Rage

id Software is working on two games using their new id Tech 5 graphics engine. One is the next Doom game while the other is Rage, their original action title that combines post-apocalypse action with some driving features. However it looks like a big feature of previous id games, mod support, may be tougher to do for Rage.

According to Gamasutra, id Software designer Tim Willits has indicated, "Unfortunately, Rage is going to be more difficult to mod." Willits, who made those statements during this week's Austin Game Developers Conference, said the reason is id Tech 5's use of megatextures. Unlike previous id games, which have used several smaller textures for levels, id Tech 5's megatexture support uses one large texture that takes a lot of processing power to me made into their final form. While full mod support may not be possible, Willits indicated that third party mod makers could create "modular chunks of gameplay that can be slotted into the extant Rage world."

Valve's weekend sales on Steam are usually just one or two titles but this weekend its a boatload of games that are now just 50 percent off for this weekend only. All of them are part of the id Software Super Pack that was introduced last year during QuakeCon.

That means all of the games in the Super Pack are really cheap via Steam; all the Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake, Heretic/Hexen titles and expansion packs are involved in this sale (except for Enemy Territory; Quake Wars and Quake IV, the latter of which for some reason has never been available for Steam download). If you want to get all of the games at once that's the best deal of all as the entire Super Pack, priced at an already resonable $69.99, is on sale this weekend only for just $34.99. That's 22 total games for less than the price for one regular retail new PC title.

When it comes to game engine programming there are few that can match id Software's John Carmack and at Intel's recent developers forum he took the stage at a keynote address to talk about how their id Tech 5 engine will use multi-threading for their upcoming action game Rage.

As reported by bit-tech.net, Carmack stated that using multi-threading, all of the rendering for Rage is offloaded onto just one processor core using id Tech 5. A separate thread handles other jobs such as "running analysis over what's being rendered, managing the streaming of information from DVDs and hard drives, decompressing all of it, transcoding the formats that are useful for GPUs, and so on." Other threads can handle features like collision detection and AI.

There's been lots of talk over the years on how piracy has kept PC games from achieving some of the sales figures of the console counterparts. However, one major PC developer executive, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead, thinks that some PC hardware companies see a benefit to piracy.

In a Gamesindustry.biz interview (conducted a few weeks ago at QuakeCon), Hollenshead states, "I think that there's been this dirty little secret among hardware manufacturers, which is that the perception of free content - even if you're supposed to pay for it on PCs - is some sort hidden benefit that you get when you buy a PC, like a right to download music for free or a right to download pirated movies and games." While he adds that he doesn't believe there is an overt conspiracy among PC hardware companies he does say, "I think the thing is they realize that trading content, copyrighted or not, is an expected benefit of owning a computer."

This Rage trailer has it all - ruthless mutants, explosions and a desert buggy race featuring heavy firepower. The trailer uses all in-game footage, which sports some incredibly detailed graphics. It looks like one of the artists is a Michael Berryman (The Devil's Rejects, The Hills Have Eyes) fan, since a character bearing a very close likeness to him opens up the trailer.

Download the Rage In-Game HD Teaser Trailer (129 MB)

It's been a week since QuakeCon but quotes from id Software's John Carmack continue to pop up on various web sites. The latest is Tom's Hardware where the co-founder and lead programmer of games like Doom, Quake and the upcoming Rage has stated that the PC platform is no longer the main platform for id's upcoming titles.

According to Carmack, "We still think the PC is a market worth supporting, but we're not making decision around the PC. It's probably more of the junior partner in the cross-platform strategy, although obviously, our day-to-day development is predominately on the PC." He added that they are "contractually obligate" to release Rage for the PC and Doom IV, id's other in-house title, will almost certainly show up on the PC as well, with Carmack saying, "Even if it was a marginal business case, we would still do it because it's the right thing to do."

For many PC gamers, QuakeCon is bigger than Christmas. The joy of meeting up with friends, guzzling pure caffeine, gorging on junk food and fragging until the wee hours of the morning is a thing of beauty -- especially considering event attendance is free!

Unfortunately, the trek to Texas is too long and arduous for many, resulting in lost opportunities for fun times galore. Don't worry; Big Download's got your back. We were in attendance this year to pick our way through sleep-deprived gamers cuddled up with their keyboards (minus the drool, it was actually quite touching) and discarded pizza boxes to sample some of the gaming products on display.

Compiled here are our announcements from the show, including new bits from John Carmack's annual keynote address, as well as hands-on and impressions articles.

Read on for all the goods!

id Software has been known almost exclusively as a FPS dev house, although their upcoming original game Rage breaks out of that genre a tab with other elements. One genre that id doesn't want to enter is the MMO space, even if other publishers want to bring id's properties to the space.

Shacknews states that with a chat with id's John Carmack he revealed that the company has received a number of offers to turn their FPS series Quake into an MMO shooter title but that id has rejected the idea, saying that he is "fully cognizant" of risks that would need to be made to make such a game. id is currently working on Quake Live, a slightly revamped version of their Quake III Arena game that will be released for free via the web with in-game advertising.

