Rage

[toblix]

The latest trailer looks good. I mean, there's a weird mix of seemingly mediocre character design and animation and awesome character design and animation, but regardless of how the game turns out, the environments look so awesome I'll be getting it (not sure which platform yet). I like that the megatexture system is not sold as the new Best Graphics Engine, but that

Carmack is clear about the engine's strength (awesome ultra-detailed no-limits texturing on everything) and weakness (no fully dynamic lighting).

[DanJW]

Yeah from a purely environment-design point of view, the "limitless texture budget" really excites me.

But damn does it look reminiscent of Fallout 3 at first glance. You wait ages for a nuclear apocalypse and then three come along at once. Oh well, it's all cool. The crappy designs you mentioned are all old footage mixed in with the new, I believe.

Wait was that a miniature spider demon I saw at 01:26 ?

[thl]

Is it just me or does the character modeling still look way too... eh, plastic? I'm not sure how to put it, but Doom 3 looked the same way. Like, I don't have a problem with the mutants I guess but the guys talking to me all look like papier mache and foam rubber like something I'd see at a GWAR show.

The detail in environments however has me completely jazzed. I don't really see any of the cold gray rubble of Fallout 3's capital wasteland. Maybe it's because I didn't really put much time into the first two fallouts (which were more desert-set).

Not sure what the gameplay is gonna be like and how the open-world racing will all of a sudden become dark tunnel scary-shooting but... Definitely looks good (except the puffy-faced dudes trying to talk to me)

[toblix]

Although I know how my mind fills blurry game trailers with non-existing detail, this stuff really looks magnificent. Then there's this guy, which looks pretty non-magnificent (though I guess this could be from the old footage?)

So I start thinking "it's too bad the characters are so p--

And then this guy comes along and looks pretty awesome. And some nice color:

And also this guy here:

I guess that could just be a cut-scene or something, but if you have this vast, awesomely detailed scenery, and then suddenly a giant fucking troll can just climb around the corner like that, things could get very fun very quickly. Also if the racing parts are good. With the reputation id has for great FPS controls, there's some hope they have what it takes to make really awesome arcade racer controls too. I was sort of ambivalent about the game itself, but I'm starting to think it might just play as good as it looks.

[Jayel]

gameplay footage doesn't really excite me, but holy shit it has some sweet facial animation!

[toblix]

This preview makes me even more hopeful for the gameplay. Actual indoor combat (not that that's so special -- I just assumed it would be all outdoors), a strong focus on game flow (i.e. not a typical open-world game), varied race competitions (RC racing, jumping, etc.) and a themed combat arena which I look forward to trying out.

I wonder if their reluctance to comment on multiplayer is because there will be none or little of it (a concession like the lack of dynamic lighting), or because it's going to totally awesome to the max (64 player huge battles, etc.).

[elmuerte]

So... It's Oblivion with Guns and Cars?

[toblix]

More like Fallout 3 with cars and circuses.

[elmuerte]

More like Fallout 3 with cars and circuses.

But Fallout 3 was oblivion with guns

[blackboxme]

Or Beyond Good & Evil populated by the offspring of Chunk from the Goonies

[Jake]

Is it just me or does the character modeling still look way too... eh, plastic?

I don't know if its the modeling as much as its the shaders/lighting. Modeling is modeling, generally it's how light hits the models that matters in this regard.

[toblix]

For what it's worth the Kotaku preview mentions that the skin shaders are less like plastic an more like rubber, but in a good way(?).

[elmuerte]

less like plastic an[sic] more like rubber, but in a good way(?).

- ign.com ?

[Thrik]

Really good trailer. I think it's fair to say those opening shots are pretty epic. Couldn't help thinking of Indiana Jones when I saw that newspaper about the ark, though!

As for the obvious Fallout 3 comparisons, I expect the way the missions and story unfolds to be a lot more controlled than what Bethesda is known for, and the world itself to be more linear — and on a personal note I prefer the look and feel of this world. From what I've seen, anyway!

[SignorSuperdouche]

Carmack is clear about the engine's strength (awesome ultra-detailed no-limits texturing on everything) and weakness (no fully dynamic lighting).

