Ahhh my fellow cohort on QERadiant.com. Hope he does well at the new gig.

Man, if I was at id I'd be looking to hit the exits as well.

id software lost all credibility with PC gamers after Rage. Anybody who thinks otherwise is either too young or too stupid or a combination of both to know better.

Mad Max RW wrote on Jan 31, 2012, 21:53:
id software lost all credibility with PC gamers after Rage. Anybody who thinks otherwise is either too young or too stupid or a combination of both to know better.

id Software deserves skepticism at this point, but I think it's naive to dismiss them entirely. Anyone can follow up a mediocre game with a good game, or vice-versa.

But, id also deserves respect for its pedigree and contribution to the evolution of games over the years. They were critical in establishing an entire genre and leaders in developing 3D engines for quite some time. Plus they're support of the community, mod-community, and open-source releases of older engines is pretty awesome in my book.

Rage could have been a steaming piece of crap for all I know (no interest in it, didn't buy it), doesn't change my opinion of id Software or automatically discount any game they might develop in the future.

This comment was edited on Jan 31, 2012, 22:14.

Ruffiana wrote on Jan 31, 2012, 22:08:

Mad Max RW wrote on Jan 31, 2012, 21:53:
id software lost all credibility with PC gamers after Rage. Anybody who thinks otherwise is either too young or too stupid or a combination of both to know better.

id Software deserves skepticism at this point, but I think it's naive to dismiss them entirely. Anyone can follow up a mediocre game with a good game, or vice-versa.

But, id also deserves respect for its pedigree and contribution to the evolution of games over the years. They were critical in establishing an entire genre and leaders in developing 3D engines for quite some time. Plus they're support of the community, mod-community, and open-source releases of older engines is pretty awesome in my book.

Rage could have been a steaming piece of crap for all I know (no interest in it, didn't buy it), doesn't change my opinion of id Software or automatically discount any game they might develop in the future.

+1. I totally agree. id isn't done until Carmak retires and goes full time into Armadillo Areospace IMO..

So they pulled a stinker with RAGE (and to be honest its not THAT bad - but not that great either - nowhere near as bad as Duke 4 Ever) Lets see what they do with Doom 4. Then revisit it again.. The problem is iD games take so long to come out that when they DO pull a stinker its years again before they do anything about it..

Ruffiana wrote on Jan 31, 2012, 22:08:
Rage could have been a steaming piece of crap for all I know (no interest in it, didn't buy it), doesn't change my opinion of id Software or automatically discount any game they might develop in the future.

Then what was the point of replying? There's tons of once great developers that went down the toilet. I was a huge fan of id software, too. I grew up with Commander Keen for crying out loud. But that doesn't make them immune to failure. It will take a miracle in Doom 4 if they ever want my money again and if they want to last longer than post-Invisible War Ion Storm.

Anyone know what/where his new gig is? I thought id was the only big developer in the DFW area.

Microsoft recovered from Vista. Id Software still rock in my book.

Well, looks like id's Linux days are now finally over.
That much was clear after the release of Rage, though.

Lets hope Doom4 isnt the steaming pile of shit that Doom3 was. Yes remember Doom3??? Its not like Rage came out of nowhere, this isnt exactly the first horrible piece of shit game to come out from iD!

Sure Doom3 had purty graphwhorix but last I checked id's games were famed for their multiplayer and gameplay.

If Doom4 doesnt have pentagrams, halucinogenic levels, serious disembowlment and hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains at the same time then Im not interested....

Definitely not too young and been in IT for 30 years.
Personally I loved Rage and it worked out the box on my PC, but then I've an old Nvidia card and not a new ATI card where ATI screwed up on their driver releases. I fail to see how id can be blamed so much for a bad PC port when the biggest issues where caused by ATI releasing a driver with the wrong .dll's in it!
I'll repeat, the game was very playable and looked great on my PC from day of install - my rig is NOT a top of the range, in fact my Nvidia card I think is THE min spec card listed on the box! A couple of tweaks to the config file and unless I span 180 really fast I never saw any texture popping.

Yes Rage wasn't great, but it was very playable and I completed it 3 times before moving on to Skyrim for 100s of hours. I will say this. Skyrim is a 100 times bigger in scope etc than Rage, but during all my play time with Rage it NEVER crashed to desktop once!! Skyrim has crashed to desktop so many times I've lost count, it's also produced a bluescreen of death 3 times - actually the first time I've seen that on Windows 7!