During his annual QuakeCon address, John Carmack divulged his reason for the resurrection of Quake III: Arena via the free web-based shooter Quake Live. Quake III represented the purity of an old school, deathmatch-oriented shooter, Carmack explained. While both fun to develop and to play -- Carmack proudly stated that he used to place first in the in-house Quake III tournaments, then humbly admitted he only survived the first round of a recent Quake Live session -- such a package would not do well as a $50 retail product.

Enter Quake Live, a free-to-play reincarnation of Quake III that can be accessed from any computer with a broadband connection and a web browser. But given Carmack's love of Quake III, Carmack answered the question he must have known was on the mind of all in attendance: might there one day be a Quake Arena 2?

Possibly -- but only if Quake Live fares well. "I'd say probably the success of Quake Live is going to determine whether or not we do another Quake Arena project," said Carmack during his speech.

Even if Quake Live does well, another Quake project would be far down the road. Though id is divided into multiple teams, Carmack has said that Rage is his first priority, and after that, the studio will no doubt gear up for a heavy marketing campaign revolving around its next Doom title. All that combined with Raven's focus on the forthcoming Wolfenstein equals Quake Live as the next big title for Quake-aholics.

Here at the 2008 QuakeCon, media is flying faster than BYOC gamers bouncing across Quake Live's jump pad-laden arenas. New trailers have been released, Wolfenstein screenshots have no doubt already graced your monitor with their presence, and just today, id Software released a massive number of new Rage screenshots.

Two of them, actually.

Yes, only two, but their aesthetic sexiness boasts the age-old "quality over quantity" mantra. Rage is in development at id Software and published by Electronic Arts, and will be released for PC, Mac, Xbox 360 and PS3 "when it's done."

Given the oft-mistaken view of Electronic Arts' as one of the industry's two evil empires (with Microsoft being the other company to hold the dubious honor), many gamers and industry specialists were quite surprised when id Software named EA as the publisher for their upcoming Rage FPS. Despite the view of EA, many were surprised due to id's longstanding publication relationship with Activision, who has published a number of the independent developer's most notable titles.

When asked about the publishing deal with EA during his QuakeCon 2008 keynote, id's famous lead engineer John Carmack smiled and said not too read too much into it and that, essentially, business was business. Carmack explained that id had shopped Rage to a number of publishers three different times. Each time, publishers such as Activision, EA, and Sega had been impressed and had offered high sums, but id had chosen to do more work and come back later with another pitch. Carmack noted his contentment that his company was one of the only independent studios who could afford to take such a position.

After reaching a milestone dictating the game could be sufficiently shown, Carmack asked all potential bidders to come forward with their final proposals. The result: EA won, plain and simple. Carmack made a special point of noting that the publishing deal only included Rage. EA could very well be signed to publish Doom, but id will likely repeat the bidding process with that title as they did with Rage.

When John Carmack speaks, gamers tend to listen, even if talk of ray-tracing and wire-thin optimization processes flies right over most of their heads. During his keynote at this year's QuakeCon festivities, the software engineering guru prevented attendees from daydreaming of returning to the BYOC area's 24-hour fragging by dropping one particularly juicy tidbit of information: id Tech 5, the engine powering id's upcoming Rage FPS, is just about done.

Carmack spoke about his role at id, explaining that he pops into Doom and Wolfenstein meetings to ensure that everything is going well before returning to his desk and focusing on the project that consumes the majority of his time: Rage.

The development of id Tech 5 began three years ago and is proceeding smoothly -- so smoothly that Carmack feels he won't be discussing its development at QuakeCon 2010, but rather its application toward Doom, the project that will make full use of id Tech 5 after Rage puts it through its paces.

Relevant Files:

Download the HD QuakeCon 2008 Wolfenstein teaser trailer

With E3 now behind us Big Download turns its attention to another terrific annual event: QuakeCon. Yes, we will be in Dallas, Texas this weekend to attend the massive (and free) gaming tournament and industry gathering sponsored by id Software. Did we mention that it's totally free.

Big Download will cover the event from the tournament to the exhibitors to the weird PC case mods in the BYOC area and more. Tonight id will hold a press conference for QuakeCon attendees which will include a lecture by id's master programmer John Carmack. We might not understand all he will say in his speech but it will be cool to hear anyway. We are also expecting id to show off their upcoming games Rage, Quake Live, and Wolfenstein (with Raven Software) and there might be some surprises as well. Stay tuned.

Is it just us or is the monster-mutant in the last few frames of the new Rage trailer look an awful lot like The Goonies' favorite not-really-a-bad-monster and Chuck's pal Sloth? Well in any case it still looks impressive and we should learn more about Rage at QuakeCon later this month. In the meantime check out the E3 trailer which shows less than a minute of actual game footage from the id Software-EA action game.

At Electronic Arts' E3 2008 press conference, the publisher announced that it has obtained the rights to publish Rage, the upcoming next original game from id Software that was first announced at QuakeCon in 2007. id Software founder John Carmack took the stage at the EA press conference to announce the deal which represents the first major change for id's publishing duties in a long time. For the past 10 years or so, Activison has been publishing most of the games either developed directly by id or made by others using id's franchises.

Carmack also showed off a new short trailer for Rage which showed more graphical goodness from the new id Tech 5 engine. This trailer, while brief, concentrated more on the characters in the Mad Max-looking game and less on the driving elements that has been seen in previous glimpses. More info and a more detailed showing of Rage will be shown at QuakeCon at the end of July, according to Carmack.