id: Rage "On a Whole New Level"

The Todd Hollenshead Interview on Kikizo hears from the id Software CEO (with an assist from designer/marine biologist Matt Hooper) on a variety of topics, including Rage, engine technology, platform support, and more. At one point a question about DOOM 3's shortcomings inspires a defense of the game (thanks Eurogamer), as Todd points out that sales-wise, "It's the most successful game in id's history." Along the way, Matt talks about Rage and the Tech 5 engine, apparently fearless about raising expectations:
The things we're doing with id Tech 5 have really opened things up design-wise. I work closely with Tim Willits who's the creative director on id Tech 5 and the guiding force on Rage, and we're going to do some things which I think are just going to blow people way - it's just going to be on a whole new level. Things that you have never seen in any game before, some things borrowed from different games, really action focused. Just as a designer we can do things in these giant worlds and with these vehicle systems and still maintain the things that people love id for, which is that control and the FPS action combat, but now we can introduce all these other elements, so it's really opened things up. On the design side, we've never had more energy, it just makes us giddy to be able to use this tech.
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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.

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