In terms of graphics, I loved Rages views and vista and texture on the NPC's etc was great, some game world objects and surfaces looked crap but then I've never played a game yet where there wasn't some surface or texture that looked low res because it was wrapped around some object strangely. The fact that Rages views had no repeating textures was really noticeable when switching to Skyrim! still I dread to think of the install size of Skyrim if the world was done using a Mega Texture!

I know it's fashionable now to bash id, but Rage ( at least on most Nvidia setups ) didn't suck - was fun - looked great.

Back on Topic:

Sad to hear Timo is leaving, was really looking forward to playing Rage again natively on Linux
Was actually surprised Rage started and ran using wine on Linux, just was not playable at the same res as on my Windows 7 install. I'm sure that a native port would be very playable. ( just as it is for Doom3 and ET:QW ).

Ruffiana wrote on Jan 31, 2012, 22:08:
Rage could have been a steaming piece of crap for all I know (no interest in it, didn't buy it), doesn't change my opinion of id Software or automatically discount any game they might develop in the future.

So... you're basically proud to be a mindless drone that feeds on hype rather than their own critical reasoning? You're unfamiliar with the last product but wouldn't allow it to taint your predetermined opinion on the company? Genius...

Seriously though, when is the last time id released a great game? Quake2 like 15 years ago? (OMG it HAS been that long) I remember getting Q3 back in the day then turning around and immediately going back to the original Unreal Tournament. Doom3, meh. Sure id was monumental in advancing and commercializing the technology, that doesn't mean most of their 'games' were ever much more than glorified tech demos, Rage included.

As for buddy leaving the company his comment about people who knew him well not being surprised sounds like he'd grown frustrated and unsatisfied with the company. The real question is whether or not it was due to personnel/HR type issues like the layoffs or frustrations with the corporate direction after being bought by Zenimax.

InBlack wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 03:50:
Sure Doom3 had purty graphwhorix but last I checked id's games were famed for their multiplayer and gameplay.

If Doom4 doesnt have pentagrams, halucinogenic levels, serious disembowlment and hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains at the same time then Im not interested....

Still amazes me that people criticize id for not copying themselves and releasing 'another Doom clone' but with a shiny new engine. Doom3 worked for me as a game because the game was designed around the engine, the engine did 100% realtime lighting and shadows, this meant it was perfect for a suspense and scare type game. If you just want 'hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains' then play Serious Sam or one of the other games that stayed on that path. Imagine the scene: you're walking into a creeping dark space station, there are flickering lights, moving shadows, strange subtle noises, suddenly out of no where comes 100 cartoony demons charging at you! - Doesn't work for me, all tension is gone and it's back to run-shoot-run ignore the environment and shoot anything that moves ( including the shadows! ) a waste of a game engine.

panbient wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 05:13:
I remember getting Q3 back in the day then turning around and immediately going back to the original Unreal Tournament.

Very much a matter of taste, I remember well the real battle, Q3 vs UT.
Personally I preferred Q3, just felt better. I've not followed what happened to UT, do people still play it online ?
I know a couple of years ago I played Q3 online and was surprised to see how many people and servers there still were. These days I still play Quake3Live about once a week, never any problems finding server with a people on to play with.

Actually a quick look at a US server tracker in the middle of the morning (UK) I'm guessing it's night still most of the US:
Q3 players active: 100(aprox couldn't be bothered it add them up)
UT3 players active: 4

I guess that answers my question on Q3 vs UT

DanteUK wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 05:24:

InBlack wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 03:50:
Sure Doom3 had purty graphwhorix but last I checked id's games were famed for their multiplayer and gameplay.

If Doom4 doesnt have pentagrams, halucinogenic levels, serious disembowlment and hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains at the same time then Im not interested....

Still amazes me that people criticize id for not copying themselves and releasing 'another Doom clone' but with a shiny new engine. Doom3 worked for me as a game because the game was designed around the engine, the engine did 100% realtime lighting and shadows, this meant it was perfect for a suspense and scare type game. If you just want 'hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains' then play Serious Sam or one of the other games that stayed on that path. Imagine the scene: you're walking into a creeping dark space station, there are flickering lights, moving shadows, strange subtle noises, suddenly out of no where comes 100 cartoony demons charging at you! - Doesn't work for me, all tension is gone and it's back to run-shoot-run ignore the environment and shoot anything that moves ( including the shadows! ) a waste of a game engine.

They're criticizng them for releasing a console game and screwing over the PC gamers that made them what they are. And yes, Tim has obviously left because of the new corporate direction. All the old companies you know and loved, id, Bethsoft, Bioware, et al. are all over and done and have been for some time now.

