• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Carmack: Rage's mod tools coming "Real Soon Now. I hope. Sigh."

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/260529465636040704

BFG work pushed the Rage tools, but Real Soon Now. I hope. Sigh. I think we have made poor decisions on this all year.

Good and yes, you did.

edit

As a reminder Tim Willits initially said the game will ship with them.. on launch day.. a year ago.. http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/05/rage-to-ship-with-full-level-editor-id-studio/

“Pull down the console, type ‘id studio’, then press enter. Then, bam, there’s all the tools we use.”

edit (Old) Pictures from idstudio: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=43547104&postcount=71
 

Forkball

Member
Carmack: Someone please come up with something to make people interested in this game. I want that Day Z money.
 
Yeah releasing an "enhanced" port of Doom 3 instead of giving us concrete details on Doom 4 after cancellation rumors is poor decisions indeed. Then again, releasing one game every generation must not be doing wonders for business either.
 
Carmack: Someone please come up with something to make people interested in this game. I want that Day Z money.

I really hope this did push the decision to release Rage's development tools. Because the dev tools have always been half of the appeal of iD's games in the past. iD tech 5 is still top tier stuff in the game engine world, I'd care if they release the dev tools for it. If the map editor is still anything like they were showing in the past, then it should have networking in it and multi user editing.
 

antitrop

Member
Yeah releasing an "enhanced" port of Doom 3 instead of giving us concrete details on Doom 4 after cancellation rumors is poor decisions indeed. Then again, releasing one game every generation must not be doing wonders for business either.
Sad, but all completely true.
 

Forkball

Member
it was announced a year ago.

I know, but I don't think it's such a leap to assume that the reason they are really focusing on it now is because Rage didn't exactly light the world on fire. Mods can mean big business and new attention to your game (how much money did Durante make FROM?). I'm a bit surprised it didn't come out earlier though, since iD was basically the company that made releasing developer tools worthwhile.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
I wanna line up a ton of mutants and throw out a ton of adv wing sticks - just watch the bodies drop

Don't forget to record it and then throw the video, accompanied by Drowning Pool's "Bodies", up on YouTube. :p
 

Corky

Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference.
Don't forget to record it and then throw the video, accompanied by Drowning Pool's "Bodies", up on YouTube. :p

Why do you make it sound like he has any other choice with regards to musical piece? You're allowed to have something else :O!?
 

sohois

Member
Carmack: Someone please come up with something to make people interested in this game. I want that Day Z money.

Dice, Infinity Ward remove mod tools from BF & COD: "Look at these moneygrabbers, trying to force people to buy their shitty map packs & DLC. "

iD add mod tools to Rage: "Look at these moneygrabbers, trying to replicate the success of ArmA 2 & Day Z."
 

NinjaBoiX

Gold Member
I love RAGE, I think it's a great shooter. Gorgeous, fast, fluid, fantastic guns, great AI and animation, it's just brilliant!

Might fire it up again tonight.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Why do you make it sound like he has any other choice with regards to musical piece? You're allowed to have something else :O!?

Various Linkin Park songs and Papa Roach's "Last Resort" are also permissible.
 

pa22word

Member
According to Carmack haven't the tools have been sitting in mothballs, complete, for like a year at Bethesda's HQ? Kinda hard to blame id for this when the decision when to release them to the general public lies with Bethesda, not id. Also according to Carmack, id can't talk about Doom 4 yet due to restrictions placed on them by Bethesda.

Even though I know they couldn't have survived otherwise, seeing id chained down like this is breaking my heart =\

Oh and weren't those cancellation rumors solely from some angry employee who lost his job and leaked a bunch of internal assets, or something?

EDIT: I believe Carmack said at Quakecon this year in his keynote that part of the reason Bethesda is keeping a tight lid on Doom 4 is because of the puzzling reaction people had to RAGE in that they expected it to be an RPG and not a shooting game. So now remaining quiet on the project until closer to release is more of a good thing that way people don't build up unrealistic and/or patently false expectations out of the project, or something. Idk it's been awhile since I watched it, but I remember him talking about this subject in depth during the keynote presentation.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
Even though I know they couldn't have survived otherwise, seeing id chained down like this is breaking my heart =\

Why couldn't they have survived? I was under the impression that Carmack and co allowed themselves to be bought out because it'd let them focus more on development and less on business or licensing, not because they were struggling financially.
 

Mastperf

Member
It's crazy that the industry has gotten so big and complicated that developers like id are tripping over their own feet. Let's hope they can quickly adapt to the new way of things. They really held on to the small development team mentality for too long it seems.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Why couldn't they have survived? I was under the impression that Carmack and co allowed themselves to be bought out because it'd let them focus more on development and less on business or licensing, not because they were struggling financially.

I don't think id would've had much left in its coffers come mid-2009. id Tech 4 was licensed for only a few titles and prior to the Zenimax buyout the studio hadn't released a product for half a decade.
 

antitrop

Member
I don't think id would've had much left in its coffers come mid-2009. id Tech 4 was licensed for only a few titles and prior to the Zenimax buyout the studio hadn't released a product for half a decade.

