RAGE - New thread for the id game

[belgerog]

Is it normal that the terrain textures look great but textures for smaller objects look very blurry? Bug or feature?

[Joe M.]

Thank you for the link to the 11.10 preview. Fingers crossed and all that... hopefully this fixes my texture problems.

[TurinTur]

Is it normal that the terrain textures look great but textures for smaller objects look very blurry? Bug or feature?

"Feature". It's not smaller objects, it all the textures (except separate entities like vehicles, weapons and characters) that are in very low resolution if you look up close. You will see it more in interiors, of course.

They had to compress them so much so the game would fit in 3 dvds. Apart fromt hat, it would have been hard for the consoles to stream higher resolution textures (with their limited ram) and maintain the 60 fps. And the pc version is a port :/.

Edit: wtf AMD, 35 kb/s is not an acceptable download speed. If you won't want to pay up for good bandwith, put a torrent next time!

[Dr. Quasius]

...And my Catalyst A.I. problem remains - now I need to find out if I'm crashing in the arena still.

Yup, still crashing. Game is still over.

[Telefrog]

...And my Catalyst A.I. problem remains - now I need to find out if I'm crashing in the arena still.

Ha! I didn't expect this patch to work. Honestly, this has been a complete cluster.

I think I'm going to ask Steam for a refund.

[Teiman]

I have found the list of console commands on the internet.

http://cs.rin.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=60433

http://pastebin.com/Y2iP2HpX (de-crapified version)

Typing this in the console:


bind "p" quit


It saves to the config, so pressing p, the game instantly quit, without using any menu :D




loadGame "quick"


This seems to load the quicksave, but I can't make it autorun from commandline :-/


I am suspicious that m_menu_sensitivity is the thing that make the mouse feel weird on the menus.

[WarrenM]

Heh, mine is working at the moment ... save for occasional flickering/corruption of NPC models. I'm not crashing or having any other issues so I think I'm going to ride these drivers out to the end. This jello does not need to be jiggled.

[MattKeil]

It was weird to fin the different tribes in Fallout using the same language. Tribes tend to have his own language, slang, accent, mythos...

There's a lot of interaction between the various groups in Fallout. There's no reason to think language would have diverged all that much in so short a time.


Here, if the different tribes have different accents, make perfect sense. Maybe every tribe descend from a single "Adam and Eva". So a english-like tribe will descend from a pair of english dudes.


Nope, doesn't work. It's only been 100 years since the asteroid impact, so this is at most the fourth generation since then. Not long enough for separate tribes of the kind you're talking about to develop. Individual groups, yeah, but not ones with their own dialects, particularly not ones that sound exactly like 21st century Cockney English. Plus, mass media still exists in the Rage world (for some reason) in the form of TV and radio, so you have yet another unifying cultural linguistic element that would prevent such radical divergence.

The actual explanation is that it's easier to give a character a stereotypical accent and demeanor rather than actually create an interesting or believable character.

[Tom McNamara]

Even worse, all characters of a given faction are voiced by the same actor. And the game doesn't even try to hide that. You'd think that it wouldn't be too much trouble to vary pitch and speed, at the least.

[Tim James]

Heh, mine is working at the moment ... save for occasional flickering/corruption of NPC models.I didn't know we had the same issue. I wish you had spoken up earlier. I just got to Wellspring and a couple of characters flicker. Does it get any worse after that point? I guess if this driver doesn't help I might as well continue on.

[Dr. Quasius]

The consensus I'm seeing on other boards is that the new patch helped out a few people, but most are still in the same boat.

11.11 here we come!

[Sarkus]

I may try the new drivers later. My problem now is that the game keeps freezing/crashing in the Shadow Bunker. Not loading in, just inside. Had it happen twice now even though I'm near the end of the level. Luckily I'm autosaving a lot, but still.

[WarrenM]

I didn't know we had the same issue. I wish you had spoken up earlier. I just got to Wellspring and a couple of characters flicker. Does it get any worse after that point? I guess if this driver doesn't help I might as well continue on.
I'm still in Wellspring so I can't say for sure. It's not bad enough to bother me right now so I'm going to press on....

[LesJarvis]

New driver seems to have fixed crash on area load (at least for the time being), but now I'm getting a lot of stuttering and hitching. What a colossal shit show.

[TurinTur]

I have only watched the flicker on Wellspring and Mutant Bash TV. On Wellspring, it was fixed later (i saw it three times, and the fourth time i visited the town, it disappeared).

[Paul_cze]

You guys all have ati cards right? I just arrived to Wellspring, talked to few people, but didn't see any flicker/corruption (with nvidia).

I guess Carmack wasn't lying when he said nvidia has better game developer support.

[Telefrog]

Yup. I think I'm asking for a refund. This will be my first from Steam. Wish me luck!

[Pogo]

I thought they didn't give refunds?

[mono]

I've been at 2560x1600, using the Nvidia BF3 Beta drivers that came out last week and the game has been flawless. I've implemented the fov and rageconfig tweaks to get better visuals, but haven't had any issues. I almost feel guilty.

[belgerog]

"Feature". It's not smaller objects, it all the textures (except separate entities like vehicles, weapons and characters) that are in very low resolution if you look up close. You will see it more in interiors, of course.

They had to compress them so much so the game would fit in 3 dvds. Apart fromt hat, it would have been hard for the consoles to stream higher resolution textures (with their limited ram) and maintain the 60 fps. And the pc version is a port :/

I see, thanks. I'm not sure I understand the point of using megatextures. Is it only to have less repetitive textures? And why would you not use standard textures for smaller objects and leave the megatextures for terrain?

[Telefrog]

I thought they didn't give refunds?

They have before if enough people bitch about a game. I'm pretty sure plenty of people have been bitching about this one.

[TurinTur]

Heh, with the new drivers now the game won't let me Alt-TAB. I could do it without problems before!

BTW, i am totally blind, i didn't see first sewer dlc just next to the Wellspring entrance until today.

[Telefrog]

Amazing. http://kotaku.com/5847761/why-was-the-pc-launch-of-rage-such-a-cluster



The issues were so severe that it drove the normally soft-spoken Carmack to cuss. Well, nearly cuss. In a response to Kotaku about the launch problems, Carmack censored himself, but the anger was still there.

"The driver issues at launch have been a real cluster !@#$," he wrote. "We were quite happy with the performance improvements that we had made on AMD hardware in the months before launch; we had made significant internal changes to cater to what AMD engineers said would allow the highest performance with their driver and hardware architectures, and we went back and forth with custom extensions and driver versions."

"We knew that all older AMD drivers, and some Nvidia drivers would have problems with the game, but we were running well in-house on all of our test systems. When launch day came around and the wrong driver got released, half of our PC customers got a product that basically didn't work. The fact that the working driver has incompatibilities with other titles doesn't help either. Issues with older / lower end /exotic setups are to be expected on a PC release, but we were not happy with the experience on what should be prime platforms."

[Tim James]

I'm still in Wellspring so I can't say for sure. It's not bad enough to bother me right now so I'm going to press on....


I have only watched the flicker on Wellspring and Mutant Bash TV. On Wellspring, it was fixed later (i saw it three times, and the fourth time i visited the town, it disappeared).Yeah I noticed it on one of the enemies during MB TV. I was hoping it was restricted to just a few guys behind a desk. It's still playable since it's only one rare enemy so far, but...

[glimjack]

I imagine that the technologies cannot (easily) be mixed -- megatextures and standard textures. This is beause "standard textures" would use up all of the video card memory that the megatexture method is streaming in. At best, the megatexture would be crippled.

That said, with the extra memory available on some ridiculous PC cards... maybe we will see that in a future iteration of the tech

[lordkosc]

Sewer Locations

1. Ark Area Sewers: Easy to find, it's near the orange tent, right across from where you come up the ramp from the Ark at the beginning of the game.

2. Outrigger Sewers: Straight down the path from the Outrigger Territory, immediately to the left before entering the little marked path to Wasted Territory, where you have to first go when entering the Wasted Garage the first time.

3. Wellspring Sewers: Immediately to the right when coming out of Wellspring, just before the road turns out.

4. Southern Sewers: Right underneath the highway ramp near Wellspring. There's a Billboard or something right by it. Easy to find once you know where to look.

5. Northern Sewers: Take the road to the right coming out of Wellspring, past Shrouded Territory and under the overpass/bridge/entrance thing to Scorcher Territory. To the right drive under the road, and the entrance is right next to the Stanley Express mailbox.

6. Kvasir's Sewers: Not actually down by Kvasir's place. You have to drive up and past Northwatch Tower, and both the entrance and exit are overlooking Kvasir's place on the edge of the cliff. Near the little circular split in the road before you head back onto the next highway section.

7. Subway Town Sewers: Again, easy to find like the Wellspring Sewers. It's to the left when you leave Subway Town, just across that bridge in the section of rocks off the road, opposite the blue marked territory.

Found @ http://forums.gameaxis.com/showthread.php?p=22537517

[TurinTur]

Oh, then there is more sewers than i believed. Nice lordkosc.

Today i have learned how the sentry bot is the best gadget ever, much better than the weak and static sentry turret, and both items use more or less the same components.

I am 8 hours, 35 minutes in the game, and I am doing right now the prison level. I suppose it will be the last level before going to the second area?

[flyinj]

"Unfortunately, we have had video driver issues that have caused problems and frustrations with our PC fans. Everyone at id Software is very upset by these issues which are mostly out of our control. We are working with both AMD/ATI and Nvidia to help them identify and fix the issues with their drivers. We've had assurances that these problems are being addressed and new drivers will be available soon."

So, every other company has been able to put out games that work with the drivers, but for some reason your game in particular doesn't work, and it's not your fault!

Got it.

Also, you're full of shit.

And even if you weren't full of shit, and for some mind-bending reason your amazing cross-platform dream engine was so complex that you disregarded all shortcomings of the drivers that every single other developer programs around... then, you know what you do?

You don't ship the fucking game until it's fixed.

Period.

EDIT: And id doesn't even address the fact that the PC SKU has absolutely zero graphics modification options other than AA and resolution- which is the most damning evidence that they just shoved it out the door not caring.

On top of that, they didn't mention why the PC SKU only has 2-speaker stereo, whereas both console SKUs support 5.1

[TurinTur]

So, every other company has been able to put out games that work with the drivers, but for some reason your game in particular doesn't work, and it's not your fault!

Got it.

Also, you're full of shit.


Calm down. Every other game from the last years used Direct3d, not OpenGL (except Brink). And reading that the article says, it seems the game was working well from them with their test drivers, but some changes at the last hour in the amd drivers fubared everything.

More exactly, i had several problems trying to play a doom 3 mod in my computer with an ati 4890, when in my old computer i didn't have problems. OpenGL with amd under win vista/7 is very problematic. It just that 95% of the time people can't notice because it's an independent module from the direct3d files. id have a bit of blame in choosing a not very well supported api, instead of direct3d.


