QuakeCon: Rage coming to iPhone, running at 60fps [Update: now with video!]

by Christopher Grant on Aug 12th 2010 4:20PM

Never one to back down from a challenge, id's technical wunderkind John Carmack has somehow – we imagine with the aid of The Dark Arts – managed to condense its latest game onto the iPhone. Speaking during a live keynote at the annual QuakeCon in Dallas Texas, Carmack announced that id's delivering a version of Rage (replete with MegaTextures and a 60 frames-per-second framerate!) onto the iPhone. While the demo was given on the iPhone 4, he said it could run on 3GS and looked best on iPad.

The game came about from an experiment with something on the Wii and, in keeping with that experimental model, Rage for iPhone won't have a four-year dev cycle: It will be out this year, before Rage, and it will be cheap, in keeping with the iPhone App Store's model. A second Rage iPhone game will be released alongside the release of the PC/console release next year, and Carmack is still "spot-surveying" the Android market to determine if it's worth supporting. He said it won't happen "this cycle" but he'll reevaluate in about six months. More news from QuakeCon as we hear it.

[Update: Now with video, found after the break! Update 2: John Carmack clarified on Twitter: "The iPhone demo was not "idtech5" on ios, it was from scratch new code. A tool in rage exported custom data for it."]

Source: @QuakeCon, QuakeCon 2010
More coverage: VG247, GameVideos

Tags: fps, id-Software, John-Carmack, mobile, pc, QuakeCon-2010, rage

Reader Comments (38)

So long as they don't hurt the real versions by developing this, this is good news.

@BlackedOut

how can they "hurt" the "real versions" by making an iPhone game. Its not like they are porting it from the iPhone to the PS3/360

@PR0F3TA

They can "hurt" the larger versions by spending budget / time on porting the engine to iOS, shrinking assets to work on that platform, etc.

Why make 5 different versions of one game that are all shallow and lame when you can focus on one or two platforms and create a much richer experience?

Personally it's all a bit silly to me - there's no way the game will look anywhere near as good on an iPlatform, and half the fun of getting the game for PC or a current-gen console is to have a game that looks amazing.

@BlackedOut

my god, you are all effing morons. you really think Id is the type of company that will take a chunck out of their devs to work on a iPhone port... seriously??? no i mean it, seriously?? its absurd to think you actually think that because of an iPhone port that the PS3/360/PC will sufffer in the SLIGHTEST bit.

it boggles the mind how you all think, i mean, my god

@FredFredrickson Budget and time? Carmack did this while taking a dump one morning. He's one of a kind, probably alien, but I'm glad the guy makes games for a living.

So the Wii gets burned...again??

By the frickin' iPhone???

THE HELL??

@Captain Planet Planeteer Power Maybe you should get that kid with the Power of Heart to make them change their mind?

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze No, send the Earthquake boy, Pyro guy, Hurricane woman and Tsunami girl to topple id's HQ.

@Shadsy They were having performance problems on the wii, so they tried the same game on the iPhone and it ran fine.

Wow, Rage with no buttons.

Sweet.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze

The real rage happens when you try and use a virtual D-pad.

@Uncle Jesse Haha. Epic.

Please come to android.. I have no desire to get anywhere near an iPhone or especially AT&T.

@DAmwake there's always the iPod Touch - and it's getting a big upgrade soon.

@DAmwake
WTF s everyone's problem with ATT? They've been great to me for years.

@DAmwake

w00t for having Android on AT&T!

@ItsameMatt03 Best Android devices are on Verizon and Sprint. AT&T dumbs down its Android devices.

can we even tell the diff with such a small screen. i guess its cool for bragging right

@PR0F3TA
there will be a large difference between this and doom classic, small screen or not

So is there any media on this?

holy molly this looks better than any Wii, PS2, Xbox, or even some PS3/Xbox 360 games. Carmack is a friggin full WIN coder.

I mean graphically.

Wait, replying to myself shows me as (Unverified)?

@Ballistic H

Carmack is indeed some kind of a genius, but there's no way it'll look better than 360 or PS3 on iOS. No iPlatform out there has the GPU power for that.

I guess the 3DS would be able to use this engine, right?

@Kurian

What? Have you seen the Resident Evil 3DS real time graphics?

I saw this demo on the QuakeCon live stream. It was pretty cool. He's still talking:

http://www.quakecon.org/gallery/livefeed.shtml

He said the first iphone game will be less of a game than the second one will be. My interpretation is the first was is more of a tech demo, and the one that comes when the full game ships will be more "gamey".

iPad too maybe?

Wait... The iPhone version will run at 60fps, but the ps3 version will only be 30... Even if the graphics are dumbed down to almost nothing that's still a pretty big kick to the nuts for the PS3!

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=220530
Apparently they're working on it, but whether that is fixed or not has yet to be confirmed.

@Shadsy

SWEET! Thanks for that, made me much happier about this!

RAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

Just to be clear. This is a game in the rage universe. It's not actually RAGE... the same game for the PC and consoles.

I just wanted to clear up that possible confusion, as the headline is a bit misleading.

@Tephlon
yeah, there's no way it's a port. Just a toned down mini version probably,

this is impressive considering the graphics and frame rate being better than doom classic! Not a HUGE fan of iPhone games, I did like doom classic, but this certainly has potential. Hopefully he takes a friggin clue from NOVA, which has the best FPS controls on touch screens.

John Carmack isn't a genius; he's an idiot. This is shit.

The iPhone needs to find a hole and bury itself.

@ItsameMatt03 Carmack probably gets more accomplished on the toilet than you've done in your entire life. You may not like him, but acknowledge his amazing contributions to gaming (and commercial space flight).

Would love to have this on higher end Android devices like my Droid X.

Would this run on my iPod touch 3G ?? Because this games looks amazing it probably has the best graphics I have ever seen on a handheld device ! And I expect the first rage they release on the app store would probably be cheap like £3.99 or something because it's only a small title but when they release the full rage game on the app store I expect it to be about £7.00-£10.00 max but I think they will try to keep it cheap so they be a real competitor on the app store and i but that the full rage game will be as big as like 2GB - 3GB hopefully it's a really big long game with amazing gameplay and I really hope it can run on iPod touch 3G please someone tell me!!!!!!!!

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Rage

QuakeCon: Rage coming to iPhone, running at 60fps [Update: now with video!]

Reader Comments (38)

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:24PM BlackedOut said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:29PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 6:00PM FredFredrickson said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 9:31PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 9:53PM oolz said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:25PM Captain Planet Planeteer Power said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:34PM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

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Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:27PM Ezio Auditore da Firenze said

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Posted: Aug 13th 2010 12:05AM watchman said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:30PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 11:43PM Levi said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:33PM McDude said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:34PM Ballistic H said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:36PM Ballistic H said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:37PM Ballistic H said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 6:03PM FredFredrickson said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 4:38PM FernandoRocker said

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Posted: Aug 12th 2010 11:45PM Levi said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 11:47PM Levi said

Posted: Aug 12th 2010 11:49PM ItsameMatt03 said

Posted: Aug 13th 2010 3:11PM SugarDaddy said

Posted: Aug 13th 2010 12:03AM watchman said

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