GTAIV will share the Table Tennis engine
by Christopher Grant 
{ Jun 16th 2006 at 2:00PM }
There's a rumor floating around these here internets suggesting that the next iteration of Rockstar's money-printing machine known as Grand Theft Auto will be using their own in-house RAGE engine (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine engine), recently seen in Table Tennis. Gamespot's Rumor Control traces the rumor to a TotalVideoGames.com post which mentioned, but neglected to link to, an MTV News report from over a month ago. That report stated, "The Rockstar reps explained that the game was running on RAGE, the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine. This is the graphics technology gamers are to expect from future Rockstar games, including the next GTA." I contacted MTV News' Stephen Totilo to see just how definite this was, and he returned, "I met with Rockstar publicists and producers for Table Tennis twice prior to the game's release. Both times they volunteered that RAGE would serve as the engine for all next-gen Rockstar games. 'Including GTA?' I asked both times. Including GTA they said both times."
So there you have it folks. Following EA's acquisition of GTA's old-engine, Renderware, Rockstar has went and made their own. Sure, Table Tennis looks great but really, anything's better than the dated engine they're using now.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tush @ Jun 16th 2006 2:05PM
What they need to do is make it so that you don't fly into trees that haven't loaded yet!
LunarDuality @ Jun 16th 2006 2:05PM
This seems like a total no-brainer. I wonder why this was such a story. I mean, why would any company spend the time and money to create (and brand) a new game engine and then only use it for one game in their library? Doesn't make logical or business sense.
Chris @ Jun 16th 2006 2:32PM
Good news. I wonder if we will see those "impact physics" that never showed up in GTA:SA?
Tabble Tennis always felt like a Tech demo to me. It's a fun game but there's not much depth to it.
Chris @ Jun 16th 2006 2:35PM
Also just wanted to note "RAGE" is the same name of the infection that made everyone crazy in the film "28 days later". Seems kinda fitting.
kvn @ Jun 16th 2006 2:37PM
I hope that people realize that gta4 is'nt going to
look as good
as table tennis.They simply have to much to render in gta4.It's going
to still looks great but not as good i can't wait to see it.
Justin C. @ Jun 16th 2006 2:38PM
I still wish to this day that someone would do a opened ended GTA style zombie game. Traversing the city and trying to make it to other citys to get help and supplies, or at times getting attackd by tons of them and having to barrade yourself into a nearby building. So far the closest things I've seen to ideas like this our the cancelled Dead Rush, and the soon to be released Dead Rising.
greatslack @ Jun 16th 2006 2:40PM
This reminds me of the days of the PS1 Spider-man running on the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 engine. Both were awesome games, hopefully the same is true for Rockstar.
dan @ Jun 16th 2006 2:43PM
burnout on the 360 looked pretty good..
Tig @ Jun 16th 2006 2:53PM
[Slightly off topic]
To add to Justin's comments:
If Rockstar were to use their knack for large cities and somehow incorporated the emotional immersion of the Silent Hill or Resident Evil series, what a game it could be...
LunarDuality @ Jun 16th 2006 3:00PM
@ Chris
No depth to table tennis? Did you take it online? Did you play through the All-star Tournament? With every player?
I know it doesn't have a "career" mode or the like, but I found that there was still a lot of challenges to explore even after playing it *a lot* over the course of 2 weeks.
Ethan @ Jun 16th 2006 3:01PM
GTA4 could look just as good as table tennis on the PS3, with 50 GBs to spare, heck, it could even look better.
lolersticks @ Jun 16th 2006 3:08PM
Ethan:
No.
Scott @ Jun 16th 2006 3:08PM
Justin, Thats a sweet idea...
The GTA series sucked. Its graphics sucked, its shooting sucked, its driving/flying sucked, and its physics sucked. They are still really fun games because there is so much to do. Hopefully the series will be greatly improved this time around.
also: I want the damn game to remember where I parked my car. You spend $$ customizing it then the damn thing just dissappears when you do a mission. WTH?
Isurus (at work) @ Jun 16th 2006 3:12PM
"GTA4 could look just as good as table tennis on the PS3, with 50 GBs to spare, heck, it could even look better."
Yeah, because graphics quality is totally dependent on how much storage space you have available.