But i agree with you in the last part, ideally, if the product isn't working with the last official stable drivers, the game shouldn't be released. They shouldn't have released it trusting in a still unreleased driver, in the hands of a third company. I suspect they didn't dealy the pc release because the whole marketing, as it is usual in these cases.


On top of that, they didn't mention why the PC SKU only has 2-speaker stereo, whereas both console SKUs support 5.1

Are you sure? I could swear i was hearing sorround audio.

[malkav11]

EDIT: And id doesn't even address the fact that the PC SKU has absolutely zero graphics modification options other than AA and resolution- which is the most damning evidence that they just shoved it out the door not caring.


They did, actually. They said they were somewhat surprised that got such a negative reaction, and more options will be coming in a patch, including texture cache size, anisotropy, and v-sync, with some others currently under evaluation for possible inclusion. Also that they would probably be documenting how to manually tweak settings that they don't choose to expose in the menu.

[flyinj]

Are people getting 5.1 output from this game? Is there some config file option/command line flag I have to put in to enable it?

I have the standard 3 green/pink/black 5.1 out of my soundcard, and my speakers set to 5.1 in the control panel. Every other game gives me 5.1, yet I only get left-right front stereo out of Rage.

Also, to clarify- I was pretty pissed about the state the game was in. Yet, it really pisses me off when developers try to push the blame onto someone else. They dropped the ball, not ATI. ATI didn't sell me Rage. id/Bethesda did.

[Telefrog]

Downloaded and installed the newest AMD driver. Man, what a difference!

http://i51.tinypic.com/2rf9dgo.jpg

Fuck you, RAGE.


I would like a refund or Steam store credit for Bethesda/id Software's game Rage due to technical issues preventing the game from playing. As documented in a large number of Steam forum issues, this game does not work with my ATI GPU. I have installed the latest AMD drivers, and tried various configuration edits as recommended by id, and the game just crashes at the first area transition.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email and inform me when this refund or store credit is completed.

Steam name: Telefrog

[Joe M.]

I think I've hit my limit for fiddling with cfg files. I don't mind diving in to tweak things like FOV or mouse smoothing on occasion but this? This is intolerable. And what makes it worse is I never know what -- if anything -- is going to be the magic fix I've been looking for, so I'm done with it until they release a patch.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Also, to clarify- I was pretty pissed about the state the game was in. Yet, it really pisses me off when developers try to push the blame onto someone else. They dropped the ball, not ATI. ATI didn't sell me Rage. id/Bethesda did.

Who sold you your graphics card? Who supplied the drivers for it?

I hope that doesn't sound too snarky. There's enough of a difference between Radeon and Geforce users that we can tell where the problem lies.

So far, my 5870 has delivered different behavior with various drivers. (All of them broken but broken in different ways.) Change the drivers, the behavior changes with it... another indicator of problem location.

I'm off to try the latest; hopefully I'll finally be able to play the game.

[DennyA]

So I was just trying to do the job board mission where you have to snipe all the mutants to protect the guy fixing the pipeline... Man, that one's hard. Three attempts so far.

Stupid sniper rifle doesn't shoot fast enough.

[Teiman]

I just did that one. Easy. But before starting the mission, you get a upgrade that make the sniper auto... maybe that upgrade has not work on your game?



So, every other company has been able to put out games that work with the drivers, but for some reason your game in particular doesn't work, and it's not your fault!


Every other company produce a game that use the same rendering model all other games.
Do you remember this (http://i45.tinypic.com/6h47td.jpg)?
By using the exact same rendering style, all games looks like almost the same game.

Here John Carmack is tryiing a new way to use the hardware on your computer, and is opening new paths.

Is going to find roadblock, and destroy these roadblock, because the old tested way is open, but the new paths are untested and bad things can lie here.

Part of this (not all) is understandable.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Well the latest Radeon driver still isn't helping my machine. I get a complete stop of graphics and movement for several seconds, then it updates, then pauses again, repeat.

Oh well, at least the drivers work fine in the newly patched Red Orchestra 2. Spent a couple hours playing that instead. It's finally in the condition it should've been when released.

[Joe M.]

Well the latest Radeon driver still isn't helping my machine. I get a complete stop of graphics and movement for several seconds, then it updates, then pauses again, repeat.

Check "disable catalyst AI" in your gaming preferences in CCC. Catalyst AI somehow solves the texture problem by... turning the game into a slideshow.

[Tom McNamara]

So, every other company has been able to put out games that work with the drivers, but for some reason your game in particular doesn't work, and it's not your fault!

Got it.

Also, you're full of shit.


The game is using a new version of OpenGL (http://www.opengl.org/documentation/current_version/), and AMD apparently had support for the wrong version in its recent drivers. The emergency drivers released yesterday included the correct version, which is why the texture pop-in went away after installing them. The character flickering is a separate issue that AMD is addressing with the 11.10 drivers.

[Thrag]

With the new drivers I had about 20 minutes of decent performance and then it was back to constantly freezing up to the point of being unplayable. I give up. I'm asking for a refund. I've read that some people who purchased it on steam have been able to at least get store credit for it.

[McKnight]

Is this worth playing Co-op? Been looking for something to play couch co-op with a friend as the games that allow it are few and far between.

[Kadath]

I bought the retail PC version. On the DVD case it has the normal steam code, which I used and will download in the background after I have fully installed another download which is higher priority to me right now.

But there is also a sheet that has two additional codes on it, they say they need to be added to Steam as well, but when I type them in I get told I already have them as part of my retail steam code. Am I going to need these later or will those who didn't preorder the Anarchy edition find them useful in the future? Or is that all marketing BS?

[nKoan]

I bought the retail PC version. On the DVD case it has the normal steam code, which I used and will download in the background after I have fully installed another download which is higher priority to me right now.

But there is also a sheet that has two additional codes on it, they say they need to be added to Steam as well, but when I type them in I get told I already have them as part of my retail steam code. Am I going to need these later or will those who didn't preorder the Anarchy edition find them useful in the future? Or is that all marketing BS?

It seems that the initial install associates the other 2 codes automatically. I don't know why they bothered with the inserts.

[mrcjhicks]

Eh, I've already given this game the Fallout: New Vegas treatment - uninstalled. I'll play it around Christmas or something, when it will probably be playable. No use wasting time here.

Skyrim comes out next month and that will be sure to tide me over until Rage is playable.

(heh)

[TurinTur]

Also, to clarify- I was pretty pissed about the state the game was in. Yet, it really pisses me off when developers try to push the blame onto someone else. They dropped the ball, not ATI. ATI didn't sell me Rage. id/Bethesda did.

Have you thought for a moment that the game works? It works fine if you have a computer with a video card that supports *correctly* the last OpenGL extensions.

Sometimes, only sometimes, pushing the blame onto someone else is the correct thing.

Maybe you don't know how this works, but you can do the best job developing your game, but you will always, always depend of the companies that make the drivers. It's the nature of pc development. You say "but AMD didn't se¡l me RAGE!". No, AMD just sold you a video card with buggy unfinished components! Because the driver is also a component of the product you are buying.

Again, they shouldn't have believed AMD promises saying all would be fixed in a new driver for the launch, their tests should have limited to the drivers that were out in that moment, in the public hands.

[MattKeil]

Have you thought for a moment that the game works? It works fine if you have a computer with a video card that supports *correctly* the last OpenGL extensions.

This is like chiding someone for not having a telephone that supports the latest rotary technology.

[Sarkus]

What a clusterfuck. I installed the new drivers and now all my saves are either generating an error or the game crashes when I try and load it. I uninstalled the new drivers and reinstalled 11.8 and the one time I got a save to load it wasn't loading most of the ground textures at all. Then it crashed trying to load out of Wellsprings. The rest of the time the saves don't load at all.

[TurinTur]

This is like chiding someone for not having a telephone that supports the latest rotary technology.

Well, it's not that different of complaining that BF3 don't work in XP. Directx 10 (so you need Windows vista or Windows 7) it part of the minimum requirements of the game!
Things get complicated thanks to the drivers, because hardware don't work alone, it's the combination of hardware and drivers that make the games work.

[TurinTur]

BTW, the game is really bad at dialogue and plot once you advance up to the whole Authority / Resistance conflict. Before it was mediocre, but now it is really bad. They really have no idea of how to make a compelling plot and setting. Also, the leader of the resistance is called Captain Marshall. Genius.

And i hate to kill human enemies with explosives, you can't loot gibs :(


----

Vote in the poll!! (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=66813)

[TurinTur]

Game isn't doing it very well on pc, sales wise. Consumers vindicated!

http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=9200q91310q28050&jstime=1&from=1314828000000&to=

[Sean Tudor]

They really have no idea of how to make a compelling plot and setting.

Shouldn't be a surprise. No id game has ever had a compelling plot. It's all about the tech.

[Sarkus]

Two hours of screwing around but I seem to have stumbled on something that works for now. 11.9 drivers, Catalyst AI disabled, and a lengthy config put together by someone online. And it works. We'll see how it holds up. Tomorrow, after I sleep.

[lordkosc]

Game isn't doing it very well on pc, sales wise. Consumers vindicated!

http://steamgraph.burstpixel.net/index.php?action=graph&appid=9200q91310q28050&jstime=1&from=1314828000000&to=


Probably didn't help that most of the youtube vids posted by people on day 1 were showing the piss poor up close graphics ,the texture loading issues , and lack of graphics settings on PC.

http://pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2011-10-04/01-settings.jpg

[Sean Tudor]

Does Rage work with nVidia cards?

[Sarkus]

Probably didn't help that most of the youtube vids posted by people on day 1 were showing the piss poor up close graphics ,the texture loading issues , and lack of graphics settings on PC.

It's going to be interesting to see how it turns out. I get the impression (perhaps the wrong one) that PC gamers were a lot more excited about this game then the console crowd. But the problems on PC are scaring off (and pissing off) a lot of people, which is probably hurting what might have been their biggest source of sales.

But here's the thing about multi-platform releases - if one is a mess they all suffer, even if the other platforms aren't actually as messed up. So New Vegas suffered from early reviews about disastrous issues for some reviewers on 360 systems even though PC problems were less severe for most people.

[Sarkus]

Does Rage work with nVidia cards?

Not all Nvidia users are having success, but the vast majority of people having problems are ATI users. Nvidia seems to have had a better handle on what was needed to make the game run then ATI.

[Paul_cze]

Does Rage work with nVidia cards?

Works perfectly with mine. No issues whatsoever, graphics is beautiful and framerate buttery smooth 60 constant. GTX560Ti here.

I do have applied some tweaks for better graphics.

[lordkosc]

Does Rage work with nVidia cards?

Its been working fine now with my GTX460 1Gb.

I used the first config option posted here :

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2156747

Changed the resolution in that first config to 16:9 , but thats about it.

[TurinTur]

Subway Town looks great. Really good, both the scenario and the characters that populate the hub.

