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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."

#rage I'm still chugging my way through Rage, but so far I've grown quite attached to a game that feels like it comes into its own over the course of its dozen-hour-or-so campaign. More »

According to a surprised Kmart Gamer, the avatar of all things gaming and Kmart related, the PlayStation 3 version of Dark Souls outsold Rage on the PS3 yesterday, defying expectations, while Rage reigned supreme on the Xbox 360. [Twitter] More »

Why, that’s the most boring headline I’ve ever written here. Still, it’s late, I’m tired, I’ve spent half the day unsuccessfully trying to track down an NVIDIA card so I can play Rage without feeling nauseous, but now I don’t have to because ATI have put out a fix for the unhappy state of the game on Radeons. Unlike the first supposed fix, this makes things better rather than worse.(more…)

Those of you who play vidya games primarily on consoles may have insulated yourself from an increasingly common scourge facing your PC gaming brethren: problematic PC ports. While we're sorry to say that Rage is suffering from some launch-day issues, the PC gaming godfathers at id Software aren't abandoning the platform. So put down those pitchforks. And torches.

The above video is a good example of the issue: textures pop-in every time the camera moves. It would appear the high-res MegaTextures that id's John Carmack has been talking about for years are being dropped from memory immediately and not streaming in quickly enough. The Xbox 360 release, underpowered relative to the gaming PC in this video, exhibits very little if any texture pop-in which sort of puts the blame purely on your friend and ours: graphics card drivers!

Bethesda Blog says that, in addition to the texture issues, there are also screen tearing problems but insists that both problems "can be attributed to driver issues" which id Software is "currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve [...] as quickly as possible."

For AMD graphics card users, "you should not use" the beta driver that Bethesda shared yesterday. The Battlefield 3 beta drivers will crash to desktop "100% with those drivers," and Beth Blog recommends updating "to the most recent driver when AMD updates, which we're told will be in a few hours." Nvidia users "should try updating Rage to the current beta driver" and Beth Blog will let everyone know when that's available. Be patient, PC gamer. It's been seven years since the last internally developed id Software game; another day or so isn't going to kill you.

#journalism I heard yesterday that games journalist Brandon Sheffield gave a tough interview to some of the guys who made Rage, this week's big new first-person shooter. More »

Frankly, we're not sure what's better, the fact that there's a Wolfenstein 3D room in Rage, or imagining the reactions from gamers too young to know what Wolfenstein 3D is.

Is your PC version of Rage crashing to the desktop? Do you have an ATI graphics card? Bethesda's Pete Hines tweets that a conflict between ATI's Battlefield 3 beta drivers and Rage might be the cause. Time for a rollback! More »

Expect a full review of Rage from Mr. Shoemaker pretty soon.

If there was one thing people expected from Rage, it's that the PC version would be impeccable on day one. If PC owners could count on any developer to knock it out of the park, it would be the father of the first-person-shooter. Right? Right?

Unfortunately, for reasons partially out of id Software's control, Rage has had a bumpy launch since its midnight unlocking around the Internet.

The response from players has been...loud. Just take a look at the gaming section of Reddit today.

The main issue is performance, which id Software and Bethesda Softworks are currently squarely blaming on driver issues. Players are experiencing an incredible amount of texture pop-in, especially so on ATI/AMD cards. We can confirm this, having loaded Rage on our in-office PC. It's inexcusably bad right now.

The texture pop-in is not exclusive to PC; it's also very much present on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

There are problems with both ATI/AMD and nVidia cards, but it's reportedly most egregious on ATI/AMD.

"While many folks are playing RAGE on PC and not running into issues," said the company on its blog, "we’re aware that some of you are experiencing issues with screen tearing and texture issues. These problems can be attributed to driver issues, and we’re currently working with Nvidia and AMD to resolve them as quickly as possible."

For the moment, it's recommended you do not update the ATI/AMD drivers and wait for the updated drivers to come "in a few hours," according to AMD's Catalyst developer on Twitter. Also, if you're using the Battlefield 3-specific drivers, the CTD (Crash to Desktop) rate is apparently 100%. A driver/battlefield-3/61-27006/ rollback is necessary there.

nVidia owners should be using the current beta drivers, which will be automatically include more Rage-specific improvements as they happen, so long as you've flipped updates on.

Expect more updates on this throughout the day.

Good news! Rage is now on my PC, and I have begun to play it.

Bad news! I’m seeing quite a few technical problems on my PC. To the point where I’m not sure I can keep playing. Sounds like I’m not alone either.(more…)

#totalrecall It's not every day you get to play a new id game. If you're not counting iPhone games (and we're not counting iPhone games) or re-releases, the last new title the studio released was Doom 3. And that was in 2004. More »

RAGE isn't what you think it is.

In fact, it's easiest to tell you what RAGE isn't right away. It's nothing like Fallout 3. It's nothing like Borderlands. It's not an RPG, though Id and Bethesda have used RPG terminology in describing it. It's not much of an open world. It's not very big. It's not very long.

And unfortunately, it's not the return to prominence that Id fans have been hoping for.

#gutcheck id Software's Rage is out there ready to be purchased, or rented, and played. But should you invest the time and money? Here's Kotaku's Gut Check: More »

Rage is now available on Steam in North America! Other regions will release soon, please check the game page for more details.

A groundbreaking first-person shooter set in the not-too-distant future after an asteroid impacts Earth, leaving a ravaged world behind. Featuring intense first-person shooter action, breakneck vehicle combat, an expansive world to explore and jaw-dropping graphics powered by ids revolutionary id Tech 5 technology, RAGE promises an experience like no other.

Everybody knows you've got to have beer, wingsticks, and sentry guns in order to properly RAGE.

You may have noticed the Rage review is live on IGN's Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 channels, but not on the PC channel. I haven't yet had an opportunity to check out the final build of the PC version, so I'm currently waiting to play alongside everyone else. When I feel like I've put in enough time, a review will appear...