News id: Rage too complex for modding

[Bindibadgi]

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2008/09...-for-modding/1

id Software has revealed that the upcoming multi-platform shooter, Rage, might be a bit too complex for users to modify.

[liratheal]

Eh. It'll get modded. Everything always does.

[UrbanMarine]

Too complex to mod because they won't release the SDK for years..

[liratheal]

Originally Posted by UrbanMarine

Too complex to mod because they won't release the SDK for years..

That's probably what they meant to say

[alexandros1313]

Let me take a stab at translating all that for the layman:

"We want you to buy the console versions. Mods may sway you into buying the evil PC version. So we kill mods".

[Lepermessiah]

Another once great PC dev goes to the dogs and stops supporting the community because of consoles. Consoles and everything they stand for suck royally.

[Narishma]

Yay another Rage bashing thread.

[Paradigm Shifter]

Hm. I suspect some enterprising soul out there will find a way to extract files so they can be edited quite quickly. Once that is done, it's really a matter of patience. Editing 128000x128000 pixel textures will take a lot, though. But unless iD are developing this game on some secret supercomputer, there has to be a normal PC out there capable of doing it. Besides... if a PC can't edit it... what hope have some of the consoles (with their limited amounts of RAM) got to run it? Or will the game run like a slideshow on everything because it's constantly paging textures off the disc?

[Veles]

I bet the hardcore modding crowd will be seeing this as a challenge. I would have thought they'd allow people to use regular sized textures though.

Another question is do we really need megatextures? Sure they're great for landscapes but are they really using them on everything? Such as smaller objects like barrels/cars/guns/etc.?

I suppose they could have one megatexture with loads of barrel textures so no barrel looks the same. IIRC, stardock changed it so ships in GalCivII were all covered by one massive texture, eliminating the need to load several different textures.

[liratheal]

Originally Posted by Paradigm Shifter

Hm. I suspect some enterprising soul out there will find a way to extract files so they can be edited quite quickly. Once that is done, it's really a matter of patience. Editing 128000x128000 pixel textures will take a lot, though. But unless iD are developing this game on some secret supercomputer, there has to be a normal PC out there capable of doing it. Besides... if a PC can't edit it... what hope have some of the consoles (with their limited amounts of RAM) got to run it? Or will the game run like a slideshow on everything because it's constantly paging textures off the disc?

Like I said. Everything is modded eventually. Just because the devs can't see it happening doesn't mean it won't

Unless they're developing on the Roadrunner. Then they might be right >.>

[yakyb]

hmm interesting ignoring the silly console comments above.

my best guess is that if a modder really did want to give this a go they could write themselves a CUDA based app or get the one for the upcoming photoshop that allows the editing of very large textures. now i cant remember how big Nvidia quoted initially.

now after that you would need a CUDA based mapping tool (or a super computer, cluster) to build the levels on function in the amount of time needed to build these things and yes its too complicated

however that begs the question what are they building the levels using?

[liratheal]

Originally Posted by yakyb

hmm interesting ignoring the silly console comments above.

my best guess is that if a modder really did want to give this a go they could write themselves a CUDA based app or get the one for the upcoming photoshop that allows the editing of very large textures. now i cant remember how big Nvidia quoted initially.

now after that you would need a CUDA based mapping tool (or a super computer, cluster) to build the levels on function in the amount of time needed to build these things and yes its too complicated

however that begs the question what are they building the levels using?

Computers from space. Mass effect is a true story, you see, but only ID have managed to get the alien tech, which is what they're using :B

[Zurechial]

While I'm an opponent of 'consolification' in most circumstances I think the early comments here are just jumping to conclusions and looking for an excuse to whine about ID now that whining about Epic has gone out of fashion.

Originally Posted by Article

Naturally though, the issue does beg the question of why the engine requires megatextures and doesn't provide support for smaller, old-fashioned texture technologies.

I doubt this is actually the case. While it's not impossible, I find it unlikely that the engine will throw up an error if a modder tried to use tiling textures smaller than 128kx128k pixels.

Given the prowess of Carmack & Co. and their general eagerness to support modding, I think it's more likely that if the engine is passed a cut-down 'megatexture' in the region of 16k x 16k pixels (an easily manageable texture size on any modern PC running photoshop) it'll tile it across the map.