But, the npc flicker reappeared in that town! Damn, so much for the bug being fixed by AMD. :/



BTW, I am using these parameters:
"C:\juegos\Rage.exe" +set com_allowConsole 1 +set com_skipIntroVideo 1 +cvaradd g_fov 10 +cvaradd g_playerhealthIncDelay 20 +cvaradd g_playerhealthperSecond -0.45 +cvaradd g_playerhealthRegenDelay -3

It makes the health. regeneration start before and it needs much more time to regenerate. I am also playing it in Nightmare.

[mono]

Does Rage work with nVidia cards?

Yeah, pretty gorgeous on a GTX 580.

[WarrenM]

Shouldn't be a surprise. No id game has ever had a compelling plot. It's all about the tech.

I don't think anyone would even mention it except that in the marketing run up, id was banging the "awesome story and compelling characters" drum incessantly.

[Kadath]

It seems that the initial install associates the other 2 codes automatically. I don't know why they bothered with the inserts.

Alright, thanks. If i can trade em off down the line so much the better

[TurinTur]

Shouldn't be a surprise. No id game has ever had a compelling plot. It's all about the tech.

All about the tech and the gameplay, you mean. ;)

I know previous id games, they don't have a compelling plot, true. But they also didn't have vehicles in them, and that part of Rage is fine. I was expecting something mundane and trite in the plot in general terms, but apart from that, the setup and execution of the story is baad and some of the dialog from the "main quest" is cringe-worthy.
Curiously, they have made a much more acceptable job in the npcs and dialog from not related to the main quest, like the random people you find and the ones related to side quests.

[malkav11]

I don't think anyone would even mention it except that in the marketing run up, id was banging the "awesome story and compelling characters" drum incessantly.

Well, didn't they do the same thing with Doom 3? We should have a pretty good idea by now what they consider awesome.

[Foxstab]

Is this for real or is Kotaku just making fun in photoshop?
http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/9/2011/10/tftit.jpg

[Joe M.]

It's more of a worst case scenario but yes, it's definitely a legitimate screenshot from an ATI rig.

[Foxstab]

Ouch.
If Rage was a game about psychological thriller and virtual reality I might've called this a feature of a dreamscape breaking down (it does reminds me the retro style of Darwinia).



Also, reading what Carmack is saying over Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5847761/why-was-the-pc-launch-of-rage-such-a-cluster) I think it's clear that: Rage was designed as a console game, the new engine is basically designed as a multi-platform authorship with console being its prime staging point for core specs to aim for. Id no longer views PC as a viable business, much like Epic.
Well, they're owned by Bethesda now, much like Blizzard is now trolled by Activision.
B@PCE Id. Carmack got done. He's Todd Howard's little grease monkey now. Just remember, John: NO SPEARS!

[RobotPants]

Dude, do you have to do your defiant "the game industry sucks" dance in every thread? Yes, the ATI issues with RAGE are shitty, but don't act like this is the first time in history this has happened to a game. I'm pretty certain folks understand your position on Blizzard by now, too.

[malkav11]

I don't think it's fair to describe Carmack's viewpoint as "PC no longer being a viable business". If he thought that, we wouldn't be getting iD games on PC at all. His position is that one can either target the high end platform (PC) with the design and produce a console version that misses key parts of the specification, or target the consoles and produce a PC version that can incrementally scale upwards to take advantage of the extra performance. And given that and that the console customer base is substantially larger (which it is, there's no doubt about that), they opted for the latter. I would really like it if companies went for the former, but I can't really blame them from an economic standpoint.

[Ninyu]

Dude, do you have to do your defiant "the game industry sucks" dance in every thread? Yes, the ATI issues with RAGE are shitty, but don't act like this is the first time in history this has happened to a game. I'm pretty certain folks understand your position on Blizzard by now, too.

It is all he has to live for now that his beloved hobby has gone to the consoles. Don't take that away from him, too.

[Foxstab]

It is all he has to live for now that his beloved hobby has gone to the consoles. Don't take that away from him, too.

LOL WOT?
Gaming never left consoles in the first place. It's more that consoles are attempting to become more of a PC without any of the user privileges that come with a PC, if anything.
Are you a moron?

[Paul_cze]

So much doom and gloom, meanwhile I am having a blast with most fun (and dare I say, best) id game ever released.

[Foxstab]

Are you sure? Doom was pretty rad.

[lordkosc]

Some super sweet wrap around screenshots :

http://widescreengamingforum.com/node/17576

[Pogo]

LOL WOT?
Gaming never left consoles in the first place. It's more that consoles are attempting to become more of a PC without any of the user privileges that come with a PC, if anything.
Are you a moron?

You seem to hold PCs in an idealistic view that never actually existed. There always were and will be bugs and conflicts with hardware and software. It's not different now than it was in some "golden age." The consoles always had their share of bugs too. I've gotten several lockups on any console system that I've owned.

The irony is that Carmack has done a huge amount of pushing for hardware and software PC tech and videogame companies to make the end user experience smoother. The point of all his criticism of the PC isn't to slam its viability as a vector for software sales, it's to improve it.

[MattKeil]

Well, they're owned by Bethesda now, much like Blizzard is now trolled by Activision.

You do understand that Activision has no control over Blizzard, right? Blizzard is entirely independent as far as decision making and such goes. It was part of the deal.

Not everything is an industry conspiracy.

[TurinTur]

Some super sweet wrap around screenshots :

http://widescreengamingforum.com/node/17576

Nice, i just made some captures showing that the interiors maybe aren't as pretty as the exteriors, but they are still good (if you don't put your nose touching a wall :P)

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/7.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/5.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/shot99998.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/6.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/4.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/3.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/2.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/Rage/1.jpg

[Paul_cze]

Are you sure? Doom was pretty rad.

Doom was pretty rad for 1993, and Rage is pretty rad for 2011.

[mono]

Nice, i just made some captures showing that the interiors maybe aren't as pretty as the exteriors, but they are still good (if you don't put your nose touching a wall :P)

If id ever does release a high rez texture option, via torrent or some such, this game will be off the charts. The level design, artwork and lighting is just top notch.

[Joe M.]

Ouch.
If Rage was a game about psychological thriller and virtual reality I might've called this a feature of a dreamscape breaking down (it does reminds me the retro style of Darwinia).

This (http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/7145/rage2011100812430480.jpg) is probably more representative of what people are dealing with. The real problem is that those corrupted/artifacted textures (or whatever is going on there) are constantly changing. It creates a very distracting strobe type effect that makes playing the game for any stretch of time utterly unbearable.

And on top of that, who knows if they will ever be able to fix the pop-in. It was the first thing I noticed in the game and it's probably here to stay even if they fix the other texture oddities. At any rate, enough of the doom and gloom... I still have hope ATI will get their act together.

[MattKeil]

Are you sure? Doom was pretty rad.

I'd agree with him, but I've never really liked an id game much before this one. Certainly Rage is the best single-player game they've ever made. Doom and Quake were novelties, but not interesting enough for me to bother finishing them.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Are you sure? Doom was pretty rad.

What, that buggy piece of shit (http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Errors_and_bugs)? Do you not get how dumb you look pretending PC games were never bug-ridden until just recently because of consoles? PC games don't need consoles to be a mess.

[Sarkus]

I've seen both those examples of artifacting in trying different drivers and fixes. As of right now the fixes I mentioned earlier this morning are holding up pretty well and I'm now to the Dead City. Speaking of which, am I the only one a bit underwhelmed by the graphics in here? There is a certain "fuzziness" to everything that seems different then in other areas. Its nowhere as crisp as Wellsprings, for example.

One odd thing was that I took the Cuperino back to the Hagar settlement so I could attempt the race the mechanic there offers. The race was in the buggy, and when I was done it put me in the buggy back at Hagar's. I drove back to Wellsprings and put it in the garage, then realized the Cuperino wasn't in the garage. So I drove back to Hagars and there is was, parked in the mechanics shop. Meaning now my cars aren't together at Wellsprings like they should be. Not sure how to fix it as hiking between the two bases makes no sense. Maybe racing in Wellsprings will bring them back together?

[Major Malphunktion]

Well, after 6 or so hours...I have to say, I love it. Pacing is wonderful, combat is intense, and it is just fun. No great drama, no melodrama, go and shoot. Some wonderful gimmicky weapons - mind control darts, electro 'dont stand in the water' darts, exploding RC cars...exc. I've been waiting for a retro shooter, and id delivered. Sure there is some repeat of areas...I don't care, it is all about blowing stuff up. What is nice is returning to some places, the carnage from your last visit is still there. I even got a 'Oh no HE's BACK' vo.

[WarrenM]

"Rage has stopped working" when trying to enter the Shrouded Bunker. Yay! This game is such a series of ups and downs.

[Teiman]

The mission on the well is much better done than average. It feel like was the first one made, and was made as good as possible to show it as demo to the press. The openworld is amazingly desert-y and sand-y :3

[WarrenM]

OK, so I verified my game cache and got into the Shrouded Bunker ... I died and reloaded checkpoint, which is outside again. Tried to enter, crashing again. Lordy...

[RepoMan]

It's enough to make you grateful there's no PC SKU for Gears 3 yet, eh, Warren? ;-)

[WarrenM]

Aaand crashing again. FFS...

[Budvar]

Also, reading what Carmack is saying over Kotaku (http://kotaku.com/5847761/why-was-the-pc-launch-of-rage-such-a-cluster) I think it's clear that: Rage was designed as a console game, the new engine is basically designed as a multi-platform authorship with console being its prime staging point for core specs to aim for. Id no longer views PC as a viable business, much like Epic.
!

Except he neither says nor implies anything of the sort. That it is no longer viable to prioritise high-end PCs over consoles doesn't mean that it is not viable to develop for PC at all. If it wasn't viable, they wouldn't release it at all. If you abandon the histrionics you will have to accept that the PC platform will have to share space with 360 and PS3. That still doesn't mean these games cannot be great.

[Kaliante]

Except he neither says nor implies anything of the sort. That it is no longer viable to prioritise high-end PCs over consoles doesn't mean that it is not viable to develop for PC at all. If it wasn't viable, they wouldn't release it at all. If you abandon the histrionics you will have to accept that the PC platform will have to share space with 360 and PS3. That still doesn't mean these games cannot be great.

Correct. Carmack said as much in his video interview with PC Gamer from E3 back in June. When beginning the project years ago the decision was to develop with the 3 platforms equally weighted. He apparently believes that was a mistake after seeing the explosion in PC power over that time period, and will take a different tack in the future:

"When we started on the game six years ago, I looked at the consoles and said ‘These are as good as the PCs that we're on here’, and our development strategy was set up such that we basically developed live on all the platforms there. And now when we’re looking at PCs that have ten times the horsepower of the consoles... I’m making a large change in my direction, just saying ‘We should be focusing on building things efficiently on the PC and [then] deploying on to consoles.’ And we didn’t make that as crisp of a distinction as we should have."

