Rage Message Board

The GTA III Rage Team is hard at work making Grand Theft Auto 3 run on Rage, the engine powering the most current lineup of Rockstar's titles, from Grand Theft Auto 4 to Max Payne 3. The GTA 3 Rage project includes previous mods from the Rage Team, including GTA III HD Cars - HD Claude, GTA SA: Liberty City, Project Oblivion and GTA III HD.

The video above shows off what we can expect in a Rageful GTA 3 when the mod drops.

RAGE 1.2 Patch Release Notes
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This RAGE patch adds some new features and addresses various compatibility and performance issues.

New Functionality
------------------------
Texture Detail: Enabling Texture Detail will improve up-close texture quality by performing upsampling with adaptive sharpening. This does not update or increase the resolution of the base textures included with the game but improves the perceived resolution and crispness of textures. This is an intensive operation and is only recommended if you have a quad-core CPU or higher. Please disable this feature if you encounter poor performance, stability issues or are given a notification that the game has run out of memory after loading a map. The Texture Detail option can be found in the Settings -> Video Menu.

Transcode Benchmark: A new benchmark has been added that determines how quickly texture data can be translated from the compressed format on your hard drive to a format that can be used by your video card. The higher your score, the faster your PC is able to make higher detail texture data available. This is not a traditional benchmark that runs through a scene of the game and returns a min/max/average framerate based on hardware and video settings. Other than the GPU Transcode option, the score will not be affected by changing any video settings. The Transcode Benchmark option can be found in the Settings -> Video Menu.

Error Messaging: If you attempt to apply video settings on a system that is not capable of handling them, an error may come up stating that your system ran out of memory. You will be allowed to continue, however, it is recommended that you either reduce your video settings until this message no longer occurs or you will be asked to restart the game with lower video settings. If you ignore this error and continue playing without altering your settings you will likely encounter texture corruption and/or system instability.

Automatic Video Settings Fallbacks: When an advanced video setting fails to apply, the setting may be set back to a safe default. Anti-aliasing will fall back to NONE if the allocation of a multi-sampled FBO fails. Texture Cache will fall back to SMALL when the allocation of a large texture cache fails. Texture Detail will fall back to OFF when large page table allocations fail. On failure, these settings will automatically fall back to safe values without the need for user input.

Patch Changes / Fixes
-----------------------------
- Fixed crash from potentially having stale transcode jobs in flight when switching between texture cache sizes.
- Fixed crash from using SIMD optimized memcpy with a PBO pointer that is not 16-byte aligned.
- Fixed GPU transcode option always turning off when restarting the game.
- Fixed progression in Dead City where player could not advance through sliding door en route to the defibrillator upgrade.
- Fixed CPU feature detection.
- Fixed issues with launching MP by using double quotes around path name.
- Fixed lack of texture detail on parts of the screen at high resolutions due to limited feedback analysis buffer.
- Fixed thread stack space usage and freed up 700 MB of virtual address space.
- Re-enabled UBOs.
- Adjustments to default VDM values for balance.

Shooting mutants? Psh, where's the challenge in that? Any Mutant Bash TV participant worth his weight in shotgun shells will tell you the true mark of great contestants is their ability to entertain the audience. Nothing makes for good programming like slicing and dicing some mutants!

Melee combat is just one of Rage HD's newest features in update 2.0. There are also two new episodes, Kraken and Aqueduct -- which players can purchase together for $.99 from the in-app store -- to play through and full iOS 5 support. And, for the best viewing experience, the app also supports HDMI out, in case you want to host your own Mutant Bash TV murder party.

Just, uh, don't tell people it's a murder party. They might get the wrong idea.

An "undisclosed number" of staff at Doom and RAGE developers id Software have been let go. [Gamasutra] More »

Rage experienced all sorts of issues on the PC at launch, but most have been sorted out by now.

Bethesda Softworks has confirmed surfacing reports about layoffs at id Software, but I don’t have details on whether the layoffs were across the board, Rage-specific or pulled from the Doom 4 team.

“As part of its standard business practice, id regularly evaluates staffing to ensure it has a workforce that meets the needs of the studio,” said VP of marketing and PR Pete Hines in an email.

“As part of that process, some id employees were recently let go, he continued. “id is still recruiting and hiring qualified developers, and development work on future id titles continues unabated.”

The release of a new game from id Software is always an event, but the response to Rage was a bit muted, especially in light of the monumental impact Bethseda’s own The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim had a few months later.

id Software was independent until 2009, when ZeniMax Media, who also owns Bethesda, picked it up.

id Software has talked about Doom 4 for years now, while the game remains shrouded in secrecy. John Carmack has talked about sequels to Rage, as well, but it’s unclear if those will ever go forward.