Isurus (at work) @ Jun 16th 2006 3:14PM
^^ that was sarcasm by the way.
Justin C. @ Jun 16th 2006 3:19PM
Yeah I've had that idea ever since the first GTA game came out and just thought. How cool would it be running for your life trying to make it to a building for cover. How awesome it would be to take a car and just plow through the mindless drones. I hope one day someone listens to my idea for this, it would be just so awesome.
Jeff @ Jun 16th 2006 3:32PM
"also: I want the damn game to remember where I parked my car. You spend $$ customizing it then the damn thing just dissappears when you do a mission. WTH?"
You jacked it, then spent $$ on upgrades - you think nobody else is gonna jack it from you if you just leave it sitting on the side of the road?
The game doesn't *always* take your car away. I think there's actually a time limit most of the time, and a few hardcoded missions where you always lose your car. I actually think it's pretty cool that you can't just leave your car lying around and expect it to still be there when you get back. It fits into the whole ethos of the game, which is that everybody's basically a criminal.
It also forces you to try out new cars, instead of just keeping one forever. And there are always garages for those cars you do just want to keep for those "special occasions".
Robotic House Plant @ Jun 16th 2006 3:46PM
This makes a lot of sense. First you have a new engine, and you get your feet with with a smaller, yet solid product in Table Tennis.
The new engine, I'm sure, has features not available in their last engine, and we've all seen the improved graphics-- but that was certain to happen anyway.
The next GTA will be highly anticipated no matter what engine it uses.
sev4 pri1 @ Jun 16th 2006 3:49PM
If it wasn't EA, I'd ask why any publisher would want to buy the old outdated GTA engine.
Orpheus @ Jun 16th 2006 4:06PM
Rockstar puts quantity over quality, and I never respected their technical prowess and the idea that GTA 4 will run on an engine designed by themselves-that scares me.
Each new sequel gets bigger and bigger Vice City (which I like) grew 3 times the size as GTA 3(which I hate), then, San Andreas became an entire state! What next, a country?!
Examples of games that have limits and know their limits are the Splinter Cell series, Metal Gear Solid series, Final Fantasy X, and Need for Speed; they give you the interesting parts around the world NOT THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' WORLD!
Rockstar really should work on presentation more. Do you really need everything?
Ethan @ Jun 16th 2006 4:12PM
It sure helps to have enough space to fit textures and other graphical stuff into a game though.
vidGuy @ Jun 16th 2006 4:18PM
I dread to think of the loading times neccessary for PS3 games using any of the Bluray's capacity and slower read speeds, especially since GTA loads so much at once...
At least you'll have time to order a pizza -and get it-before you start playing.
Ethan @ Jun 16th 2006 4:23PM
Vidguy, they showed at E# that whatever needs to be loaded next gets stored in the HDD so that it can load in like 3 seconds.
Ethan @ Jun 16th 2006 4:25PM
Vidguy, they said at E3 that whatever needs to be loaded next will be stored in the HDD, so that it can have quick access and load in like 3 seconds.
Ethan @ Jun 16th 2006 4:26PM
darn, I didn't think the first one posted right.
Joe @ Jun 16th 2006 4:36PM
its alright the PS3 can't load more the 256mb of data at a time anyway becasue thats all the PS3 bandwidth can handle at a time.
this should also kill that 50 gb per disc is better bullshit becasue what the point if you can only cram in 256mb at a time 50,000MB/256 MB = Nice long load time..
Will @ Jun 16th 2006 4:37PM
"I never respected their technical prowess"
Yeah, look at San Andreas. Absolutely huge game world, and absolutely no loading times outdoors. What a bunch of hacks.
GamerZero @ Jun 16th 2006 5:21PM
The 360 ATI graphics chip is well ahead of the Nvidia part in PS3 so in terms of looks 360 is king.360 also Wii's all over PS3 when it comes to AI and heavy use of branch prediction from its Xenon cpu compared to Cell.
The PS3 version will just be a port of the 360.The 360 isn't restricted to 256mb of graphics like the PS3 as the developers will access what they like from 512mb.The PS3 restricts developers whereas the 360 is much more open and flexible.50 gig of blu-ray storage amounts to nothing unless it can show more than 256mb of graphics data .....but Ken say's so,so I must be wrong!