Kal

[lordkosc]

124.9 Mb patch?


RAGE defaults to lower video settings to allow the game to work on a
wide variety of hardware and software configurations.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to anticipate all possible graphics
driver issues in combination with unique end user hardware and software
configurations. For this reason RAGE does not automatically increase
video/graphics settings as this could result in negative side effects
on specific hardware and software configurations. The original release
of RAGE does not expose many video/graphics options for people to tweak
because some of these settings, although desirable from a quality
perspective, simply will not work on specific configurations either due
to hardware limitations and/or driver bugs. Due to popular demand for
more video and graphics options, this patch updates the video settings
menu and exposes several quality and performance settings. However, not
everyone may be able to increase the settings due to hardware limitations
and/or driver bugs.

[belgerog]

I'm having fun with the game, or at least some parts of it. But these invisible walls are annoying. Why do you put a jump key if you can't jump over ANYTHING? There's are some obstacles no taller than a foot you can't jump over.

I like how the mutants move, they can be pretty good at evading my shotgun blasts.

[Paul_cze]

Hmmmpff just had my first annoyance with save system, I was cleaning up Shrouded Bunker and was so immersed that I completely forgot to save...and the last room full of enemies I die, and last checkpoint is 30-40 minutes back.

Dammit.

[RobotPants]

Yeah, I'm so used to not being able to save anywhere these days that I end up forgetting.

[Sarkus]

The game is pretty stable for me at this point and I'm deep into the Dead City. Whats the weakness of these armored mutants? Assault rifle ammo seems not to do much damage and while the shotgun does, it takes about a full load to take one of them out. Anything particularly good against them?

[TurinTur]

What armored mutants? The one who fires at the sky and then it explodes in two places in the ground? Or the "kraken", the one with the tentacle?

In both cases, they are damage sponges, just throw whatever you have in your arsenal, usually with preference of explosives (rocket pops, rockets, grenades, dynamite arrows). The trick fighting with them is how to deal with the big monster (in the first case avoiding his shots, in the second case avoiding his charge and tentacle) while the weak mutants are attacking you.

[TurinTur]

Hmmmpff just had my first annoyance with save system, I was cleaning up Shrouded Bunker and was so immersed that I completely forgot to save...and the last room full of enemies I die, and last checkpoint is 30-40 minutes back.

Dammit.

I lost two times 20 minutes, in different places. It's ok for me, it won't happen me again for a second time in that area as that time i will remember quicksaving, and there is always the possibility of playing the combat in a different way.

It happened even more times playing Stalker

[Sarkus]

What armored mutants? The one who fires at the sky and then it explodes in two places in the ground? Or the "kraken", the one with the tentacle?

Neither of those, I'm talking about the slime mutants that throw slime at you and melee attack you as well.

[RedHerb]

Neither of those, I'm talking about the slime mutants that throw slime at you and melee attack you as well.

What's wrong with you? You shoot the glowing parts! Like the head or in particular the back! Jeez play more videogames already :)

[TurinTur]

Best most interesting rocks in a game ever
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/th_12.jpg (http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/?action=view&current=12.jpg)

[IkeVandergraaf]

What do I do with these pieces of meteor I've found? The one dude in Hagartown said to save them but will they have some use or should I just sell them for money?

I'm about 3 hours in on the 360 version. So far it's fun enough, but the 1990's design decisions are frustrating and disappointing. The shooty is good, but a lot of modern games have good shooty. Also its easily the best looking 360 game ever and smooth as butta. But I find myself agreeing with Tom that there's a lot of missed opportunity here.

[WarrenM]

What do I do with these pieces of meteor I've found? The one dude in Hagartown said to save them but will they have some use or should I just sell them for money?
I'm wondering that too! I'm hoarding them at the moment since he said not to just give them away as they are super valuable .. for what? Are they ammo for some future weapon or something?

[Paul_cze]

Meh 7 hours in and I haven't seen any use for them, so I have been selling them.

[TurinTur]

You can exchange 20 of them for a extra defibrillator charge, there is a npc in the Wellspring bar who will make the offer.

[Lh'owon]

Best most interesting rocks in a game ever
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/th_12.jpg (http://s6.photobucket.com/albums/y247/Turin_Tur/?action=view&current=12.jpg)

Yea! I don't think I'll be playing this game, but I have this screenshot (http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6157/6221525616_66ac87058c_o.jpg) as my wallpaper (from the superlative Dead End Thrills (http://deadendthrills.com/)). Lovely rocks and sky.

[TurinTur]

And finished!

16 hours, 30 minutes, looking at the time stats. But you have to add up at least one more hour, between retries of races, reloads when they killed me, the time stat doesn't count up in menus, etc.

It was a good game, with some features which make it close to a great game... but in the other hand lots of stuff lowers the mark again, making the game not worth all the hype:
The underwhelming end, the bad plot and dialogue, the poor setup between the Authority and the Resistance, the not very well balanced economy (i prefer games where i am not swimming in abundance), the vehicle action got a bit repetitive, the duration is a bit on the short side (taking in account is not a linear fps and there is a bit of back and forth between missions, and the game makes you play again almost every dungeon a second time in side missions) and the incredible easy difficulty (even playing in a extra hard custom nightmare mode!) with health regeneration, bandages, multiple defibrillator charges, and abundance of extra items in general which all combined makes the excellent combat not as enjoyable as it should.

[lordkosc]

Thats one of my issues, why do we have bandages, if we have regenerating health?

I have yet to use a single bandage.

:|

[belgerog]

What's wrong with you? You shoot the glowing parts! Like the head or in particular the back! Jeez play more videogames already :)

What, really? I just shot a bunch of shotgun shells at them till they died.

[TurinTur]

A photo collection of one of the best guys doing captures from games.

http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6119/6224620011_8c41e435d7_b.jpg

http://deadendthrills.com/collections/rage/

Edit: damnit, too late!

[lordkosc]

Lh'owon , posted that link a few posts up... :p

But indeed very sexy graphics.

Question , is there a say to keep the dead bodies from melting into the ground?

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Well, I'm finally playing, smooth as silk, courtesy of latest Radeon 11.10 preview driver and this launch option for dual core systems:
+jobs_numThreads 0

Anyone else still having problems should read the entire Rage patch notes to see if their issue is mentioned.

[RedHerb]

Thoughts on RAGE now:

Hmmm, I'm going to stock up on big mama rounds and head shot most enemies. Oh well, it does make the pistol one of the most powerful weapons.

I remember using a rocket launcher once.

Hell, I got so much ammo. Hell, I got so much arsenal but all I need is my big mama rounds baby!

This upgraded robots dudes and turrets rock I wish I bet reason to use them then on waves of mutants.

Spawn more mutants RAGE , I don't think you spawned enough already.

Yay! A super big final weapon I bet I'll have to shoot something awesome with it...

[Dr. Quasius]

My ATI/Rage/Catalyst A.I. problem remains, so I still have to run without it on. The patch fixed the Mutant Bash problem for me so I was able to complete it, and now I can continue playing - at least until I hit another game breaking bug :) . The texture streaming problems have almost completely vanished no matter how fast I spin around. (I still have texture problems because of having Catalyst A.I. turned off but that's something else again)

Is there still anyone that cannot play no matter what they try?

Edit. A lot of people with dual-core processors are being helped greatly by adding +jobs_numThreads 0 as the first line of the default.cfg files. I'm able to play with Catalyst A.I. turned on using this, but barely. For me it's still better to have it off.

Edit 2: Actually add +jobs_numThreads 0 to Steam Rage launch options. I am up and running 100%. If you have a 5770 this should solve all of your problems.

[razarok]

Is anyone with a Radeon card (5770 by any chance?) not having any problems?

[Dr. Quasius]

Is anyone with a Radeon card (5770 by any chance?) not having any problems?

That's what I have, and seems to be the most problematic of the entire ATI line.

Edit: No problems anymore. See my post above yours, doing that should fix whatever problems you are having.

[nKoan]

The new patch has done wonders for the texture streaming problems for me. I started getting used to the pop in when turning (not even turning fast in my case) but now its completely gone. I set the texture cache up to high and everything is loaded now.

nVidia 260 GTX w/ 896 MB RAM in case anyone is wondering.

[RobotPants]

Yeah, it was pretty minimal for me before, but still noticeable in tight spaces. After changing it to high, I don't see it at all.

[TurinTur]

Thinking a bit about the end, and how it compares to other games, i think Quake 4 had a much stronger ending, with your ship being attacked by Stroggs, having to run to individual dropship and doing the final assault, with some very epic fights near the end.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

No spoilers please! I want to discover the awesome story for myself! ;)

[TurinTur]

Those were spoilers from Quake 4, not Rage :D.

[Sarkus]

So I want to capture a few screenshots from within the Dead City (I really like the atmosphere in here) but Print Screen doesn't seem to be working. Any other way to capture images in Rage?

[nKoan]

F12 takes screenshots (for all Steam games, I believe)

[Sarkus]

F12 takes screenshots

Where does it save them?

[nKoan]

Where does it save them?

Right click on RAGE in Steam and select View Screenshots. From there there is a button to view the file on disk, upload to Steam Cloud, and other stuff.

[anaqer]

Does "\bind [key] screenshot" not work anymore?

[Sarkus]

Right click on RAGE in Steam and select View Screenshots. From there there is a button to view the file on disk, upload to Steam Cloud, and other stuff.

Right click on it on the library list? I'm not seeing a View Screenshots option there.

[nKoan]

Right click on it on the library list? I'm not seeing a View Screenshots option there.

Yeah. That's how I'm doing it. It looks like Steam is handling the Screenshots. Have you taken any yet?

[Sarkus]

Yeah. That's how I'm doing it. It looks like Steam is handling the Screenshots. Have you taken any yet?

Yes, I went in and did a couple hitting f12. There was a bit of a pause, leading me to think it saved them. I just can't find them.

Edit: Ok, figured it out. I had Steam Community disabled and turning that back on solved the issues.

http://i52.tinypic.com/256bh4g.jpg

[Juste]

Started on the 360 tonight. Beautiful game but the mechanics are a bit of a throwback so far. Fun game but i hope there are other types of quests than fetchquests.

[scharmers]

Well, once again against my better judgement, I picked up RAGE.

I must build rock-solid PCs, or something, as I have had zero technical issues with the game -- other than a strip of corrupt graphics across the screen, easily resolved by deactivating "smart" VSYNC. This is on a bog-standard i3/GTX460 setup.

Graphics are fine and smooth at medium settings, and if there's noticable texture fill-in ala UE3 games, I don't see it.

As for the gameplay itself: So Dan from Rosanne rescues me from the Vault, er, Ark, about 20 seconds after I wake up. He sees something about me (calloused trigger finger perhaps? "I LIEK SHOTING MANS" tatooed on my forehead?) that would indicate that I should be shooting mans even before I have a chance to get my first morning cup of coffee. HEY, WORKS FOR ME.

Opinion? You shoot mans. The manshootery is pretty decent. There's some frippery about quests and building stuff and whatever, but if you want a postapocalyptic world that's more about character arcs and stuff (and weak manshooting), well jesus didn't you guys already play F3 and FNV? The sound is OK on my new speakers and the game didn't crash or nothin'. OK, sure, maybe those of us who have played Borderlands a couple of times are wondering where the little dancing robot is in Rage, but yeah.

