id: No content cuts made to Rage for 360's sake [update]

Saying you can't wait until they do it is almost as bad as doing it yourself. It's just like the "in before x!" comments - you're practically encouraging it.

If you're gonna troll, man up and don't do a half-assed job.

Did tide get a money hat to?

LET THE FANBOY WARS BEING!!!
Better?

Sorry to respond to the first post with this but I thought it was important.

Tim Willits just denied this:

"Willits' unedited response follows:

"During my talk today I mentioned that we originally wanted to have around 5 or 6 smaller wasteland environments but later decided instead to have 2 larger wastelands. Mostly because we were going to be shipping on two DVDs for the 360 and felt that it would play better with one large wasteland on each disc so there would be no loading between wastelands. Not loading levels while you drive around is a much better decision regardless of platform.

There was NO CONTENT removed from RAGE because of the 360--NONE AT ALL. Moving from multiple wastelands into fewer but larger wastelands was a far better decision and is actually giving us more gameplay in the game.

We feel the 360 is a great platform and will provide a fantastic Rage experience.""

Source: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/54780

Indeed I am most disappointed by their decision to do that.

It is funny though that everybody acts like they didn't see this coming though from a mile away. When did you think disc size on the 360 was going to be an issue...NEVER?

go back to last year and check the comments...you would be surprised at how many actually thought so

They should just use the hard drive. 2 discs + a 4 gig DL or something. Make it work without that extra disc!

That wouldn't be fair to people with the arcade.

Hey Brandon..Fuck the people with the arcade.

I concur!

But this is why I traded in my Wii for a PS3, because Wii sucks and I know the 360 has it's limitations hardware-wise (including RROD).

Sounds like someone is angry at the 360 for the per-disc royalties. I'm more inclined to believe Carmac and his "The textures you wouldn't normally see will be a little bit blurry" rather than this guys "we're considerably cutting the game because we can't possibly fit it on two dual layer DVD's" (not verbatim)

Let me slice through some of this BS. Remember Crysis? Yeah, well, it's only like 6 gigs, and it's more than the Xbox 360 or the PS3 can run at 720p, period. In trying to say that they have to cut levels out of this game because of the 360, he's essentially saying one of two things: "We refuse to scale back some of the huge pre-rendered cut scenes that are going to be in this game, in exchange for more actual gameplay" or "I have no idea what the hell I am talking about, you is can has console flamewar nao". If you can do Crysis (which is a massive, near photo realistic game) in 6gb, then you damn well can do Rage (which, again, has to run on consoles. Crysis cannot) on two DVD-9's or whatever the 360 uses. The ONLY thing that should need to be scaled back, is CGI Cut Scenes (which take up more space than anything else).

I call shenanigans.

BananaBitch, when was the last time you saw a huge, prerendered cutscene in an id game?

@ Banana -
A lot of current gen games use in-game graphics with scripts for their cutscenes, because the engines are good enough to produce that level of gfx. They might replace the character models with higher poly models for the cutscenes, which I think they might have done in Uncharted, because the system doesn't have all that game code to process behind the graphics.

Though, a big thing that takes up a lot of space now is uncompressed audio, which can trump the size of high res textures. Of all games, Little Big Planet apparently almost fills a Blu-Ray because of all the voice tutorials in different languages for the level editor.

I think I read that LBP thing here.

Oops. XD

@ banana

I'm not sure but doesn't Crysis use a lot of the same assets in a lot of the same areas?(Correct me if I'm wrong)

Still though I see what you're saying, even if they do use the same textures (etc), that game looks phenomenal.

Hey BananaBoat, Rage got no CGI, it's all realtime stuff. Rage use the new Tech5 engine with the new megatexture technology. Each "level" is almost 80GB uncompressed, and that's one big texture. I don't think they can compress more without loosing quality.

And the way the CryEngine renders scenes is different, you can't compare them.

@Banana

And Crysis is fairly short and basically has two environments: Jungle and Alien Ship. Three if you want to count Jungle w/ Ice on Top. You can't just pick a game like Crysis and claim there's no reason for other games to be over 6 GBs when so many factors determine the size.

I was just using Crysis as an example, but it's just as easy to say that there has never been a game (that I can remember anyway) that comes anywhere close to filling two DVD's. As far as Crysis only being jungle and beach, I realize this, but Rage sounds like it's going to be wasteland...after wasteland...after swamp.