Night Elve @ Jun 16th 2006 5:27PM
@25 Man there is a little something called "cache" and certainly it does not work like that.
=P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache
~ Cheers guys.
Orpheus @ Jun 16th 2006 5:30PM
"Yeah, look at San Andreas. Absolutely huge game world, and absolutely no loading times outdoors. What a bunch of hacks."
How fast did it go?
How did it look?
Yeah I agree, loading sucks, I love it when a game stutters.
butterman @ Jun 16th 2006 6:14PM
Yay fanboy violence!!!
Oh and Ethan please make sure you know wtf you are on about before you start stating bullshit.
Fine you can fit Higher Res textures on a 50gb disc, but howcome Devs havent filled our DVD-9s with Super Hi Res textures yet?
Think!
ozymandias @ Jun 16th 2006 6:20PM
Night Elve:
cache is one of the cells weak points. read this:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=4
and
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=8
It goes into detail about the how the main ppe has 64KB L1 cache and a 512KB L2 cache and the spes have no cache of their own. if you read on you'll see why thats not really a problem for the ps3
Eric Blade @ Jun 16th 2006 7:12PM
For zombie games.. i know it's not GTA with zombies, but...
http://www.freewebs.com/darkleo777/
DeadAwake addon for Land of the Dead PC..
It's several months away still, but the LOTD game isn't terrible, and DeadAwake will hopefully be all kinds of fun :)
also,
http://www.undeadgames.com/
All your Undead Gaming needs.
Jim @ Jun 16th 2006 7:46PM
Given how Table Tennis is shares absolutely nothing in common with the needs of a free-roaming, large scale world like GTA...it's not even slightly indicative of how GTA might play...that is, unless it has a table tennis minigame.
SuBsTaNcE @ Jun 16th 2006 8:42PM
Hi,
Sure the Table tennis game looks sweet but that is only rendering 1 room, try rendering a whole ciy like that, maybe nearly possible on a good PC but on ps3 and 360 i think not
Logic Bus @ Jun 16th 2006 8:52PM
"Rockstar has went and made their own"?
Can someone at Joystiq get a grammar checker?
JJ @ Jun 17th 2006 8:05AM
Hmm i think this game will look pretty much the same on both 360 AND Ps3. The power gap between the two is nearly as big as say Xbox over PS2. So they'll look damn near the same i believe. Especially if they're coming out at the same time which probably means each one more htan likely WONT be optimized for each system.
Since when is the release of one game any indication that another game will be better on that other games system of release?
Anyway Fanboyishness aside, I hope the new GTA looks good.
Cody S. @ Jun 17th 2006 9:20AM
JJ, the gap between graphics on PS2 and Xbox is large. The analogy you made is very illogical.
I've always thought that the GTA series was seriously lacking. The game idea is great but I have always thought it was poorly executed. Maybe Rockstar will hit it right this time around...
miha @ Jun 17th 2006 9:32AM
I actually sent an email to planetgrandtheftauto.com about this. I found it on gtaforums.com in GTA IV section. So look to gtaforums.com for all info about this game. I hope this is not advertising. Im just telling the facts.
GamerZero @ Jun 17th 2006 11:23AM
The only thing PS3 can do better is to render more poly's.Seeing as developers are using more filtering,texturing and the extensive use of shaders rather than more poly's will prove that the 360 was designed with developers in mind.No matter how you look at it both consoles will get GTAIV but people with 360's will have an extra 200 bucks in their back pocket or a Wii next to their 360 :)Did I forget Blu-Ray....no,but one day everyone will,LOL!
JJ @ Jun 17th 2006 12:17PM
Sorry coded i didnt proofread... i meant ISN'T as large.
I thought the story was good in all 3 GTAs and in the first one the graphics were good enough for what the game accomplished, now the otehr 2 were fun, but could have been much better... but given that it was the same engine i didn't expect much. Its like witha ny other game engine in a series of games, it just gets more refined, not more powerful and what not.
sockatume @ Jun 19th 2006 5:57AM
Hype control: don't take this to mean that GTA IV will have the same level of graphical detail as Table Tennis. Remember, GTA3 and Burnout 3 both ran on Renderware, and they're very different graphically.