Score: x-5 quatloos.

[Joe M.]

I'm not sure what a pair of RPGs have to do with an expansive corridor shooter. What am I missing here?

[Sarkus]

I'm not sure what a pair of RPGs have to do with an expansive corridor shooter. What am I missing here?

Bethesda publishing along with some "RPG elements" comments by id about Rage suggested it was going to be deeper then just a typical shooter. It is, in some ways, but as story shooters go it doesn't rise to the level of the best ones.

[lordkosc]

Bethesda publishing along with some "RPG elements" comments by id about Rage suggested it was going to be deeper then just a typical shooter. It is, in some ways, but as story shooters go it doesn't rise to the level of the best ones.

I would agree, and to get voice talent like John Goodman , he seems totally under used in this game.

[Sarkus]

I would agree, and to get voice talent like John Goodman , he seems totally under used in this game.

I'm not surprised about the lack of use of Goodman, that is typical of recent Bethesda published titles. They get a big name and then only use them a little so that they can save some money. Oblivion made a big deal about Patrick Stewart, but his character dies in the prologue. Sean Bean was the other big name they used, but he has relatively little dialogue. Fallout 3 is similar - Liam Neeson is Dad but he has only a handfull of actual lines. New Vegas is about the only variation, since they got some bigger names to be companions.

So I never expect to hear much of the "big names" announced for voice acting in Bethesda titles. I'm pretty sure the same will hold true for Skyrim.

[rei]

So where's the cheapest to get this for PC?

[RobotPants]

I do wish Bethesda would get some more varied voice actors for the generic characters. All these hardened people living out in the desert in a dead world just sound like video game voice actors.

[Sarkus]

One thing they do get right, though, is giving everyone a name. You may never speak to them, but its a subtle way that helps with immersion. Its not another townsperson you can't interact with in Wellsprings, it's Dallas. And so on.

Speaking of which, am I the only one who thinks this is taking place somewhere around Houston or Dallas? There is definately a Texas twang to some of the NPCs.

[Tim James]

I must build rock-solid PCs, or something, as I have had zero technical issues with the game.... This is on a bog-standard i3/GTX460 setup.Whenever someone starts a sentence like this in the Rage thread, I quickly scan to the end. Yup, it's always an Nvidia card.

[Sarkus]

Whenever someone starts a sentence like this in the Rage thread, I quickly scan to the end. Yup, it's always an Nvidia card.

Yeah, Nvidia users are experiencing far fewer issues. Most of the Nvidia complaints I've seen on the official boards tech area are about pop-in, not the artifacting and other stuff ATI users have seen.

[Tim James]

The game seems solid after the patch with my ATI 6970. I didn't notice any more artifacts. I got rid of the Rageconfig.cfg and used the in-game options. I also bumped it up to FOV 90. It looks good. The only major annoyance left is the mouse pointer sensitivity within the UI screens.

[divorced]

Game was working awesome for me but now it crashes in the exact same place every time. I'm going to turn in a mission fairly early in the game. I'm supposed to take some medical supplies to Dan. I hop on my buggy, turn right, go over a bridge and BAM! Frozen solid every time.

Game worked great up until then.

Damn

[Major Malphunktion]

I just did the first subway mission for Red. I finished it off with my fists and the 'quad'. Yes, the two tentacle beasts...with my fists! It was a total Doom moment with photo realistic graphics.

[RobotPants]

So since the update, this is now happening (http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541781415181132196/E19E90BD6751B426FB3AD17884B4AAA8AEE77773/). I thought it might be heat at first, but my temps are all fine. It also only happens when I'm in a vehicle and another vehicle explodes. It's done it out in the world driving around as well as during combat races.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

I might have to turn in my gamer card. Playing on Hard is getting to be too hard. Not because I get killed (health regen + defib makes surviving easy) but because I'm running out of ammo. Almost every round gone after clearing out a bandit garage. Is there any way to get ammo other than looting it off enemies? I don't see any in the first seller's inventory.

[Sarkus]

So since the update, this is now happening (http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/541781415181132196/E19E90BD6751B426FB3AD17884B4AAA8AEE77773/). I thought it might be heat at first, but my temps are all fine. It also only happens when I'm in a vehicle and another vehicle explodes. It's done it out in the world driving around as well as during combat races.

There are a number of complaints about the patch causing problems.


I might have to turn in my gamer card. Playing on Hard is getting to be too hard. Not because I get killed (health regen + defib makes surviving easy) but because I'm running out of ammo. Almost every round gone after clearing out a bandit garage. Is there any way to get ammo other than looting it off enemies? I don't see any in the first seller's inventory.

The shop interface is kind of vague and I missed it at first as well. There is an arrow to the right of the list of items and it switches to ammo. The shopkeepers seem to have an unlimited supply of ammo to sell you, but you can only hold so much. Another trick is that on the sell screen an icon at the bottom as you click each item in your inventory tells you if it can be used in crafting or if its just for selling. Be carefull, though, as sometimes is says "$" when you might want to keep it. Like assembled lock grinders, for example.

[malkav11]

I might have to turn in my gamer card. Playing on Hard is getting to be too hard. Not because I get killed (health regen + defib makes surviving easy) but because I'm running out of ammo. Almost every round gone after clearing out a bandit garage. Is there any way to get ammo other than looting it off enemies? I don't see any in the first seller's inventory.

It's on a different page, but vendors do sell ammo.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

Awesome, thanks for the tips!

[TurinTur]

Some thought about Rage.

The game feels a bit schizophrenic. It doesn't know if to be an "old school" game or a "new generation" game. Sorry for using these shorthand expressions, i suppose you know what i am talking about.

For example, the strongest point of the game is the FPS part, the shooting in usually interior levels, that part is great in the weapon's feel, the sounds, animations, AI, variety thanks to ammo types and gadgets, 60 fps, etc. That part of the game, even with the novelties it does have in comparison with the past id games, it feels inside the "old school" realm, i mean, it's a fast pace action shootfest against fast jumping mutants and cool bandits and soldiers with shotguns, machineguns, etc.

But that "old school" part of the game is, and allow me the expression, "contaminated" by a more modern game design, like the health regeneration, the generous defibrillator and the low difficulty in general. So in the end it doesn't have the same feeling as the old id games.

Does that mean they wanted to make a more modern experience? If that's the case, why did they make a plot that sucks so much? Because if they wanted to make a old school experience i could understand it, but in modern fps if you make a fps with focus on the single player experience, you need a more decent storytelling.

There is an exception where old fast arcade combat and bad or void story is "allowed" in modern gaming, and it's when you game have a strong coop component, like full 4 player coop in the campaign. Then people doesn't see your action as shallow and they ignore the story, the focus is in playing with your friends.

My point is,
-If they wanted to make a "modern old school" game, they should have added a stronger coop component. It's "in", for lots of people is the way to play these games.
-If they wanted a proper old school sp game, they shouldn't have been so generous with the difficulty and health.
-If they wanted to make a true modern game, they should have cared more for the story, atmosphere, an open world a bit more developed, etc.

[anaqer]

So far, I'm really not keen on the mission design. If you let me find that Juno guy and the big obvious satellite alignment switch before I receive the quest for it (which is fine), why can't you let me tell the quest giver right away that I've already found him / turned it on (well, I would have)?

[IkeVandergraaf]

So I was just trying to do the job board mission where you have to snipe all the mutants to protect the guy fixing the pipeline... Man, that one's hard. Three attempts so far.

Stupid sniper rifle doesn't shoot fast enough.

I'm having a really hard time with this one also. I'm playing on hard and I suck with the sniper rifle. I am getting the upgrade, so that's not the problem.

[TurinTur]

It's pretty hard to hit the mutants while they are running, so if there is no easy target, try to wait until the closest mutant reach the guard (it will stop there) to snipe the mutant just before his attack connects.

[anaqer]

Hah, just found the teeth... the rest of the easter eggs seem a bit weak so far, but I have to give it to them, I wasn't expecting to see those in the game. Nice.

[nKoan]

I had to use walkthroughs found on the web, but I was able to find the Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake rooms. They were pretty neat.

[MSUSteve]

I played a good amount of RAGE this weekend. I'm really enjoying the game. I find myself addicted to upgrading my car and just completed the first round of Mutant Bash TV, which let me acquire a Cuprino class ride.

Speaking of Mutant Bash TV, it seems a little unfair that I have to expend all of my own ammo to compete. In the races I'm provided a certain allotment of weapons and devices to use, but in MBTV, I'm stuck with whatever I brought in. I got a couple of refills during the first round I played though, but nowhere near enough to return me to my pre-MBTV ammo count. Certainly the money I win is enough for me to restock at least my regular ammo, but it's still a little irritating.

MBTV also reaffirmed my feelings on the shotgun. It just doesn't have enough spread and enough power, at least on Hard difficulty.

I've been selling everything but the crafting components and ferrite (or whatever). Is there any good reason to hold onto oil/gas cans, or any other non-crafting loot?

[nKoan]

I never found a use for the random items like oil/gas cans, books, etc. I sold everything with the $ on it, but kept anything that could be used for a recipe (even the ones that said 'Recipe unknown' underneath them).

[Tim James]

Rather than name dropping Easter eggs, I'll tell everyone about my experience playing with both the gamepad for driving and mouse and keyboard for shooting.

It works great. When you enable the gamepad it switches all the interface icons to button keys, but it's not hard to remember to press E or enter or arrow keys. (It's 2011 and game developers still think we want to use enter and arrow keys, lawl.) I've enjoyed the driving parts with the gamepad. I don't play a lot of console games so the arcade racing is new enough to be interesting to me.

There's only one annoyance. I have to drop the gamepad on the carpet so I don't hear it vibrating while I'm playing with the mouse and keyboard. It's still worth it.

[TurinTur]

MBTV also reaffirmed my feelings on the shotgun. It just doesn't have enough spread and enough power, at least on Hard difficulty.



What? MBTV is mostly all small mutants, and they die from one hit of the shotgun, if you aim for the chest. Just wait until they are in the 0-3 mts range.

[TurinTur]

I changed the controls for the vehicle (in keyboard). keys cursor for movement, space for shooting, wasd for the 4 items, q for using it, shift for turbo, control to handbreak. I thought on trying the 360 pad once, but in the end i forgot about it.

[Tim James]

Yes, I don't know why everyone complains about MBTV. I don't want to spoil anyone with my simple strategy, but once I came back there a second time I won easily on Hard.

It feels like nitpicking design decisions again. I suppose it's odd. But it's not difficult enough to matter.

[Ginger Yellow]

MBTV also reaffirmed my feelings on the shotgun. It just doesn't have enough spread and enough power, at least on Hard difficulty.


Two words: Pop rockets.