I'm pretty ignorant about this sort of thing. Could someone explain, in the simplest terms you can, what the implications of not having fully dynamic lighting are please? Would I be likely to notice the difference?

[elmuerte]

Dynamic lights as in: a flash light you carry around; or day-night cycle.

Basically, lighting changes at runtime.

[SignorSuperdouche]

Dynamic lights as in: a flash light you carry around; or day-night cycle.

Basically, lighting changes at runtime.

Ah ok, thanks So if the light sources are static, rather than dynamic, that makes the shadows significantly easier to draw? That makes sense to me because instead of having to allow for a general case you can lock down a buch of variables and just code for a much smaller subset of cases - is that how that works?

Anyhoo, the trailer is pretty cool. I've never really played any id games (I played Wolfenstein 3D as a nipper) and I, rightly or wrongly, basically had them down as the guys who made technically excellent games that lacked soul. This looks like it may have more subtance behind the gloss than I was expecting to find.

[toblix]

Quote:

SignorSuperdouche:

I'm pretty ignorant about this sort of thing. Could someone explain, in the simplest terms you can, what the implications of not having fully dynamic lighting are please? Would I be likely to notice the difference?

In Doom 3, all the lighting was fully dynamic. That means that when they made the levels they just placed light sources around and the moment they did so the lights would light up everything and cast the right shadow, and it would look like this:

Notice that the shadow edges are really hard. This is because shadows are really hard (as in demanding) to calculate to begin with, so realistic lighting that bounces off glossy surfaces, picking up new color, and shadows that blur correctly according to the source of and distance from the light cannot be done properly. You can fake it by blurring shadows uniformly, but it never looks as good as if you take the time to do it, as in:

realistic lighting, which looks like this:

Notice that all shadows are correctly blurred and that the white walls pick up colors from reflected light, etc. This took about 40 hours to render on a 1,7GHz P4. So you just can't do that shit 30 times a second, no matter how much you're John Carmack. So what they do is they combine the two techniques. They place light sources that won't move, ever, in the level. Then they let all their computers calculate this awesome lighting magic for a couple of days. Then they place Doom 3 style lights where there'll be dynamic shadows, for example around people and vehicles. These shadows won't look anywhere near as good, but they're really quick to draw. The result is this:

Notice the difference between the landscape shadows (three days) and teh car shadows (three microseconds or whatever).

So, to summarize:

Static lighting looks awesome but takes hours and can't change. Dynamic lighting looks like crap (well, in comparison) but can be drawn on the fly.

Edited August 16, 2009 by toblix

[SignorSuperdouche]

Ah, now I get it. Thanks Toblix, that's super clear to me now.

[MrHoatzin]

Toblix, what kind of crazy cinemascope monitor do you have? Every other time you post an image it breaks the site for me.

[Chris]

Wow, this actually looks way more awesome than I was expecting. I guess I didn't have a specific expectation, but this looks interesting. I don't really care that it's like Fallout, which seems to be a common observation both here and elsewhere; the world looks a lot more like Mad Max to me, which is pretty rad.

[elmuerte]

I wonder why they don't use soft shadowing.

[Thrik]

It's a lot more expensive. Maybe the PC version will have the option though, like Doom 3.

[toblix]

Toblix, what kind of crazy cinemascope monitor do you have? Every other time you post an image it breaks the site for me.

Sorry, I often forget image size when linking from someone else's site. I'll keep it narrower in the future.

[elmuerte]

It's not that expensive if your using stencil shadows, specially not compared to AA.

Looking at those high resolution screenshots... they actually look quite crap. (Besides the very low quality JPEG compression). For example the rock formation on the left behind the first buggy looks like something from 2002. Absolutely no displacement/normal/bump mapping? Also the shadow those rocks cast on the ground look quite crisp, even though it is pre-rendered. The displacement of the rubber in the buggy's shock-absorbers are incorrect. (of course this is the outdoor stuff you will race by at high speed, but it's not just that).

Even the sky in that screenshots looks like crap (compared to the sky shown in the videos). But also in the trailer:

That's really really flat. (The water looks like though).

Anyway, Rage sounds/looks much more interesting to play than Doom 3. Looking forward to it.