...it should be interesting to see how Rage sells, given the "fool me once" axiom.

Yes, said axiom applies if you're first game played was, in fact, DooM 3. Some of us actually go back 10+ years earlier with their games.

I heard id has licensed "Turbo Lover" to be played during all the driving sequences. Awersomnezz!!

But seriously, there's a good deal of validity to Surf's point and it should be interesting to see how Rage sells, given the "fool me once" axiom.

Todd sounds full of crap. It's Carmack's technical wizardry that I'm looking forward to.

Goes to show, you can't play by the numbers can you Todd?

You can play by their numbers until at least until their next game comes out. D3 scored very well on Metacritic and the like, did Judas Priest get pretty good reviews too? (Honest question, I was 2 years old then)

There's also the fact that the game leaked a week early on BitTorrent, giving people a week more for word to get out about it.

i have all respects for carmack but hollenshead needs to get a good lobotomy for doom 3.

I mean, if it's on a whole new level, it's just going to blow us away!

I think if we counted up every single "whole new level" bullshit quote released in the industry, games would now be approximately on the 86,472nd level. On a scale of 1 to 10.

Creston

Released a career ending album called Turbo in the late 80's. The album single handedly destroyed the bands reputation and was the first album that officially sucked.

JP band members came back with "Its the best selling album that Judas Priest ever made!"

The problem? The album sold sight unseen due to past efforts, not what the end user received. The following album, Ram It Down, was one of the worst selling JP albums of all time.


Goes to show, you can't play by the numbers can you Todd?

I've mocked Doom 3 and it's utterly repetitive formula enough here that the regulars are sick of my step-by-step directions to Doom 3.

Needless to say, I spent $60 on it, played it for 2 hours, then uninstalled it.

I've yet to pay full retail for a PC game since. And I've yet to see a simple bland vanilla version go for $60 since.

Meh. Another id FPS. Same old formula. Same as Doom 3. Zzzzzzzz.........

Sponge also the screen shot you posted is pretty bad, and for that I blame it on 2 things. 1)the distance away the shot was taken.
Plus engine wise (thanks to that optimizer posted a few days ago) in Crysis MP it's definitely a 'ohh ahhh' moment when a VTOL blocks the sun and you see the 'god rays' cast around it.

Completely and utterly irrelevant to my point. Poor texture blending is poor texture blending. No matter how many pixels you throw at it, no matter how close you get, it's still vertex blending, and will NEVER look as good as unique texturing. I'm also not even talking about graphics, I'm talking about texturing, so I really don't care how many shader and lighting effects it uses.

I had a feeling someone would completely take what I was saying out of context, and I wasn't disappointed.

I'm not talking about multiplayer either, in which case Crysis would fall under one of the 10 biggest mistakes in multiplayer ever. I'm not even bothering to argue this though as this wasn't what I was talking about in the first place.

Sponge also the screen shot you posted is pretty bad, and for that I blame it on 2 things. 1)the person's computer who took the shot, 2)the distance away the shot was taken.
Plus engine wise (thanks to that optimizer posted a few days ago) in Crysis MP it's definitely a 'ohh ahhh' moment when a VTOL blocks the sun and you see the 'god rays' cast around it.

But comparing Crysis vs ETQW is like comparing Apples to Rotting Apples.

Why not? There is no game on the market on any platform today that can use unique texturing on any surface, or gives artists the equivalent freedom that unique texturing provides. I would even go so far as saying there aren't any freeware games, indie games, open source projects that use this technology, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

Don't get me wrong, it appears to be the best and most useful texturing technique out there and would benefit most games - it's just until it's in engines other than those by id I don't really care. Apply it to UE3, STALKER or Source and I'd be interested - all of those have much better rendering of character models and environments. I'm just fed up of rubber-skinned models, which the id Tech5 video still demonstrates. It's the same with Crysis - it's all very well having innovative new features but if they run slow on 95% of hardware then that doesn't interest me.

Is it as radical for gamers? Probably not

I think that really nails it. MegaTexture is great but it didn't make ET:QW a good game, nor did I look at the levels and think "wow, I can really see what MegaTexture does".

Is there some kind of PR contest where the PR guys compete to see who can make the stupidest comments?. Because Cevat Yerli is a strong first, and Rein and CliffyB are always good contenders, but Todd's entry

I'd have to put Todd first (easy first for me), though he's certainly not as well exposed as Cevat's rants.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society

Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn

Stupid interviewer. Einstein was never an accountant. And don't compare Einstein to a tool Todd Hollenshed

It's hard to make a comparison between ET:QW and Crysis because they're not meant to be played like that...

