Rage and the Tech Behind id Tech 5 172
MojoKid writes "id Software's long-awaited FPS, Rage, is set to ship in October. When it launches, Rage will be the first game to feature id's newest graphics engine, dubbed id Tech 5. id Tech 5 has evolved considerably since the company started talking about it four years ago, however. While it contains a number of additional features, MegaTexturing remains one of the game's most visible advances. MegaTexturing uses a single large texture to map the terrain of an entire area. Data from that texture is streamed in depending on where the player is standing and what's visible. Effects that would normally be blended in traditional tiled texturing can be baked into the megatexture and streamed off disc when needed. The advantage of megatexturing is that it allows artists to create unique environments rather than resorting to a variety of tricks to hide repetitive texture tiles."
id's Tim Willits spoke with Eurogamer about Rage's development, explaining how their goal of fast-paced action dictated certain design decisions. Rage will make use of Steamworks, but won't require a persistent connection for offline play. However, small parts of optional single-player content will only be available to players who buy the game new. Willits said, "Most people never find them. But as soon as you do, you're like, oh. And then you start to look for it. That's our first-time buyer incentive."
Re:Megatexture is asinine. (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess what? The vast majority of making something look good lies in the artists' realm.
You can put as many polygons onto the screen as you wish, but if you don't have someone competent painting them with the appropriate colors and putting them in the right place it's going to look bad.
Re:Megatexture is asinine. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a streaming system that lets artists paint unique textures rather than today's tiled patterns. That's a bad thing how? What exactly is it shifting responsibility for? Engines don't create the texture assets.
The key to good trolling is to sound just rational enough that a large swath of people won't dismiss you outright. Try again, anonymous coward.
and yet another game. (Score:4, Insightful)
gets sucked into steam.. sorry but i rather not be treated as a pirate first and a customer second. sadly most games including many indie titles have now jumped onto this bandwagon.
used to be a pretty avid gamer, not so much anymore. steam pushed me away because i did not want to trade being treated well as a customer for the 'oh shiny' aspect of being able to piss off my isp for downloading multi-gig games and a in game chat function with other people playing other games.
Sadly though this also means that the release of the doom3 source code will most likely be the last time id releases their engine source code to the community. like it or not steam is a drm platform first and foremost. So by tying in steam into id tech 5 means that the release of the source code will be a no go because it might allow others to de-steam other titles easier.
Re:Long term Id fan here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Except John has already said the engine is not suitable for those sorts of games:
He added that id Tech 5 is "not magic," and the engine is good for certain kinds of games such as Rage, but not as much for games such as Grand Theft Auto that render cities with lots of surface area.
"The megatexture direction [in id Tech 5] has some big wins, but it's also fairly restrictive on certain types of games," he said. "It would be a completely unacceptable engine to do [Bethesda's Elder Scrolls V:] Skyrim in, where you've got the whole world, walking across these huge areas."