Just in case you didn't get a chance to wander around the Earth, post asteroid-smash, in id's Rage earlier this year, you can give the game a taster without investing any of your hard-earned cash (well, beyond an XBL Gold membership). The game's demo is now available on Xbox Live, and is expected out on PSN on December 6.

If you like what you see, don't forget that the title can be found in most Black Friday sales this weekend -- most retailers have it offered up for about $30 or so. And if you agree a little more with our review (that there are probably better games of this ilk out there right now), well hey, at least there are better games of this ilk out there right now, right?

#fineart Today's Fine Art features two men who worked on RAGE, id's recently-released desert shooter. One helped design (and build) the game's cars. The other, the game's mutants. More »

#pc It's been a big month for PC games, and things are about to get even bigger, so if you've been lazy and forgotten to update your graphics card drivers, you're going to want to fix that. More »

In a refreshing act of commenting on rumors and speculation, Bethesda has shot down the assertion that id Software's work on Doom 4 had been "indefinitely postponed." Kotaku relayed the story from a source "claiming" to be close to the publisher, and suggesting that Doom 4 development had been jettisoned in response to Rage's rough landing.

Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing at Bethesda Softworks, tweeted: "Re: DOOM 4 rumor, games are done when they are done and no title under development at id has been postponed --indefinitely or otherwise." In response to another journalist, Hines described the rumor as "complete bollocks." Hey, PR folks? More of this, please.

Though it may not be officially postponed -- strangled in its bed because a sibling brought home a mixed report card -- Doom 4 (working title) isn't likely to arrive any time soon. This is id Software, and the game was only announced in 2008, roughly a year after we first heard about Rage.

#rumor A source claiming to be close to the publishers of the recently-launched RAGE has told Kotaku that, at a recent "company wide" meeting held in Dallas, Bethesda and parent company Zenimax made the decision to "indefinitely postpone" development of Doom 4. More »

#rage You may recall that a couple of weeks ago, Gamasutra's Brandon Sheffield ran an interview with id Software's CEO Todd Hollenshead about Rage. In the interview, Sheffield expressed some doubts about the game, and wasn't convinced by many of Hollenshead's answers. It was a solid piece of journalism, and as our own Stephen Totilo pointed out, it's the kind of interview we could use more of. More »

Lists! Two of ‘em, in fact. But what do these lists do? They compare the top-ten selling PC games of last week on Steam with the top-ten selling PC games of last week at UK retail. What could we learn from them? Nothing, probably. Apart from which game companies became slightly richer over the last few days. Well done, those companies.(more…)

Rage is id Software's first big game since Doom 3, and many eagerly started playing in the IGN offices as soon as it was available. As you'll find described in the review, Rage's story sagged, the driving felt like filler and the quest design wasn't especially interesting. That being said, the phenomenal visuals, exciting first-person shooting sequences and cool upgrade systems more than made up for those issues, earning Rage an 8.5...

Question to the floor: how’s everyone doing with Rage at the moment? There seem to be mixed reports as to the efficacy of the recent patch – for some it did the trick, for others (especially on ATI cards – our own John Walker claims the game is still more or less unplayable on his 5850) it didn’t help the glitching and texture pop-in, and others still have claimed it made things even worse. Carmack claimed on Twitter yesterday that id are still monitoring forum reports, and suggested those experiencing difficulties browse said forum for help. They’re worth a check, even though it’s massively tiresome to have to do so for a game you paid good money for, as there are a raft of fixes and tweaks doing the rounds – most of which at least involve only the relatively simple act of downloading a replacement config file.(more…)

Users suffering from performance problems while trying to play the PC version of id Software's Rage should grab the latest patch. In addition to addressing numerous stability issues, the patch adds more video options to the in-game settings menu. In addition to anti aliasing and resolution, you can now adjust v-sync, texture cache and anisotropic filter...

#rage They invented the term, so why isn't deathmatch available in Rage? More »

#idsoftware Among amateur rocket-launching circles, there's a bounty called "The Carmack Prize". It's named for id boss, Doom co-creator and budding rocket scientist John Carmack, and will reward anyone who can get a home-made rocket 100,000 feet into space and capture some GPS data from it. More »

#rage The PC launch of id's anticipated shooter RAGE has been, well, a "Cluster!@#$". And that's in the developer's words. Does a massive update released over the weekend help things? More »

id’s legendary robo-brain John Carmack has broken the developer’s rather inadivsable silence about the state of Rage at launch on PC last week. Apology? Nah? Accepting blame? Nah. It’s all ATI’s fault that id released a game designed for future rather than existent drivers, he says. Oh, and the reason the game, once working, is still not as super-shiny as we might have hoped is because “We do not see the PC as the leading platform for games.” Here we go again.