[MSUSteve]

What? MBTV is mostly all small mutants, and they die from one hit of the shotgun, if you aim for the chest. Just wait until they are in the 0-3 mts range.
That hasn't been my experience, at least not consistently. If they're right on top of me, yeah, one shot seems to do the trick. But even if they're back only a couple of paces, it seems like significantly less damage is done. I play a lot of shooters on console, and while I won't claim to be any kind of professional, I don't usually have this much trouble hitting enemies at point blank range with a shotgun equivalent. Regardless, it's not ruining the game or anything. I'm really really enjoying the game.

[Tim James]

Are you having trouble hitting them or dropping them? They are very hard to hit even with mouse and keyboard because they actually dodge and run by you. They don't always go down with the first shot, but it's usually enough to stagger them and hit them again. Against any kind of ranged enemy I usually switch to something else or sprint and shoot them up close.

[sluggo]

I just started playing, but I thought the opening was hilarious. You've been awake 20 minutes, John Goodman gives you a lift to his garage, hands you a gun and says, "I'm going to need you to murder my neighbors. By yourself." And you do it, no questions asked.

How is it that a game can be in development 7 years and that's what they went with?

[WarrenM]

Does the assault rifle ever become useful? Right now it feels like I'm throwing insults at bad guys, they die so slowly. The pistol is WAY more effective at taking guys out.

[Ginger Yellow]

How is it that a game can be in development 7 years and that's what they went with?

Remind me how the realistic plot of Quake went.

[Ginger Yellow]

Does the assault rifle ever become useful? Right now it feels like I'm throwing insults at bad guys, they die so slowly. The pistol is WAY more effective at taking guys out.

It's certainly been that way for me. Later on you get ammo for the assault rifle that is supposed to be better against armoured enemies, not to mention a couple of upgrades that make it more accurate. But I haven't really experimented with it much as I much prefer fatboy pistol, sniper rifle and pop rocket shotgun.

[TurinTur]

Two words: Pop rockets.

The game is by the way too generous with the pop rockets, dynamite bolts and stuff like that that kills in one hit. Yeah, i confess they are awesome to use, but they should have a bit more of restraint in weapons like that.

[TurinTur]

Does the assault rifle ever become useful? Right now it feels like I'm throwing insults at bad guys, they die so slowly. The pistol is WAY more effective at taking guys out.

There are two upgrades for the AR, buy them to improve the accuracy and recoil.

At long range aim to the head in bursts, at close range just unload the entire magazine on enemies :P.

[Ginger Yellow]

At long range aim to the head in bursts, at close range just unload the entire magazine on enemies :P.

The thing is, at long range you might as well use a sniper rifle, or even the pistol. And at close range you might as well use the shotgun, especially with pop rockets. I can see the assault rifle being useful in theory at mid-range, but in practice it's rarely worth the hassle of switching. It's basically an "I'm out of other ammo options" weapon for me.

[nKoan]

I used the AR quite a bit after getting the two upgrades. That is, until I got the Authority gun which is everything the AR is, but with more damage and a real scope.

[TurinTur]

Oh, hell, let's make a little revision of the weapons. Btw, i love how you examine the weapons each time you get a new one.

Spoilers of weapons and ammo types! If you care for that.

Pistol. Typical starting weapon, but at least it's done with competent talent.The default ammo is Weak after the first two hours of the game, but i still used against mutants if there weren't a lot of them.

Fat boy: the magnum of Rage, high caliber ammo pistol with better damage and much better stopping power (important in this game). Good ammo, if not very original (it's basically the same behavior as the normal ammo, just more power)

Fat Mommas: Even more power on this ammunition, making the pistol a cannon on you hand, but i personally didn't craft a lot of this ammo, i prefer to use the tnt component for other types.

Killbursts: Good idea, and it feels good to unload in a instant 6 bullets on a enemy, but from a practical standpoint it was one of the less used ammunition for me, the reload is too slow for each shot, and the damage is not that good.

Shotgun: Good early weapon with the virtue of feeling useful even on later stages. Because the good ol' shotgun always have a decent amount of omph, and like every other id game the combat at close range is usual. It's a semi shotgun, so the DPS it can unload in seconds 7 or 8 rounds, making it useful for tough enemies.

Sawed-off double cannon shotgun: Twice the power, less range, much worse rate of fire than the normal shotgun. Having in account everything, the normal shotgun is on average better, but this version is still useful on occasions where you find enemies individually and not in groups, which is when you want to deliver lots of damage in one hit, even if the second hit, if needed, will be slow.

Pop rockets: One of the best ammunition in the game. Actually, one of the best ammunitions in videogames. Interestingly, it can be used also at very long ranges, but it does have a slight arc in the flight path, so it needs a bit of skill to use without wasting ammo. The damage radius also can be used to hit enemies behind cover without having to flanks.

Pulse shots: So they do more damage to robots and Authority guys (more to shield guys?). Ok, i truly didn't care for this munition in my game. It's much more precise than the other shotgun ammo, btw.

Assault rifle. Cheap post-apocalypse clonic AK assault rifle, it's not very good, but it does have a high rof and the default munition is plentiful. The two upgrades of the weapon improves the recoil and spread of the weapon, making it more useful for medium range-far range engagements where the pistol feels weak and the shotgun is null (and maybe you are keeping the sniper rifle ammo for more important or truly far away enemies). Not the best weapon of the game, but it feels like like a decent polyvalent weapon to use when you don't have time to think and want some to use both for close range and far away enemies, for individuals and groups. I suppose that's the true feature of this weapon, flexibility, as you all have said there are better weapons for each individual case.

Feltrite AR round: Twice the damage to armored enemies, it should be pretty clear to know when to use it. One of the most rare munitions in the game, in the other hand, even if it's not THAT good.

Will continue tomorrow.

[RobotPants]

I'm only about 5 hours in, but I've been using the shotgun almost exclusively. The sound of it is fantastic.

[Bill Dungsroman]

The game seems solid after the patch with my ATI 6970. I didn't notice any more artifacts. I got rid of the Rageconfig.cfg and used the in-game options. I also bumped it up to FOV 90. It looks good. The only major annoyance left is the mouse pointer sensitivity within the UI screens.

Ooh which patch, Tim? I have the same card.

[Case]

The game is by the way too generous with the pop rockets, dynamite bolts and stuff like that that kills in one hit. Yeah, i confess they are awesome to use, but they should have a bit more of restraint in weapons like that.

Dynamite bolts are fun. Shoot the bad guy, here them say, "Oh, SHIT!" then they blow up.

[TurinTur]

The game seems solid after the patch with my ATI 6970. I didn't notice any more artifacts. I got rid of the Rageconfig.cfg and used the in-game options. I also bumped it up to FOV 90. It looks good. The only major annoyance left is the mouse pointer sensitivity within the UI screens.

Try this

Add +cvar m_menu_sensitivity -0.2 to your Steam launch properties

[Tim James]

Ooh which patch, Tim? I have the same card.The normal Steam patch that came out this weekend. Have you tried playing since then? If you're still having problems, then I'm not sure what's going on.

[Tim James]

By the way, I don't think anyone spelled out exactly how to increase FOV from the command line. To increase it by 10 degrees, put "+cvaradd g_fov 10" in the launch options within the Steam game properties. (Or maybe you only need +cvar, I don't know.)

The default is 80. That's not horrific, but I caught myself a few times thinking how restricted it was, especially in a turning battle with other cars.

[Dr. Quasius]

The normal Steam patch that came out this weekend. Have you tried playing since then? If you're still having problems, then I'm not sure what's going on.

In my case the patch and a launch command solved every problem I was having. There are still a few people with ATI cards having problems, but the vast majority are able to play the game now.

[Joe M.]

In my case the patch and a launch command solved every problem I was having. There are still a few people with ATI cards having problems, but the vast majority are able to play the game now.

Yeah, my problems magically fixed themselves this morning after cleaning out my CFG files and applying a few tweaks from the forums. Namely:


I added these to my launch options:

+com_skipIntroVideo 1 +seta com_allowconsole 1 +vt_maxPPF 8 +jobs_numThreads 0

And then my rageconfig.cfg is as follows:

seta com_videoRam "1024"
seta image_anisotropy "4"
seta image_usecompression "1"
seta image_lodbias "-1"
seta image_useCache "1"
seta image_cacheMegs "200"
seta image_cacheMinK "50"
seta m_smooth "0"
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 "8192"
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly "8192"
seta vt_pageimagesizeunique "8192"
seta vt_maxPPF "8"
seta vt_lodBias "-1"
seta vt_minlod "-1"
seta vt_maxaniso "2"


And now I'm getting a solid 40-60 fps, no corrupted textures with minor amounts of pop in on my 1GB HD4870. For some reason running fullscreen instead of windowed significantly improved performance, so one might try that if the game feels a little sluggish.

Also, if you haven't been trolling the Bethesda forums, one of the posters there created a handy CFG maker: http://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/rage/

[sluggo]

Remind me how the realistic plot of Quake went.

The difference, of course, is that Quake didn't even pretend to have a plot. Every level had an exit, and monsters trying to kill you, and you simply killed them out of self defense. In context of the weird game world, your actions still made sense.

Rage, on the other hand, goes to a lot of trouble to set up a narrative that makes no sense at all. Most shooters establish simple self-defense as a justification for bloodshed; your first mission in Rage is a suicide mission for a guy you barely know, to slaughter a group of people who just let you pass without incident. The more appropriate course of action at that point is to just shoot John Goodman's character and his buddy in the head and figure out a plan from there.

But what bugs me the most is how easily that opening could have been tweaked to make sense. Instead of the bandits just letting you pass, maybe they open fire or there's a canyon chase, establishing a threat that needs to be dealt with ASAP. Maybe Goodman is injured, which is why you need to go it alone. Maybe they have supplies you feel obligated to retrieve as payback for being rescued. Developers spend so much time trying to make sure the opening segments of their games hit just the right notes; after 7 years in development, this one struck me as downright bizarre.

[MSUSteve]

There was some discussion on this a few pages back. Suffice to say, I completely agree about the opening, but find it amusing to think of the main character as a barely contained homicidal maniac.

[sluggo]

Ah. Now that I'm playing it, I should probably catch up on the most recent 30 pages of this thread. :)

OTOH, I'm playing on a PC with an NVIDIA GTX 260 (hardly cutting edge), and no issues so far. Plays extremely smooth at 1920x and no crashes ... yet.

[Sarkus]

So far, I'm really not keen on the mission design. If you let me find that Juno guy and the big obvious satellite alignment switch before I receive the quest for it (which is fine), why can't you let me tell the quest giver right away that I've already found him / turned it on (well, I would have)?

You aren't supposed to explore much on your own. Within specific mission areas, yeah, go for it. But just wandering around the wasteland has very limited value (outside discovering the optional sewer levels).


I've been selling everything but the crafting components and ferrite (or whatever). Is there any good reason to hold onto oil/gas cans, or any other non-crafting loot?

