1681

I’m only about 5 hours in, but I’ve been using the shotgun almost exclusively. The sound of it is fantastic.

1682

Ooh which patch, Tim? I have the same card.

1683

Dynamite bolts are fun. Shoot the bad guy, here them say, “Oh, SHIT!” then they blow up.

1684

Try this

Add +cvar m_menu_sensitivity -0.2 to your Steam launch properties

1685

The normal Steam patch that came out this weekend. Have you tried playing since then? If you’re still having problems, then I’m not sure what’s going on.

1686

By the way, I don’t think anyone spelled out exactly how to increase FOV from the command line. To increase it by 10 degrees, put “+cvaradd g_fov 10” in the launch options within the Steam game properties. (Or maybe you only need +cvar, I don’t know.)

The default is 80. That’s not horrific, but I caught myself a few times thinking how restricted it was, especially in a turning battle with other cars.

1687

In my case the patch and a launch command solved every problem I was having. There are still a few people with ATI cards having problems, but the vast majority are able to play the game now.

1688

Yeah, my problems magically fixed themselves this morning after cleaning out my CFG files and applying a few tweaks from the forums. Namely:

mildly spammy cfg stuff

I added these to my launch options:

+com_skipIntroVideo 1 +seta com_allowconsole 1 +vt_maxPPF 8 +jobs_numThreads 0

And then my rageconfig.cfg is as follows:

seta com_videoRam “1024”
seta image_anisotropy “4”
seta image_usecompression “1”
seta image_lodbias “-1”
seta image_useCache “1”
seta image_cacheMegs “200”
seta image_cacheMinK “50”
seta m_smooth “0”
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 “8192”
seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly “8192”
seta vt_pageimagesizeunique “8192”
seta vt_maxPPF “8”
seta vt_lodBias “-1”
seta vt_minlod “-1”
seta vt_maxaniso “2”

And now I’m getting a solid 40-60 fps, no corrupted textures with minor amounts of pop in on my 1GB HD4870. For some reason running fullscreen instead of windowed significantly improved performance, so one might try that if the game feels a little sluggish.

Also, if you haven’t been trolling the Bethesda forums, one of the posters there created a handy CFG maker: http://donotargue.com/cfg-makers/rage/

1689

The difference, of course, is that Quake didn’t even pretend to have a plot. Every level had an exit, and monsters trying to kill you, and you simply killed them out of self defense. In context of the weird game world, your actions still made sense.

Rage, on the other hand, goes to a lot of trouble to set up a narrative that makes no sense at all. Most shooters establish simple self-defense as a justification for bloodshed; your first mission in Rage is a suicide mission for a guy you barely know, to slaughter a group of people who just let you pass without incident. The more appropriate course of action at that point is to just shoot John Goodman’s character and his buddy in the head and figure out a plan from there.

But what bugs me the most is how easily that opening could have been tweaked to make sense. Instead of the bandits just letting you pass, maybe they open fire or there’s a canyon chase, establishing a threat that needs to be dealt with ASAP. Maybe Goodman is injured, which is why you need to go it alone. Maybe they have supplies you feel obligated to retrieve as payback for being rescued. Developers spend so much time trying to make sure the opening segments of their games hit just the right notes; after 7 years in development, this one struck me as downright bizarre.

1690

There was some discussion on this a few pages back. Suffice to say, I completely agree about the opening, but find it amusing to think of the main character as a barely contained homicidal maniac.

1691

Ah. Now that I’m playing it, I should probably catch up on the most recent 30 pages of this thread. :)

OTOH, I’m playing on a PC with an NVIDIA GTX 260 (hardly cutting edge), and no issues so far. Plays extremely smooth at 1920x and no crashes … yet.

1692

You aren’t supposed to explore much on your own. Within specific mission areas, yeah, go for it. But just wandering around the wasteland has very limited value (outside discovering the optional sewer levels).

As noted, when you go to the sell screen and select an item you will see an icon below. That tells you whether it has potential crafting value or is just for cash generating purposes. Oil and gas, for example, are just for selling. But be careful, as the game will show the cash icon for crafted items, so don’t just blindly sell based on the icon. And the ferrite can be sold or either held on to, but apparently its uses are limited.

1693

I don’t know why you’re having such a hard time with the opening. Goodman rescues you from two bloodthirsty bandits, whose deaths will shortly prompt their bandit friends to come for you and the dude who rescued you. The logic seems fine to me. Really, the only iffy thing for me is why they would just let you pass in the vehicle if they’re supposed to be a ruthless band of shitbags. But honestly, I don’t dwell too much on it because I’m too busy shooting things.

1694

Rage, on the other hand, goes to a lot of trouble to set up a narrative that makes no sense at all.

Well, it doesn’t go to much trouble, which is kind of the point. But I’m not denying it’s dumb. I’m just wondering why you expected any different from id. All their plots are flimsy excuses to shoot things in the face.

1695

It’s kind of funny if you think about the story and the effect on the game. I critizied the main plot before, but actually is only part of… what, 20% of the game? The other 80% you are doing missions for the mayor of the town or the sheriff or random npc with no relation with the Authority or the Resistance.
Why? Just because.

1696

Nobody would have except that they said, time and time again, that the plot was going to be awesome and engrossing. I guess shame on people for believing them? I dunno…

1697

I don’t follow much press, but did they really say that? I’m sure they may have suggested that they’d focus on story more than their previous titles, but did they actually say that Rage had an awesome and engrossing narrative?

1698

Yes, in those vid doc things they published. I don’t remember the exact wording but they definitely promised an awesome storyline.

1699

Additionally, remember that unlike previous id games, this was id and Bethesda saying that the story was going to be awesome.

1700

The excuses of “this is id game, what did you expect?” are quite annoying.
Sure, this is id, but:

  1. this is 2011, not 1997
  2. they are trying a lot more than they did in quake/doom days, with many NPCs, non combat zones, quests…

If they go to the trouble of making a game where sizeable portion of gameplay takes place in noncombat zones, talking/shopping with NPCs, they could have gone to the trouble of making the story and writing good.