Rage Message Board

John Carmack, co-creator of iconic first-person-shooter Doom and one of the smartest minds in video games, has resigned from the development studio he helped co-found.Read more...

Rage, John Carmack's MegaTexture technical spectacle, is not the alpha and omega of its intellectual property, id Software co-founder Tim Willits told us during this week's QuakeCon 2013 event in Dallas, Texas.

"I'm proud of what we did, I'm proud of the universe that we built. The franchise is not dead," Willits said. "We're not doing anything immediately with it, but when I designed the universe, I designed it in such a way that it would be easy to step back into. I'm still proud that we did something that was different - it wasn't like the games that we've done in the past."

Willits also said that Rage's development fueled innovations in id Tech 5 that continue to pay off as the engine is adapted for use on next-gen consoles and in other Bethesda products. "We really tried to do one engine that worked for everything," he said. "It really helps establish a robust tech that, as John [Carmack] said last night, we're adding stuff into it based on the new consoles, and it's allowed people to make different games because the technology is flexible and robust and works on everything."

Last week, a patch hit Black Ops II that enraged some unreasonable Call of Duty fans so much, they started sending death threats to the game's design director, David Vonderhaar. While unfortunate, it's also not the only recent case of enraged fans spewing ridiculous threats at something.Read more...

Learn the basics about this action-RPG's Rage and power system.

Doom 4 is locked in development Hell - even for Doom, that's not a good thing. Since its announcement in 2007, developer id Software has completely rebooted Doom 4's development at least once and still doesn't have much to show as far as an actual game goes, Kotaku reports. The website provides the following breakdown from a series of anonymous people:

Doom 4 began as a Call of Duty-inspired shooter, with cinematic, scripted sequences, but after the lukewarm launch of Rage in 2011, id took another look at the project and started from scratch. Within that process, Rage 2 was canceled and id tried to merge the Rage and Doom teams, to focus solely on Doom 4.

By January 2012, id wanted Doom 4 to be as big as Skyrim, but the disparate teams had trouble finding a groove. Additionally, much of the project's "top talent" left id throughout 2012. This year, Zenimax, id's parent company, issued an ultimatum that could see id cleaned out to refocus on tech, two people tell Kotaku.

For now Doom 4 is still alive, though it may not be immortal. In October 2011 and February 2012, Doom 4 had two cancelation scares, each of which Bethesda refuted. The image above was part of a series that leaked in early 2012, though id Design Director Matt Hooper said it didn't represent actual Doom 4 direction. Last we heard - back in August 2012 - Doom 4 was attached to the Oculus Rift's VR push.

#rage Having been promised for an age, id Software finally made good last week on a pledge to release a modding tool kit for its ambitious, if slightly wonky 2011 shooter RAGE. More »

Rage's first bundle of DLC, "The Scorchers," is available now on PC and Xbox 360 for $4.99/400 MS Points, with the identically priced PS3 version dropping with this evening's PSN update. The package adds a new clan, new weapons, new areas to be angry in, a new "Ultra-Nightmare" difficulty level and the added ability to keep playing the game, even after the story has ended.

We're sure at least some of that stuff is represented in the new screenshots below, but we can't get past the weird gross fungus guy to check. Eugh.

Bethesda has officially confirmed The Scorchers downloadable content for Rage. According to a blog post on Bethesda's official site, The Scorchers will hit Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC next week for $4.99 (400 Microsoft Points).

Rage is shortly receiving new DLC over a year after release, if a trophies listing is accurate. PS3Trophies.org reports ten new trophies are being added to id Software's shooter, five of them based around a new job path called 'The Scorchers.' Another trophy is for finishing the campaign on 'Ultra Nightmare difficulty,' suggesting the DLC includes a new difficulty level even tougher than plain ol' Nightmare setting.

The trophies are backed up by a PEGI listing from earlier this year for 'Rage: The Scorchers,' content rated for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. id Software founder John Carmack has also said mod tools which were supposed to ship with Rage were coming to the game "soon." It's just speculation, but if the DLC is accurate it may coincide with their release.

We've reached out to Bethesda for confirmation of the DLC.

#rage id's RAGE may have its fans - and I'm one of them - but even they'd admit it never really hit the heights it could, or given the developer's pedigree perhaps should have hit. More »

Rage was supposed ship with modding tools when it launched in October 2011. It didn't, but a tweet from id Software founder John Carmack suggests he hasn't forgotten the promise he made to mod fans one year ago, nor the frustration of letting them down:

"BFG work pushed the Rage tools, but Real Soon Now. I hope. Sigh. I think we have made poor decisions on this all year."

Doom 3 BFG Edition launched on October 16 in the US, and now id is most likely focused on the development of Doom 4. If id is still serious about pushing Doom 4 onto the Oculus Rift, those mod tools better come out mighty soon, lest we never see them at all - when prioritizing development for either a crazy futuristic headset or modding tools for a year-old lukewarm game, the choice seems to jump right out at you.

#fallout Well, not just for you. Fans of Wasteland, RAGE, Borderlands or any other game set in a post-apocalyptic desert are more than catered for at Wasteland Weekend, which will be held in the Mojave Desert at the end of the month. More »

Speaking during the QuakeCon keynote, John Carmack took the stage and immediately apologised for Rage.

Flipping tables. It's about as perfect a rage moment as you can get. And now, in WoW's upcoming Mists of Pandaria expansion, you'll be able to do it in a video game. More »

When Rage launched last holiday, it made reference to a faction that didn't make it into the final game: The Scorchers. It appears that The Scorchers are back, as a listing on Europe's PEGI game rating website outs something named "Rage: The Scorchers" for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Siliconera spotted the listing and dated it to less than a week ago. For its part, Bethesda hasn't offered a comment, though we've reached out for more info. Thus far, Rage has zero DLC beyond a day-one "Anarchy Edition" bonus. Ahead of the game's launch last year, id Software's Tim Willits told GamesIndustry.biz, "Our immediate plans, of course, are some DLC for Rage," so it stands to reason that DLC of some form for the game is still planned.

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
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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
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- 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…)