DanteUK wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 05:24:

InBlack wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 03:50:
Sure Doom3 had purty graphwhorix but last I checked id's games were famed for their multiplayer and gameplay.

If Doom4 doesnt have pentagrams, halucinogenic levels, serious disembowlment and hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains at the same time then Im not interested....

Still amazes me that people criticize id for not copying themselves and releasing 'another Doom clone' but with a shiny new engine. Doom3 worked for me as a game because the game was designed around the engine, the engine did 100% realtime lighting and shadows, this meant it was perfect for a suspense and scare type game. If you just want 'hundreds of monsters trying to eat your brains' then play Serious Sam or one of the other games that stayed on that path. Imagine the scene: you're walking into a creeping dark space station, there are flickering lights, moving shadows, strange subtle noises, suddenly out of no where comes 100 cartoony demons charging at you! - Doesn't work for me, all tension is gone and it's back to run-shoot-run ignore the environment and shoot anything that moves ( including the shadows! ) a waste of a game engine. Graphics are the only thing that define a good game for me, oh and monsters jumping out of closets are always scary!

There fixed that for you. Seriously though, why NOT copy themselves? Why fix something if it aint broke???

Let me draw a parallel to another huge and (mostly) independent studio who have perfected the formula. Blizzard. Doesnt seem to hurt their pockets that much and their fans seem to be pretty happy with them....

DanteUK wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 05:10:
Definitely not too young and been in IT for 30 years.
Personally I loved Rage and it worked out the box on my PC, but then I've an old Nvidia card and not a new ATI card where ATI screwed up on their driver releases. I fail to see how id can be blamed so much for a bad PC port when the biggest issues where caused by ATI releasing a driver with the wrong .dll's in it!
I'll repeat, the game was very playable and looked great on my PC from day of install - my rig is NOT a top of the range, in fact my Nvidia card I think is THE min spec card listed on the box! A couple of tweaks to the config file and unless I span 180 really fast I never saw any texture popping.

I have to second this. Obviously, the console ports came first this time and megatexturing is not as impressive as it will someday be, but the ATI driver thing was ATI's dog, not id's. Before release, Carmack complained a lot about the difficulty of wringing any kind of performance out of the (superior) hardware of a PC due to crappy software drivers. When Rage came out it was a perfect shitstorm of all the technical issues he'd been pointing out. It's ATI that doesn't care about PC gaming, not id.

I'm looking forward to the time when Bethesda uses the Rage engine for their next Fallout game instead of the "claymation engine" they use now.

Anyone can follow up a mediocre game with a good game, or vice-versa

Sure, but when's the last time id put out a good game? Discounting re-releases, that'd be Quake 3, way back in 1999. So they haven't released a good game in almost 13 years now.

That doesn't mean they're incapable of releasing something decent, but it sure doesn't give much evidence that it's likely to happen.

creatorswhim wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 07:33:

DanteUK wrote on Feb 1, 2012, 05:10:
Definitely not too young and been in IT for 30 years.
Personally I loved Rage and it worked out the box on my PC, but then I've an old Nvidia card and not a new ATI card where ATI screwed up on their driver releases. I fail to see how id can be blamed so much for a bad PC port when the biggest issues where caused by ATI releasing a driver with the wrong .dll's in it!
I'll repeat, the game was very playable and looked great on my PC from day of install - my rig is NOT a top of the range, in fact my Nvidia card I think is THE min spec card listed on the box! A couple of tweaks to the config file and unless I span 180 really fast I never saw any texture popping.

I have to second this. Obviously, the console ports came first this time and megatexturing is not as impressive as it will someday be, but the ATI driver thing was ATI's dog, not id's. Before release, Carmack complained a lot about the difficulty of wringing any kind of performance out of the (superior) hardware of a PC due to crappy software drivers. When Rage came out it was a perfect shitstorm of all the technical issues he'd been pointing out. It's ATI that doesn't care about PC gaming, not id.

I'm looking forward to the time when Bethesda uses the Rage engine for their next Fallout game instead of the "claymation engine" they use now.

Todd Howard has stated on numerous occasions that the RAGE engine is unsuitable for open-world games such as Skyrim or Fallout. In any case I dont think the main issue with Rage is the graphics or the engine. Its simply not a really good or very enjoyable game. You know, fun, enjoyment? The thing that Doom2 or Quake3 had shitloads of?

I've yet to play Rage, but can't imagine it's worse than Doom 3 was.