Was Rage financially successful?
 

Glass Rebel

Member
It might be a bit too late for this, I dunno. I wonder what happened to that Scorchers DLC that appeared on ESRB.

Still love you, John.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Was Rage financially successful?

It's hard to be sure since we don't have much in the way of sales figures, although from that you could infer the game performed below expectations. If we consider Rage's development as a whole rather than the last ~2 years Bethesda bankrolled, I strongly doubt it's turned a profit.
 
I love RAGE, I think it's a great shooter. Gorgeous, fast, fluid, fantastic guns, great AI and animation, it's just brilliant!

Might fire it up again tonight.

The facial/ character animations in Rage still impresses me too, and iD's proprietary physics engine is fantastic. One of my absolute favorite things in rage were the sentry bots that you could build. The AI on these things were incredible. What really kills me is that they designed this engine for literally one game, and we will never see it licensed out to any other developer to use... but at least releasing the dev tools would be something...
 

pa22word

Member
With Borderlands 2 out, nope.


I really wish people would stop comparing these two games. Regardless of your opinion on one or the other and which one you prefer, the games' are vastly different in their design direction in the gameplay area.

Ie, BLands is Diablo with guns, and Rage is a shooting game with a hub world instead of purely linear progression from level to level.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
The facial/ character animations in Rage still impresses me too, and iD's proprietary physics engine is fantastic. One of my absolute favorite things in rage were the sentry bots that you could build. The AI on these things were incredible. What really kills me is that they designed this engine for literally one game, and we will never see it licensed out to any other developer to use... but at least releasing the dev tools would be something...

They've already licensed it out to... some studio, I forget the name. They're ex-Starbreeze guys (Riddick-era, not Syndicate-era).
 

mtm5925

Member
Rage sold like 2.5 to 3 millions and EA paid them 10+ millions for publishing right. I think that should be enough to sustain 60 people team for next 4~5 years.
 

pa22word

Member
They've already licensed it out to... some studio, I forget the name. They're ex-Starbreeze guys (Riddick-era, not Syndicate-era).

That's not technically licensing though as Bethesda owns Machine Games as well, right?

Rage sold like 2.5 to 3 millions and EA paid them 10+ millions for publishing right. I think that should be enough to sustain 60 people team for next 4~5 years.



The problem comes in when id had to balloon their staff to upwards of (iirc) 200 just to complete Rage.
 

Glass Rebel

Member
That's not technically licensing though as Bethesda owns Machine Gun as well, right?

ZeniMax owns Machine Games but yeah, they're under the same umbrella and Hollenshead already said a while ago the engine could be shared with ZeniMax' internal developers but not outside studios (for the time being).
 

Tiu Neo

Member
According to Carmack haven't the tools have been sitting in mothballs, complete, for like a year at Bethesda's HQ? Kinda hard to blame id for this when the discussion on when to release them to the general public lies with Bethesda, not id. Also according to Carmack, id can't talk about Doom 4 yet due to restrictions placed on them by Bethesda.

Yeah, it's kinda sad this is happening to him. You can feel the frustation on his tweets.
 

@MUWANdo

Banned
That's not technically licensing though as Bethesda owns Machine Gun as well, right?

That's the one, yeah. I have no idea whether Bethesda/Zenimax owns them, you could be right about that.

As far as I know the relative lack of interest in licensing idtech5 is due to Zenimax, and not any real misgivings about the tech--id doesn't wanna have to support the engine for licensees, and Zenimax wants ownership/publishing rights to any game that uses idtech5 on top of licensing fees.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Rage sold like 2.5 to 3 millions and EA paid them 10+ millions for publishing right. I think that should be enough to sustain 60 people team for next 4~5 years.

Source? Also, VGC sales numbers are not reliable, and id Software is composed of over 200 people, not 60.
 
ZeniMax owns Machine Games but yeah, they're under the same umbrella and Hollenshead already said a while ago the engine could be shared with ZeniMax' internal developers but not outside studios (for the time being).

Oh, thanks for the info. I didn't realize that anyone else outside of iD were using Tech 5.
 

mtm5925

Member
Source?

please don't say VG chartz

Sorry, it's a speculation based on first month sales and similar (new IP) titles. 550k for first month is pretty decent for new IP. Brink sold like 400k copies in first month in NA and somehow it sold 2.5 millions lifetime.

Source? Also, VGC sales numbers are not reliable, and id Software is composed of over 200 people, not 60.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/59285/ids-john-carmack-explains-zenimax

In addition, Carmack revealed that while the studio had "early offers" for the Rage publishing rights, to the tune of "X million dollars," id instead chose to keep self-funding the game until it was "far into development."

"When we finally signed a deal," he said, "it was X plus $10 million."

60 is the number of core Rage team.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Sorry, it's a speculation based on first month sales and similar (new IP) titles. 550k for first month is pretty decent for new IP. Brink sold like 400k copies in first month in NA and somehow it sold 2.5 millions lifetime.

I imagine it being on sale on Steam eight times over the past ~14 months is a key factor.
 
Top Bottom