In happier news, the first Rage patch is out, and thank the god of textures, it introduces a much-needed graphics settings menu to the game.(more…)

RAGE Patch Release Notes - October 8th 2011
-------------------------------------------

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.


VSync
-----

The new "VSync" option in the video settings menu allows you to remove
screen tearing. There are three options: ON, OFF and SMART.

When VSync is turned OFF you may experience screen tearing.

When VSync is turned ON you should not see screen tearing. However,
any time your frame rate drops below 60 frames per second you will
get a sudden more severe drop to 30 frames per second. This is how VSync
inherently works. If your computer cannot maintain 60 frames per
second and you miss the synchronization to the vertical retrace of
your monitor then you will miss a whole frame and synchronize to
the next frame instead.

Some graphics drivers now support a so called "swap-tear" extension.
You can try using this extension by setting VSync to SMART.
If your graphics driver supports this extension and you set VSync
to SMART then RAGE will synchronize to the vertical retrace of
your monitor when your computer is able to maintain 60 frames per
second and the screen may tear if your frame rate drops below 60 frames
per second. In other words the SMART VSync option trades a sudden drop
to 30 frames per second with occasional screen tearing. Occasional
screen tearing is usually considered less distracting than a more
severe drop in frame rate.

If your graphics driver does not support SMART VSync and you set VSync
to SMART in the video settings then RAGE will automatically fall back to
turning VSync OFF and you may experience screen tearing. The "swap-tear"
extension is brand new and may still present some issues on certain
graphics hardware. If you experience any problems using SMART Vsync
then set VSync to either ON or OFF. We are actively working with the
graphics hardware vendors to improve the "swap-tear" extension.

If changing VSync in the RAGE video settings menu does not appear to
make any difference then make sure you are not overriding the VSync
setting in the graphics vendor control panel. You can find the
graphics vendor control panel by right-clicking on the Windows desktop
and selecting the " control panel" option from the pop-up menu.

If you force VSync to the 'on' setting in the graphics vendor control
panel then you should not see any screen tearing in RAGE but you may
get a more severe drop in frame rate if your computer cannot maintain
60 frames per second.

If you force VSync to the 'off' setting in the graphics vendor control
panel then you may experience screen tearing no matter what setting you
use for the VSync option in the RAGE video settings menu.


Texture Cache
-------------

The new "Texture Cache" option in the video settings menu allows you
to increase the texture cache size to keep more texture data in
video memory.

If the Texture Cache is set to LARGE then RAGE will keep more texture
data in video memory. This may not only significantly reduce blurry
textures and texture popping, it will also allow complex scenes to be
rendered with more texture detail.

However, this may not work on computers that do not have enough system
or video memory, or you may experience a significant drop in performance.
If you experience issues due to hardware limitations you will have to set
the Texture Cache back to SMALL.

If after changing the Texture Cache to LARGE you experience a crash or
texture corruption (like a partially or completely blue world) then
the graphics driver may have run out of memory.

We are actively working with the graphics card vendors to resolve
any crashes.

If you do not experience a crash but you see texture corruption then you
may be able to get the large Texture Cache to work by accepting the change
and restarting the game. If you still experience texture corruption after
restarting the game you will have to set the Texture Cache back to SMALL.

You may also be able to improve the memory situation on your computer by
changing the Windows paging file management. Note that making changes to
the Windows paging file management may change the performance characteristics
of your computer. Any changes you make to your system configuration are
at your own risk. Always make backups of your system and revert these
changes if you notice undesirable side effects.

To change the paging file management on Windows Vista and Windows 7, first
press the "Start" button, then right-click on "Computer" and then select
"Properties" from the popup menu. Then select "Advanced system settings"
on the window that appears. Select the "Advanced" tab on the
"System Properties" window that is displayed and press the "Settings"
button under "Performance". Select the "Advanced" tab on the
"Performance Options" window that shows up next and press the
"Change..." button under "Virtual memory". Now uncheck the option
"Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" and make
sure that the option "System managed size" is selected on the
"Virtual Memory" window. Confirm the change by pressing the "OK" button
on each window. After making this change you will have to restart your
computer for the change to take effect.