What JPR is saying makes alot of sense, and it does explain why the size of the disc might be an issue, but I don't really get why they'd need to do their textures in a new way when the "old" way (ahem...Crysis) worked just fine. In that case, isn't the problem them and their goofy engine, and not the disc? I mean, hell, I'm the first to admit that Microsoft needs to add Blu-Ray to their next gen system (not however that they should have added it to the 360. Blu-Ray didn't exist in any form when they started planning the 360) but I think it's more of a problem of companies like id creating engines that aren't this-gen friendly that is the problem. Then again, this new engine could be the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it could completely make me drink the "You need teh Blu-Rays!" koolaid, but still, how good can you make a washed out grey wasteland look anyway? (I am now prepared for visual and auditory mind rape at the release of Rage)

Take out one of those "problems" from that one sentence, and uhh, you know, just use your in-brain grammar filters.

It's only midnight, but waking up at 6am for class is destroying my typing ability. Why I picked a 7am class in the first place I have no idea, but next semester I'm not taking anything before noon. A man should atleast get to sleep till noon on a weekday...right? Right? Who's with me? After a year and a half of this, I'm not sure how the hell I ever woke up at 5am so that I could catch the 6am bus to my school that started at 7am and lasted till 4-5pm after all after school activities were over. Why am I still typing? Goodnight

@BannanBoat
"I don't really get why they'd need to do their textures in a new way when the "old" way (ahem...Crysis) worked just fine."

You have to understand how games are created from a game artists perspective to fully appreciate the MegaTexture tech and philosophy. Let me tell you, even with the good amount of RAM in the PS3 and 360, you still have all kinds of limitations with how many, and how high rez you can make texture maps for games. We often spend more time figuring out how to cleverly re-use textures as to not look like they're being re-used than actually making them in the first place. In other words, we still have limitations. If this mega texture tech works as advertised, then working on a game with it would be incredibly freeing, and you would have all kinds of interesting and unique detail all over the world, and all that unique detail takes up tons of storage space. Right now, even if I could use double the resolution on my maps, let alone have more maps per model, it would be fantastic, but compromises have to be made... This tech will not only allow for lots of unique detail, but potentially super high-rez textures on everything.

I for one, cant wait to play Rage!

So it allows for much better looking games on the consoles? I realize I only know the basics of how games render scenes through the GPU, but isn't the limitation still how many (for lack of a better term) textures you are trying to jam through the GPU at one time? Wikipedia says that the engine can use textures "up to 128000×128000 pixels". This sounds great as a gigantic number, but it's also hundreds of thousands (if not millions) more pixels than any monitor/TV can possibly display, so again I have to ask, what is the point?

I'm excited to compare and contrast Rage (on the PC) with Crysis, Gears of War, etc. I'm still skeptical that this engine will bring any noticeable (to the player) improvements. We shall see.

Thanks for explaining the benefits

No. The lack of any vowels make it impossible to pronounce.

I think there's a chunk of change involved even for 2 discs.

Because id has to pay MS royalties per disc.

"Evidently royalty fees associated with a third disc would make the project financially unviable"

From this article post last month

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/01/carmack-rage-to-look-worse-on-360-if-limited-to-two-dvds/

No =/

No as in "It doesn't matter lol". BUT, this will make me get the PS3 version probably.

Oh well. I was getting Rage on PC anyways. As for Final Fantasy 13, if I get a PS3 before it comes out, I will get it on there. But, if I don't, my 360 will get it.

I am sure part of the negotiations regarding final fantasy making an appearance on the 360 included concessions on multiple disc royalties.

"Oh well. I was getting Rage on PC anyways."

Ok, but the PC version is getting gimped too.

::shrug::

He mentions that only two "wastelands" could be kept in due to the 360's limitations, so I'm assuming it's one wasteland per disc. What's a wasteland? It's probably a huge area like Farcry or Crysis' island.

So yeah, you probably can't go back to other stages; but one stage looks like it takes up a DVD. Just a guess.

uh...if there is one version that works, it would most likely be the PC one, not the 360 one

Even if it would be easier to port that version of the game over to the 360 than the PS3.

It just all sounds kinda weird. idk

ok? they are also "crippling" the PC version if you haven't noticed...

Well what does that tell you.

It tells you that the problem ID had with making the game was that it was to large to be feasibly created for all systems, so instead of making a long game for two, they make a shorter game for three.

It also tells you that they are making the game for the lowest common denominator so it could play on as many platforms as possible.

Finally, it tells you that they didn't feel like making two versions of the same game.

It isn't just textures...its whole levels missing. The lazy ones were MS for throwing together off the shelf parts and selling it as next gen.

"Off the shelf"? They were on the floor collecting dust in the reject pile. That's what MS used so they could push it out faster and compete with Sony.

If I recall correctly, LBP is on BluRay due to the number of tutorial videos and not necessarily due to the textures.

uh, the fact that the PS3 uses Blu-Ray disks and a HDD just means that they have more space to work with, but yah, some of them have taken the easy route.

But the Blu-Ray decision also comes at a cost, newer technology to which not everyone is used to, there are developers actually studying it and working around it.