into the office that it changes to a different colour scheme for the grading.

 

[JaseC]

The dice game in Wellspring is bullshit. Initially, I won around $600 after playing it for all of about 5 minutes, but now I've been trying to win on-and-off over the past 2 hours or so as an interstice to missions with absolutely no luck.

 

[Solo]

Can't wait to get back to this tonight. The game belly flopped on day one from a technical perspective, but once I got it up and running and tweaked and starting actually PLAYING, it was hella fun.

 

[Maffis]

I use a SSD installed PS3, and I noticed that the SSD significantly reduces the texture pop-in.


Here're comparison videos. (sorry for the quality)


video 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJJlyZUWU0E&hd=1

HDD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsunRUJQpdc&hd=1

SSD


video 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7Wjt1eCs5o&hd=1

HDD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY15YCcH7XM&hd=1

SSD


video 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea4FuTq8c4E&hd=1

HDD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6fhc65C4AM&hd=1

SSD


Not sure how this will compare to fully installed 360 Rage.

That is a pretty noticeable difference.

 

[Solo]

Holy shit the wingstick is so awesome.

Yes it is. The gore on headshots... so good.

 

[Gattsu25]

i'm pretty sure it's intentional. colour grading for stylistic reasons. i've seen it in lots of games. it's an artistic choice, not one anyone has to like, but there you go. it's not a limitation of the engine, it's an actual a feature of the engine that lets them adjust the mood of an atmosphere. it's a pretty common feature in game engines these days.

it's a just a bit over done here, and there are spots like that office where it's a bit obvious when you go into the office that it changes to a different colour scheme for the grading.

Yeah, it's obviously a style they were going for.