To change the paging file management on Windows XP, first press the
"Start" button, then right-click on "My Computer" and then select
"Properties" from the popup menu. Select the "Advanced" tab on the
"System Properties" window that is displayed and press the "Settings"
button under "Performance". Select the "Advanced" tab on the
"Performance Options" window that shows up next and press the "Change"
button under "Virtual memory". Make sure that the option
"System managed size" is selected on the "Virtual Memory" window.
Confirm the change by pressing the "OK" button on each window.
After making this change you will have to restart your computer for
the change to take effect.


Anisotropic Filter
------------------

The new "Anisotropic Filter" option in the video settings menu allows
you to increase the anisotropic texture filtering.

Anisotropic filtering is a method to enhance the image quality of
textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles.

The anisotropic texture filtering in RAGE defaults to a low value to
accommodate for low-end graphics hardware. However, the anisotropic
filtering can be increased for high-end graphics hardware by setting
the Anistropic Filter option to HIGH in the video settings menu.

Do not force anisotropic filtering to the on setting in the graphics
vendor control panel because this may cause rendering artifacts in
the game.

Note that increasing the anisotropic filtering may improve the
texture quality while it may also decrease the frame rate.


Patch Changes / Fixes
---------------------

- Implemented workaround for AMD driver crash right after intro cinematic
on Win 7 32-bit systems.
- Disabled UBOs because they are causing animation issues with AMD drivers.
- Don't allow swap-tear to be enabled on AMD while the extension is not
exposed because it may crash.
- Support for new video settings: "texture cache", "vsync" and
"anisotropic filter"
- Automatically adjust vt_maxPPF based on the number of available cores.
- Improved performance for SLI cards when GPU transcode is enabled.
- Fix for GPU Transcoding option being disabled after exiting gameplay.
- Added safe mode to restore video settings to default values.
- Allow g_fov to be changed from the RAGE launch options in Steam.
- Server now forwards text chat from clients to all other clients while
in-game.


Known Graphical Issues
----------------------

The following issues were found using NVIDIA graphics hardware with
the GeForce R285 Driver or AMD graphics hardware with the AMD Catalyst
11.10 Version 2 Preview Driver.


- If you turn up both the screen resolution and anti-aliasing settings
to high values in the video settings menu and/or you enable
"GPU Transcode" then the screen may no longer update on some hardware
configurations. This means your system does not have the necessary
video memory to run with these high settings. You can re-enter the video
settings menu and lower your settings to restart screen updates.

- If you turn up both the screen resolution and anti-aliasing settings
to high values in the video settings menu you may experience a crash
if your system does not have the necessary memory to run with these
high settings. To avoid this problem you will have to re-enter the
video settings menu to lower the settings. If you can no longer launch
the game after changing the video settings to high values you can add
the following to your RAGE launch options in Steam:

+com_safemode 1

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam
and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in
the dialog that pops up. Adding this option will reset your video
settings to the default values the next time the game is launched.
When the game is launched in safe mode the game will show "safe mode"
in the corners of the screen. Do not forget to remove the safe mode
launch option after launching the game once to make sure you do not
lose your video settings each time you launch the game.

- Using a NVIDIA graphics card on Windows XP 32-bit or XP 64-bit, you
may experience a crash or hang when changing the screen resolution in
full screen mode or switching from windowed mode to full screen mode.
This has been identified as a graphics driver problem. We have spent
significant effort trying to work around this problem and were
successful in reducing the frequency of occurrence but a driver update
is necessary to completely fix the problem. We are actively working with
NVIDIA to make a solution to this problem available as soon as possible.

- Using an AMD graphics card, you may experience black flickering
artifacts on flags, banners and zip-lines if you run in full screen
mode. This has been identified as a graphics driver problem. We are
actively working with AMD on a solution to this problem.

- Using an AMD graphics card, you may experience black grid lines on
some graphical user interface (GUI) elements like the in-game mini-map.
This has been identified as a graphics driver problem. We are actively
working with AMD on a solution to this problem. If you find the grid
lines particularly distracting, you can add the following to the RAGE
launch options in Steam as a temporary workaround.

+vt_maxAniso 1

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam
and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in
the dialog that pops up. However, note that adding this setting will
lower the general texture quality in the game.

- If you have an AMD graphics card with a dual core CPU system you may
experience severe hitching and low frame rates. This has been
identified as a driver problem. We are actively working with AMD on
a solution to this problem. As a temporary workaround you may add the
following to the RAGE launch options in Steam:

+jobs_numThreads 0

The launch options can be found by right-clicking on RAGE in Steam
and selecting "Properties". Then click on "Set Launch Options" in
the dialog that pops up.