As noted, when you go to the sell screen and select an item you will see an icon below. That tells you whether it has potential crafting value or is just for cash generating purposes. Oil and gas, for example, are just for selling. But be careful, as the game will show the cash icon for crafted items, so don't just blindly sell based on the icon. And the ferrite can be sold or either held on to, but apparently its uses are limited.

[Joe M.]

I don't know why you're having such a hard time with the opening. Goodman rescues you from two bloodthirsty bandits, whose deaths will shortly prompt their bandit friends to come for you and the dude who rescued you. The logic seems fine to me. Really, the only iffy thing for me is why they would just let you pass in the vehicle if they're supposed to be a ruthless band of shitbags. But honestly, I don't dwell too much on it because I'm too busy shooting things.

[Ginger Yellow]

Rage, on the other hand, goes to a lot of trouble to set up a narrative that makes no sense at all.

Well, it doesn't go to much trouble, which is kind of the point. But I'm not denying it's dumb. I'm just wondering why you expected any different from id. All their plots are flimsy excuses to shoot things in the face.

[TurinTur]

It's kind of funny if you think about the story and the effect on the game. I critizied the main plot before, but actually is only part of.. what, 20% of the game? The other 80% you are doing missions for the mayor of the town or the sheriff or random npc with no relation with the Authority or the Resistance.
Why? Just because.

[WarrenM]

I'm just wondering why you expected any different from id.
Nobody would have except that they said, time and time again, that the plot was going to be awesome and engrossing. I guess shame on people for believing them? I dunno...

[mono]

Nobody would have except that they said, time and time again, that the plot was going to be awesome and engrossing. I guess shame on people for believing them? I dunno...


I don't follow much press, but did they really say that? I'm sure they may have suggested that they'd focus on story more than their previous titles, but did they actually say that Rage had an awesome and engrossing narrative?

[WarrenM]

I don't follow much press, but did they really say that? I'm sure they may have suggested that they'd focus on story more than their previous titles, but did they actually say that Rage had an awesome and engrossing narrative?
Yes, in those vid doc things they published. I don't remember the exact wording but they definitely promised an awesome storyline.

[Telefrog]

Additionally, remember that unlike previous id games, this was id and Bethesda saying that the story was going to be awesome.

[Paul_cze]

The excuses of "this is id game, what did you expect?" are quite annoying.
Sure, this is id, but:

1) this is 2011, not 1997
2) they are trying a lot more than they did in quake/doom days, with many NPCs, non combat zones, quests..

If they go to the trouble of making a game where sizeable portion of gameplay takes place in noncombat zones, talking/shopping with NPCs, they could have gone to the trouble of making the story and writing good.

[TurinTur]

Yep, Paul got it right.

[Sarkus]

I'm up to the part of the story involving the Resistance and the Authority and it's pretty hard to see why I should care about this or why I'm involved. Like much of the story, its all rather flimsy in terms of reasoning and logic.

[Tim James]

they could have gone to the trouble of making the story and writing goodIt's one of those things where I don't really care as it is, but in an ideal world I'd certainly love for it to be good.

This is an obvious truism -- we'd all like as many good things as possible. It'd be nice if they went the extra mile. It's like the icing on the cake. But it doesn't always work out that way. So in situations like this I think it's best to acknowledge the failure, try to keep it from ruining the rest of the game, and add another dose of skepticism the next time they talk about story.

[RepoMan]

I think it's basically down to Carmack not shedding his preconceptions quickly enough. A while ago in this thread someone mentioned that quote of his about story in shooters being about like story in porn movies, in that no one cares.

Thing is, that's no longer nearly as true as it used to be. id got the memo about needing to beef up and broaden the gameplay, but not about needing to do the same with the writing and the world-building.

Hopefully they will get that memo by the time they make Rage 2, because then they would really be firing on all 21st-century cylinders. Unfortunately I am not sure I would bet on it.

[Tim James]

id got the memo about needing to beef up and broaden the gameplay, but not about needing to do the same with the writing and the world-building.Good point. One step at a time, at least. Personally I'm thrilled the only tedious narrative developing is about the story and world building. I don't think that will be quite as overwhelming as comments on monster closets and dark rooms like we saw after Doom 3.

[mono]

I think it's basically down to Carmack not shedding his preconceptions quickly enough. A while ago in this thread someone mentioned that quote of his about story in shooters being about like story in porn movies, in that no one cares.

I don't think Carmack is that terribly involved w/ the creative development. The culture at id certainly doesn't prioritize story, but as I posted earlier, I'm more than happy to lay the blame for the moribund state of id's narrative creativity at Tim Willits' feet. He's been at the helm long enough to prove he just doesn't have the chops. Now that id is owned by Zenimax, maybe some corp type can come in and take care of the unpleasant aspect of displacing him and moving someone else over to fill the role of creative director.

[razarok]

That's what I have, and seems to be the most problematic of the entire ATI line.

Edit: No problems anymore. See my post above yours, doing that should fix whatever problems you are having.

Thanks for the answer. I don't actually have the game yet as I'm somewhat swamped with games, but I was considering it.

[Bill Dungsroman]

Additionally, remember that unlike previous id games, this was id and Bethesda saying that the story was going to be awesome.

It's funny how many times this needs to be restated in this thread.

[Major Malphunktion]

The excuses of "this is id game, what did you expect?" are quite annoying.
Sure, this is id, but:

1) this is 2011, not 1997
2) they are trying a lot more than they did in quake/doom days, with many NPCs, non combat zones, quests..

If they go to the trouble of making a game where sizeable portion of gameplay takes place in noncombat zones, talking/shopping with NPCs, they could have gone to the trouble of making the story and writing good.

See, as someone who loves a good old school shooter, I could give a shit what the story or motivation is.
What is my motivation? Everything after a loading screen must die...before the next loading screen. Yep. That's it. I do not need some artificial incentive to jump into the game style I enjoy. The enjoyment is enough for me. Enemies in my world break down into archetypes, I don't care what they are called. Armored, fast, spooky, annoying.

And you know what.. I find Rage fun as hell. I enjoy it far more than most of the melodrama bullshit that pretends to be shooters these days. I don't want to be attached to the AI sidekick. I want to shoot things. Rage is great at the shooty bits. I'm ok with that.

[Telefrog]

And you know what.. I find Rage fun as hell. I enjoy it far more than most of the melodrama bullshit that pretends to be shooters these days. I don't want to be attached to the AI sidekick. I want to shoot things. Rage is great at the shooty bits. I'm ok with that.

I'm glad that id's failure to provide the promised story worked out for you, but for the rest of us it's still a failure.

[RobotPants]

I think all anyone's saying is that the game's enjoyable despite the idiotic story. But maybe if we keep harping on it in this thread, it'll change somehow.

[sluggo]

I have no problem with arcade shooters. If the plot to Serious Sam 3 is ZOMG! ALIENS! SHOOT THEM!!!, I'm fine with that.

But if you're going to open your game with 20 minutes of expostion, it should probably not be completely retarded. If you're going to have characters doing stuff other than shooting things, then you should try to make that stuff interesting and not have people going WTF the whole time. In other words, if you're not going to do something right, don't do it.

And I give id credit for trying to expand its horizons and do something beyond an arcade shooter, but I can only shake my head at the fact that they couldn't even get the opening hour right. I mean, whatever people hated about Doom 3, the story and exposition was at least competent and served the story and gameplay.

I mean, have we even talked about the introduction of the defibrulator yet? I'm fine with the actual mechanic, but the way it's introduced is one of the goofiest things I've ever seen in a shooter.

[WarrenM]

I think all anyone's saying is that the game's enjoyable despite the idiotic story. But maybe if we keep harping on it in this thread, it'll change somehow.
What would be nice is if people could stop trotting out, "I don't care about the story, it's still fun!" Yes, nobody is talking about that. It's a (seemingly) simple point that the story that was promised and the one that was delivered are vastly different. That's it. Full stop. It doesn't need to be refuted.

[lordkosc]

Game is a lot of fun co-op, wish there were more than 6 levels.

:)

[MSUSteve]

And you know what.. I find Rage fun as hell. I enjoy it far more than most of the melodrama bullshit that pretends to be shooters these days. I don't want to be attached to the AI sidekick. I want to shoot things. Rage is great at the shooty bits. I'm ok with that.


I think all anyone's saying is that the game's enjoyable despite the idiotic story. But maybe if we keep harping on it in this thread, it'll change somehow.
Right. I don't think anyone is saying it ruins the game...


But if you're going to open your game with 20 minutes of expostion, it should probably not be completely retarded.

[Drunkagain]

Story? Man I couldn't care less about the story. In an id game or any other game. I almost feel bad for developers that try so hard to give me a good story because all i ever do is press the buttons to get past the dialog so I cant get back to killing shit. I get that some people do care about the story so I do see that it's a legit criticism. But its probably the least important aspect of any game I play.

[sluggo]

13 years ago, Valve released Half-Life, which was so unanimously embraced that it spawned the entire concept of having a "Game of the Year edition."

The reason it did so -- or at least one of the key reasons -- was because people loved its story and narrative style. They loved the opening tram ride, they loved meeting the the Black Mesa staff and the little scripted events that happened throughout the game. Yeah, the combat was great, too, but the way gamers responded to all the narrative stuff changed the way the entire industry approached shooters overnight.

So for people who don't care about story, that's fine, but it's time to realize you're in the minority. Please stop telling us how story doesn't matter to you. The gaming industry stopped making games for you over a decade ago.

[stusser]

I mean, have we even talked about the introduction of the defibrulator yet? I'm fine with the actual mechanic, but the way it's introduced is one of the goofiest things I've ever seen in a shooter.
How would you do it better? Seems to me they took the most obvious path.

I care a great deal about story, but I didn't really expect it from id. I expect a new engine providing astonishing graphics, and several patches and driver updates later, when standing at medium distance from the scenery outdoors, we're there.

[Lh'owon]

The reason it did so -- or at least one of the key reasons -- was because people loved its story and narrative style. They loved the opening tram ride, they loved meeting the the Black Mesa staff and the little scripted events that happened throughout the game. Yeah, the combat was great, too, but the way gamers responded to all the narrative stuff changed the way the entire industry approached shooters overnight.

That's defining story in what I think is an appropriately broad way, and that's a really important point. When games have the plot advance in a really structured way - such as through cutscenes and rigid set pieces between segments of pure action - many people rightfully don't feel the story has much importance, especially because game narratives are rarely much to talk about in their own right. The story can feel like an interruption or breathing space before you get back to what you really want to do, blowing aliens apart or whatever.

But when the story plays out not only through pivotal moments, but also in an organic way through the world around you, gameplay and story become much less distinct. The Half-Life series is a great example of this - Black Mesa doesn't just feel like a shooting gallery, the whole idea of a facility under attack (both from an alien incursion and military) is inescapable throughout, meaning you're really playing the story.

A more recent example would be Human Revolution I suppose: it's no coincidence that the rigid, set-piece, cutscene-using boss battles were the most maligned part of the game.