If the engine supports it and if the modder is inventive enough, they could use shader maps, multiple passes of texture-layers or even film-grain shaders and the like in real-time in-game on that cut-down modder's-megatexture to give an impression of higher-detail similar to the progressive-texturing system used in the older iterations of the Unreal engine (used most effectively in the original Deus Ex).
It'd never approach the same level of detail and uniqueness provided by a true Megatexture created at ID, but it'd probably suffice for most modders and satisfy most players.

Additionally, I can imagine someone writing a command-line tool for morphing, flipping & manipulating the existing ID megatextures or applying Photoshop filters without rendering the texture - for an automated kind of texture-mangling to create something 'new' from the existing ID megatextures but on typical gamer/enthusiast-grade hardware.

Isn't the next major iteration of Photoshop going to be accelerated with parallel-processing via CUDA or similar?
If so, I'd imagine megaxtures would be somewhat less of an issue for anyone equipped with a GPU capable of that.
And who's going to be seriously trying to play Rage (nevermind mod Tech5) with anything less than an 8-series or similar?

Originally Posted by GameSutra Article

Megatextures require huge amounts of processing power to be baked into their final form for distribution on the game disc; Willits alluded to a large number of computers working for a long time to process them, analogous to a CG render farm.

At a guess, this is referring to the conversion of a lossless-quality megaxture to a compressed-texture for use in-engine. If this is the case, it's only a matter of time before someone writes an alternate converter that converts faster but produces a lower-quality final megaxture, or spends less time on compression and creates a higher-quality, less-optimised final megatexture.
The above is conjecture on my part, but when it comes to modding: Where there's a will there's a way. That's what modding is about.

Originally Posted by GameSutra Article

Willits envisioned modders developing modular chunks of gameplay that can be slotted into the extant Rage world, rather than full mods, as a potential solution. While the game's large central wasteland is a streaming hub world, its levels are instance-based.

This paragraph alone suggests to me that most of the accusations of console-preference aimed at ID are unfounded, and that they're eager to support modders on the PC (looking for solutions and providing workarounds), but are just publicly acknowledging and addressing the issue that, because technology has moved on, modding Tech5 simply won't be as easy for the average modder as it was with Doom and the Quake games when they came out.
The above quote even suggests to me something along the lines of the plugin system used in Morrowind and Oblivion, and I think that could do the job nicely with Rage, but I'd hope also that the modders wouldn't be locked into using a dumbed-down SDK-Lite aimed at the average user (TESCS and the NWN editor spring to mind..)

[UrbanMarine]

Consoles...when a full size PC bangs a micro size pc a console is born.

If Rage is a quality game why worry about the mods, the main game should keep us occupied for years.

[chrisb2e9]

Naturally though, the issue does beg the question of why the engine requires megatextures and doesn't provide support for smaller, old-fashioned texture technologies.

maybe they are trying to move computer gaming forwards instead of keeping it stagnant. I get tired of seeing the same texture over and over again. sounds like a good thing to me.
As for not being able to mod this, like other people have said, modders will find a way. It might not happen in the first month, or the first year, but eventually they will have the tools to do it.

Another once great PC dev goes to the dogs and stops supporting the community because of consoles. Consoles and everything they stand for suck royally.

What makes you think that they wont be support modding in the future, and why do you think they dont support modding for this game? because of consoles?

The problem it seems arises from the megatexture technology used in the game

did you read the article?

[Cobalt]

Based on what has come out of the modding scene in the past it seems like an odd statement to me. I wonder what kind of computer is actually required. In the hardcore gamer market (where a lot of the modders come from in the first place) high end machines are a lot more common than you would otherwise expect in a game's audience. Unless they do require multiprocessor workstations to manipulate the textures, there are still going to be enough people out there with the required hardware.

Besides, just because terrain editing may be difficult due to the technology, what's stopping them from modding other parts of the game?

[Narishma]

Cobalt: I suggest you read the article because it answers both of your questions.

[UrbanMarine]

I suggest building a 25million server room and then attempting to make a 10x10 room in Rage editor. It should work

[LordPyrinc]

128000x128000 pixels for textures????

Now I see why the footprint of the install is so massive. How much of that can the average LCD screen actually parse into individual pixels? I don't know the answer because I'm too lazy to do the research, but what is the visual difference to the end user?

[roshan]

All the talking about Rage these days ,make me beleave the game is nearly finished and hit the market soon.