id Tech 5... What a shame...

[lost_soul]

For anyone who hasn't read, it isn't going to be open-source immediately after all. That was a mistake.

 

However, I really think id should let the modding community use the new engine for free. Epic is doing it! You've got to stay competitive. I understand that if they let the modders use the engine right away though, it may decrease sales of their games. "Why should we make a mod for Rage when we could make it on the free version of the engine?"

 

So, why not do what Epic did in a year or two?

[MoroseTroll]

Gamasutra has published another interview with John Carmack. And I've found the following phrase that is very interesting for me:

If you want to do a game that's all about walking around with torches, our dynamic lighting approximations are not as good as you might want for something like that.

Does it mean that id Tech 5 would not be an ideal for TDM, in theory?

Edited August 22, 2011 by MoroseTroll

[Midnight]

Does it mean that id Tech 5 would not be an ideal for TDM, in theory?

Again?

 

idTech5 strikes me as id software's attempt to prove they can do outdoor environments better than anyone else after criticisms of past engines, so a different direction to TDM. The main problem (apart from idTech5 only being available for internal Bethesda projects for the foreseeable future) is that you'd need an army of dedicated artists to get anything like the quality you'll see from Rage, so it doesn't seem at all ideal for modders IMHO (specifically talking about the megatexture tech here).

[GameDevGoro]

Does it mean that id Tech 5 would not be an ideal for TDM, in theory?

 

Probably not. But think of Thief 1 and 2, they didn't have that many dynamic lights going on, so maybe it would still be possible...

[New Horizon]

With the release of the D3 source code just around the corner, why is everyone suddenly so anxious to have us switch engines?

 

Perhaps it was just a hypothetical question, but changing engines isn't like changing a pair of pants, so TDM isn't changing engines.

[MoroseTroll]

Midnight, New Horizon: Hey, I wrote "in theory" . Of course, I understand that it wouldn't happen even if id would make its Tech 5 free of charge. That was just a thought.

[Midnight]

Hey, I wrote "in theory" .

No worries , but it is still the case that idTech5 is never going to be a success in the modding community (if it is ever even made available).

 

 

What a shame.

[nbohr1more]

Modding...

 

There's some grumblings at Quake3world that idTech5 will still support brush based map editing and traditional textures. Light maps are a question as they might be merged into the Megatexture tech component. But it could offer a Quake 3-esque platform with some more modern features. Still, Xreal exists for that very purpose so... idTech5 would be redundant or possibly worse. (Except for crazy mod teams with server farms... )

[stumpy]

wasn't the idtech5 engine reduced in tech due to having to fit it on the xbox360, I read somewhere that stuff had to be removed for it to actually work on the now extremly out of date console. The hi rez texture maps for rage had to be turned into very low rez texture maps for the xbox360, cos the hi rez texture wouldn't work.

[nbohr1more]

wasn't the idtech5 engine reduced in tech due to having to fit it on the xbox360, I read somewhere that stuff had to be removed for it to actually work on the now extremly out of date console. The hi rez texture maps for rage had to be turned into very low rez texture maps for the xbox360, cos the hi rez texture wouldn't work.

 

The original proof-of-concept did not have a complex paging scheme that we now see for the console version, just a whopping big allocation... but contrary to your remark the PC version is the version that Carmack is complaining about due to the restrictive API overhead of Windows driver model.

 

Yes the image quality was degraded to fit on the console but that does not speak to the fact that geometry batching is better on consoles and shader effects can be more specifically scheduled there. Carmack doesn't care for Tessellation or any of the big ticket features of DX10\11. (He has essentially implied that they are currently hacky and immature.)

 

I'd say the lack of dynamic light is an engineering decision that was planned for all versions anyway. JC appears to be putting off dynamic light solutions until either voxel or ray-tracing is possible. He keeps benchmarking them against each other but finds that neither are ready yet. I think he should've expanded the Doom 3 simple light volume methods rather than scrap it all. The chance to take the alternate road is up to the OSS community. I hope they don't waste too much time trying to convert Id Tech 4 into a poor-man's Id Tech 5 rather than extending it's inherent strengths...

Edited August 24, 2011 by nbohr1more

[stumpy]

It looks like microsoft are aimming idtech5 towards there own console, and to be used with exclusive xbox titles, therefore they would block the code from outside use, they're probably going as far as telling idsoftware how the program should function, I've heard they do that a lot when the virus known as microsoft get there spores into something either a programing language or a game editor.

[Renzatic]

Microsoft. The new boogyman for our modern internet enabled age.

 

It looks like microsoft are aimming idtech5 towards there own console, and to be used with exclusive xbox titles, therefore they would block the code from outside use, they're probably going as far as telling idsoftware how the program should function, I've heard they do that a lot when the virus known as microsoft get there spores into something either a programing language or a game editor.

 

No. The decision to go mutliplatform and not license the source was all Id's decision. Yeah, MS has torn into a few studios in the past, like Bungie, but that's a rare case scenario, connected to them wanting to have a must have exclusive alongside their then newborn console. Beyond that, they usually leave their developers alone.

 

Plus Rage is coming out for the PS3, and has pared down versions of the engine running on iOS devices. It's hardly a 360 exclusive.