[RobotPants]

What would be nice is if people could stop trotting out, "I don't care about the story, it's still fun!" Yes, nobody is talking about that. It's a (seemingly) simple point that the story that was promised and the one that was delivered are vastly different. That's it. Full stop. It doesn't need to be refuted.

But nobody's refuting it. And people keep trotting out that line because other people keep trotting out the line about how bad the story is. If someone says how terrible the story is, someone else is going to say it doesn't matter. Don't act like one opinion is somehow superior, that's just how this shit works. It's dumb to even argue about it, honestly, because we all know the story's ridiculous and bad and silly, even though they said it would not be those things.

[sluggo]

How would you do it better? Seems to me they took the most obvious path.

Well first, let me explain what I saw in the introduction, just in case I got it wrong.

You're in the first mission area, and you venture into what's an unavoidable trap. And you're killed or knocked unconscious or whatever.

And then for the first time, the game "breaks" (instead of teaching you stuff within the context of gameplay) and brings up this tutorial screen that explains how defibrulation works. When the O's are together, press a button to save yourself. Got it.

And then the minigame goes off, and I'm not anywhere in the vicinity of hitting it correctly, but I get credit nonetheless, because I'm sure they did focus testing that said people really hated when they died on the tutorial.

But the part that blew my mind is not that the defibrulator worked, but it also (a) vaporized the enemy that was menacing me (b) untied my chains I was hanging from and (c) set me down on the platform.

After that, I just stared at my screen and thought, did that really just happen? What kind of crazy freaking defibrulator is this?

What would I do different? I guess I could come up with a number of tweaks to that scene, but overall, I'd say ... something that didn't seem 18 kinds of crazy. Did I misinterpret how that scene went down?

[nKoan]

The defibrillator also does a good job of restoring missing heads.

[stusser]

No, you pretty much got it. The defibrillator also does damage to any enemies close to you. Otherwise you could revive with 4 health and get instantly killed again. I don't think you can actually fail it; if you mess up you just resurrect with less health, which is fine because it regenerates anyway.

I dunno about the chains, I didn't even notice that.

[lordkosc]

questions good sirs , after completing a sewer segment, if you go back to wellspring... on the job board it tells me to clear it out again, is this a bug ? or just making me do more busy work for cash? since all the good loot is gone on the first go through...

[Tim James]

Add +cvar m_menu_sensitivity -0.2 to your Steam launch propertiesThis didn't do anything for me to fix the high mouse sensitivity in menus. A quick Google search indicates this might've been disabled after the latest patch.

It's so silly. I get that 80% of users will be on gamepads, but at least let some unpaid intern fix mouse UI problems before the game is released.

[nKoan]

questions good sirs , after completing a sewer segment, if you go back to wellspring... on the job board it tells me to clear it out again, is this a bug ? or just making me do more busy work for cash? since all the good loot is gone on the first go through...

It a ploy to do one of two things, either to pad the gameplay time, or to allow you to shoot more stuff.

All the sewers have job board missions like that.

[TurinTur]

The sewers jobs are the only ones i didn't complete fully, i didn't care for these missions enough to play them again.

[TurinTur]

About the discussion of the plot and the storytelling, i suspect that what bothers to most people is not that the story is mediocre, hell most fps have also a mediocre story, it's the execution of the story, like the total lack of initial motivation and context for your character, or how you are transformed in total unknown dude converted in to-go hero of the town again without a proper logic behind it, or how they fail at "show, don't tell" maxim with the Authority, the tell a lot about them in the dialogue instead of showing off their oppression and how they pursuit ark dudes.

In other words, it doesn't have any ounce of believability.

[TurinTur]

Anyone playing the multiplayer? Comments about it?

[TurinTur]

UNFFF
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-eR4ZsfoTs

[TurinTur]

A pair of John Carmack tweets


@ID_AA_Carmack If RAGE for the PC had been done with DirectX rather than OpenGL, would we have had all the same problems?

@ID_AA_Carmack John Carmack
@karehaqt we probably will try a PC D3D port before D4 is done to see if it magically works better. Worry about the tex updates, though.


@ID_AA_Carmack @karehaqt so you answer others but not me? lol I'm not the only one mad, grow up an answer us you coward.

@ID_AA_Carmack John Carmack
@JeffHollingswor convince Sony to allow unbuffered hard drive IO and/or free up more OS mem and we can make it better.

[mono]

Did I misinterpret how that scene went down?

Not really. However, the text explaining the defib did elaborate that the closer you got the two circles together, the more health you'd regain. There was no fail. It also explained that nearby enemies would be stunned and/or killed. Everyone from an Ark is essentially a hot-rodded super cyborg deigned to survive and rebuild earth post-apoc, and I guess the defib electrical blast was a built in feature. I don't recall being in chains in the torture room, just groggy.

[Teiman]

Yesterday I was able to play a bit more and... woooooah man. This game graphics are impresive, and the female npc's a smoking'hot. I am true amazing by a lot of things.

Also, I love the spiderbots, I am considering using a moneycheat to have enough money to buy infinite materials to always have one. I like to have a robot pet :3

*claps* nice work, Id.

[TurinTur]

I think you can have almost always one sentry bot without need of cheats. The components are cheap enough.

[WarrenM]

I don't recall being in chains in the torture room, just groggy.
Pretty sure you were in chains when you were hanging from the ceiling.

[Sarkus]

Now that I'm on the main story fast track (in this case Return to the Dead City), I have to say that I'm not finding the game all that compelling. Shooting "Authoritiii" guys isn't all that exciting and I think I'm only pushing through because I know there is another area opening up soon.

[Case]

I was saving up my BFG ammo for the inevitable boss at the end... except there wasn't any. So I never fired the BFG.

[nKoan]

Yeah, the ending leaves much to be desired. It does set up the world nicely for DLC and sequels, but the ending is very unsatisfying.

[mono]

Pretty sure you were in chains when you were hanging from the ceiling.

Chains or a rope, yeah. Then they cut you down, you black out and they've brought you to the 'Kill Room'.

[Telefrog]

Best part of RAGE for me:



We have refunded your purchase of the items listed below. The credit will be appear in your Steam Wallet and is available for immediate use.

Refunded items:

Rage Pre-order


Suck it, Carmack.

[RedHerb]

I was saving up my BFG ammo for the inevitable boss at the end... except there wasn't any. So I never fired the BFG.

Tell me about it! My god that was dumb! What were they doing ?

While I didn't mind that there was no boss at the end, what they replaced that with was so feeble and lackluster. Just to compare, here are two examples of this kind of thing done to great effect just of the top of my head:


The end of resistance 3 there is no boss fight but an all in fight and intense battle.
The end of Killzone 2 (before the actual shitty boss fight)


Instead we get a less interesting version of the end of Half- life 2.

[Sarkus]

I made it to the second "hub" area. Kind of underwhelmed to be honest. And whats with the card game person acting like I've never played before? Almost sounds like they were supposed to be my first introduction to the game.

[Major Malphunktion]

SArkus, yeah that was annoying...missed script there.

[lordkosc]

Anyone tried the racing online? I waited in the lobby for about 10 minutes to see if I could get a public game going, and 1 person (at level 14) joined then left after 2 minutes.

I guess the multiplayer for this is dead already? lol.

[glimjack]

Monday night I played a bit of racing, and had very little wait for a 4 car match. However, I switched over to the co-op campaigns, because apparently I am a terrible racer...

[Dr. Quasius]

I was saving up my BFG ammo for the inevitable boss at the end... except there wasn't any. So I never fired the BFG.

I did that too. I never fired the thing because I was honestly expecting a Mecha-Cross or something of that sort. I also didn't go into the sewers, because I was going to do it later but then the game ended. I liked the game, but not enough to replay anytime soon.

[Sarkus]

I'm rather disappointed that they pulled the same exact thing in the second area as the first to get you the next car. "You can't go on this quest unless you get a better car. Luckily the same guy you beat for your first car upgrade is here with the type of car you need and ready to race again."

Plus the new car totally sucks.

[Juste]

This game is so strange.

The graphics are amazing, the gunplay is excellent, the enemies are varied and fun. The minigames are mostly excellent and there are lots of fun things to do in the world.

Yet the quest system is totally hopeless. "Go there. Fetch this. Go back" "Oh wait, i can do X for you but you need to fetch Y for me first". Why build this amazing looking game and filling it with all these fun things to do then design your core game, the things that should keep folks playing for a long time like it's 1996? I really, really want to like this game but the repetition is already getting to me and I'm not even out of Wellspring yet.

Oh, and the AI races has the worst case of rubberbanding ever. I mean, come on! I was leading a race last night and just could not shake one of the other drivers no matter what i did. Then i did a wrong turn and lost a lot of time, costing me first place. Or so i thought. When i turned the last corner the same opponent was just standing there idling, seemingly waiting for me to catch up then speeding up when i passed him. There really is no excuses for that.

[DKDArtagnan]

Complacency is the natural consequence of perpetual success.

[TurinTur]

Hey, they advanced their game design to 2007/8 levels. But we are in 2011. :(

I don't agree with the rubberbanding comment. Well, i agreed with it playing the first races, i saw some very suspect AI in racing... but later, i had some races where i could get the first place and open a nice gap between the second and me.

[WarrenM]

I agree, I've won a number of races by a pretty large margin.

[RobotPants]

The questing system is the worst thing about the game simply because it's so pointless. The story's not nearly good enough to justify making the player spend so much time not shooting stuff just to take part in it. The quests themselves are mostly great once you actually get to their location, but man is it tedious to keep going back and forth just to get another quest for an area you've been to several times already.

[Ninyu]

Got my wallet credit for this POS. Skyrim, don't let me down!

[TurinTur]

http://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/statuses/124916837791186945

We have a bicubic-upsample+detail texture option for the next PC patch that will help alleviate the blurry textures in Rage.

[Tim James]

Every time I start getting into it, they tempt me to wait for another patch. Back to The Witcher 2 once again.

[scharmers]

Reading all of this, and playing the game, I'm not seeing the full-on, DNF-style, "OMG I smugly got a refund" hate for this game, unless:
a) You are an ATI graphics card guy;
b) You think that your old 8800GT should be able to run this thing full-spec since it's just a console port (been there);
c) You don't like straightforward, competent manshoots, in which case you shouldn't be bothering posting in a thread about straightforward manshoots, and should be posting about how DX3's boss fights ruined the entire game or how Oblivion was a debacle.
Not that I want to become a RAGE apologist or glib enthusiast here, but shit people, this is one of the full price shooters that I've bought in the last year plus or so that I'm not bitterly disappointed about (CoDBlops and Bulletstorm: looking at you).

[Quitch]

a) You are an ATI graphics card guy;

That's about 40% of the market.

[Paul_cze]

My ingame counter tells me 18 hours 20 minutes and I am still not done with the game.
In every other shooter I would start to get bored by 6th hour, but not here...somehow the combination of awesome gun feel, minigames + racing + incredible artwork-like graphics and art design make me enjoy this game far longer.