From the sky? No, but like I said any air vehicles or large variations in height will make these issues stick out like a sore thumb. I only picked out a birds eye shot to compare it easier to another birds eye shot. I'm not comparing gameplay at all, either, I'm just comparing engines, so I think the comparisons between Crysis and ETQW/id Tech 5 are fine for this purpose, although Crysis multiplayer works a bit like BF's multiplayer from what I tried in the beta.

I'd assume if a game based on more conventional texturing techniques was released and was designed to be played from a height the issue wouldn't be as prevalent, if at all.

Most RTSes use the same method of rendering terrain: heightmaps and vertex blending. Arguably, RTSes stand to gain the most from this kind of technology.

Unique texturing allows a lot more details like the erosion channels, the sand dunes, and generally goes a far way to making areas look unique-- provided the artists are up to it. You could create a blown up chunk of road WITHOUT having to make it a separate texture, and make all the variations for it if required, and all the material references just for a one-off usage.

it's just not as radical as Carmack would like to have us believe

Why not? There is no game on the market on any platform today that can use unique texturing on any surface, or gives artists the equivalent freedom that unique texturing provides. I would even go so far as saying there aren't any freeware games, indie games, open source projects that use this technology, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

It is radical in that this is a first for PC gaming, and that it radically alters the workflow of development. Check out the QuakeCon video from last year about the tools if you haven't watched it.

Is it as radical for gamers? Probably not, but Carmack is an engine programmer. He's speaking about engines, and he generally doesn't dumb down or is concerned about what the end-user wants to hear about. You generally don't have engine programmers giving interviews as often as Carmack does, which probably doesn't help the situation much.

Wow!

Is there some kind of PR contest where the PR guys compete to see who can make the stupidest comments?. Because Cevat Yerli is a strong first, and Rein and CliffyB are always good contenders, but Todd's entry,

I think there are three people on the internet that keep making these posts that Doom 3 was "bad", and they get no credibility from any other people...

gives him an automatic second place.

Also, the fact that even now id can't recognize the fact that Doom 3 was good technically but boring gameplay wise (which is worse than bad) doesnt't give me much confidence in Rage.

Am I the only one that watched the trailer and said 'meh'.

You got a great body, but your record collection sucks....
BN 360 Scoreboard:
http://www.mygamercard.net/clboard.php?id=GW57kfq7

Will this be a rehash of Stranger's Wrath? Will it just be another attempt at Tribes?

Hell, rehashes of those games would still be unique and fresh among today's games.

Heh.. Those two statements seem fairly contradictory to me.

That would be because they are. One was talking about the Far Cry / Source engines not necessarily having good development tools in comparison to UE3; the other was talking about id's upcoming engine and what they've done to improve things from a development / licensing perspective.

The road, specifically you can tell is looped over and over again. The tops of the cliffs just look off, like they just took the rock texture and stuck it there. Check out the sand dunes on the outside of Refinery on the ET:QW page for a comparison. (The sand dunes there are extremely noticable in game IMO) Most of the rocks on the terrain in Crysis just fade out into grass.

Yes. Crysis is far from perfect, though you don't play the game like that to notice things like the looping road texture. It's hard to make a comparison between ET:QW and Crysis because they're not meant to be played like that... it would be more suitable to compare it to Battlefield 2 and texture looping isn't as much of an issue (though it's getting on a bit and doesn't hold brilliant to today's standards, having a lower texture resolution). I always thought the textures in Crysis were a quite lacking, especially as mountains (as you rightly point out). I'd assume if a game based on more conventional texturing techniques was released and was designed to be played from a height the issue wouldn't be as prevalent, if at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for things that improve graphics / immersion. Texture compression started off as a limited experiment by S3 and Unreal Tournament but went on to become a standard, much as MegaTexture could - it's just not as radical as Carmack would like to have us believe (as least not based on ET:QW and the earlier preview of id Tech5).

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Founder of the "I Hate Smiley Fitz" society

Remember: Riley has autism. He has trouble communicating, and in an overstimulating
environment, he can get frightened and run away, leaving his parents frantic. - Auburn

awwwwww shit... they takin it to the HNL??

damn, yall - thats a ho.. nubba.. leva

Cos it makes fuck all difference to the end-user - it simply automates the conversion process, saving the developer time and money.

There's not much point licensing an engine if you have to spend a quarter of the development on engine tools.

Heh.. Those two statements seem fairly contradictory to me. In the end, less time spent fighting the engine = more time&budget (the world runs on money you know) left for actual gamedesign.. Which benefits you, the end-user.