- If you are running RAGE in full-screen mode and you ALT-TAB to a
different application you may lose your VSync setting. When you
switch to a different application VSync stops functioning.
RAGE detects that VSync is no longer working and automatically switches
back to synchronizing to real-time to make sure the game time advances
in a consistent manner. We are actively working with the graphics
vendors on a solution to this problem.

#rage Appropriately enough, the season four finale of Breaking Bad is on AMC tomorrow night. You may recall that, in late August, Rage made a strange cameo in the meth-slinging drama, in which someone plays the game with a light gun. Well, Rage has returned the favor with a Breaking Bad prop cameo of its own. More »

Fans of Rage probably already caught the game's appearance in an episode of Breaking Bad from earlier this season. Now, fans of Breaking Bad can catch a neat reference to the show in Rage. Check out the video above to see the toothy Easter Egg in question.

Rage, the first id game since – careful now – Doom 3 – came out on Tuesday in American climes, and is due in the retailer-oppressed UK tomorrow. After initially losing a day to the PC version’s notorious technical problems, which ultimately led to picking up a different graphics card and manually tweaking configuration files, I’ve since been haring my way through its wastelands and tunnels, on foot and on wheels, and I’m ready to offer my verdict. Return to form, exploring new frontiers or compounding age-old problems? Let’s find out, stranger.(more…)

Yesterday, Rage's secret Wolfenstein room made its way around the internets, an easter egg homage to id Software's golden years. Everyone asked, "Where's the DOOM and Quake rooms?" Well, here you go ...

Alec and myself are busy playing Rage, and rather enjoying it, actually. That said, we had to do quite a bit of tweaking to get the damned thing working ok. We both used the fix detailed here in combination with enabling the GPU transcoding thing, while also updating drivers (particularly important for ATi cards). This seems to address most of the texture pop-in issues, and apparently ups the texture res, too. You’ll ideally need a card with 1.5gb VRAM to get a step up in texture quality, and if you have 3gb or more it’s reportedly possible to go higher still, although this article on the Geforce site said they found no immediate differences. Anyone with enorm-VRAM able to confirm?

Bethesda echo these and other fixes here.

Yesterday, Rage's secret Wolfenstein room made its way around the internets, an easter egg homage to id Software's golden years. Everyone asked, "Where's the DOOM and Quake rooms?" Well, here you go ...

#nvidia When Nvidia was in the Kotaku offices the other day showing off, well, something we can't quite talk about yet, they noticed we didn't have a dedicated gaming PC. (All of Kotaku's gaming rigs are in the homes of our writers, including mine.) So they had Falcon Northwest cook up a nice little rig—Intel i7 2600K (with a splash of overclocking), 4GB o'RAM, and a couple of GTX580 cards with a grand-and-a-half of onboard RAM in SLI—and let us use it for a while. More »

For us, Rage was "a scaffolding for a game of bolder ideas, ideas which, for whatever reason, aren't realized." The general feeling from other reviews is that it's a well-made effort from veteran studio id Software, though gameplay isn't anything better than what's out there now. The game is floating a metacritic score in the low 80s, with review scores scattered like buckshot.

• IGN (85/100): "Rage starts to drag toward the second half after most of the mechanics and upgrades are introduced because the fictional world isn't very interesting. Despite the lack of genuinely exciting context, all the content packed into Rage is still a blast to play, including the surprisingly entertaining car combat mode and co-operative challenges. "
• Giant Bomb (80/100): "Even if Rage were the worst game to come out in a long while, it would still arguably be the best-looking one. The sheer complexity of texture and detail packed into every one of the game's environments is nothing short of staggering, especially in the two town hubs that you'll return to again and again between missions."
• 1UP (B): "Rage fits that mold snugly, but it's nothing revolutionary. It comes from a different kind of Id, one that would rather play with existing conventions than reinvent them. Conversely, it's the same Id that puts look and feel on the same high pillar, and it's impossible to call Rage badly-composed. I just don't think it's going to be remembered as anything but a sleeper hit of the fall of 2011. "
• Edge (70/100): "In its later stages, Rage becomes a slog. Enemies get tougher, and the repeated pattern of rooms filling with monsters - which must be killed before, say, a door falls off its hinges - begins to drag. Objectives, meanwhile, rarely move beyond simple fetch quests. There's a fine line between sticking to what you're best at and being stuck in your ways, and id occasionally crosses it."