Fixed my problem; see post here:
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1255523-just-bought-cant-play/page__view__findpost__p__19152461



Lets start with my system specs before I get into the details...

My systems specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate w/SP1
AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 54000+ 2.79GHz
4.00GB RAM
Nvidia GeForce GT 430 (DirectX 11 support, 1024MB DDR3, PCIe x16)
Video card driver: 285.62


I just bought the game via Steam on sale, had to snag it while it was on sale cause I am really interested in playing the game. Video card driver is updated freshly all the time, and I am not willing to downgrade at the expense of playing a single game. I have other applications that require me to stay updated.

Anyway onto the problem(s). The game loads fine, intro plays without issue, menu works etc. I left everything default for the first attempt to play through, started a new campaign game, and watched the meteor video etc. All fine so far, but as soon as I load into the room with the pod, the problem(s) start.

The entire room is black, all I can see is the pod door and the red computer screen texture floating on a black wall of nothing. As soon as the pod allows me to move, over to the right is a door that is entirely missing with the ability to see parts of the outside world. Soon as I step outside, the entire world is missing, all I can see is the skybox and random textures.

I tinkered with the graphics settings the next go around to see if it helped, turned on vsync, turned on texture pooling etc. didn't help same issue.

I forced vsync on for RAGE via Nvidia's control panel, didn't help still black.


Kinda disappointed to spend $40 on the game and I can't even play it. (Yes I know, people spent more. I don't care that's not the point.)

Any help would be appreciated. Or if possible a refund.

thats a plus one here...
i have been tryingto make it work since i bought it a few days ago (at full price, and i have seen it discounted today - GUTTED!) anyway, your not alone there!
if you manage to get a refund let us know... if i won't be able to get it working within a week i'm giving up!

Welcome to the club.

It's been more than a month since the release.
One useless patch was released right after the release, but since then
not a single word from id, bethesda or ATI regarding these show stopper problems.

However, you can try tons of tweaks posted on Steam forum.
There's a good chance you can manage to workaround the problem, because your video
card is nvidia. Majority of people suffering from helpless texture bugs and crashes seem
to be Radeon owners, including me.

Good luck.

Dual cores have had a lot of trouble running this game. You will have to look at the various troubleshooting steps to try and get this to run. I know AMD's latest patch seemed to help a lot of users with dual cores play the game but this wasn't consistent. Try updating your drivers to the latest.

You might try these launch options for rage, made things better for me and it skips the stupid non-escapable intro.

+set com_skipIntroVideo 1 +vt_uncompressedphysicalimages 0 +vt_uncompressedvmtr 1

Could be a corrupt download?
You could try this: open Stream, right click Rage, go to properties,local files, then run verify integrity of game.
Might as well run the defrag while there to.

R285.38

i know you don't want to downgrade but them the brakes.

try this driver version. It's the beta version of what you have now.

Up to you of course.

Also keep anti aliasing to no more than x4 for now and make sure vsync is on. Leave the nvidia control panel alone, reset to the default settings if you can. There is no need to be in there.

Hey guys, got mine to run great now. Took a bit of tweaking and such but I'm up and running and the game plays smooth and great.

Here's what I did to get the game to run for me on my setup; hopefully it can help some others.

1. AMD Dual Core Optimizer; have had this installed since I got my system so I would recommend it as well if you use AMD dual core processors:
http://support.amd.com/us/Pages/dynamicDetails.aspx?ListID=c5cd2c08-1432-4756-aafa-4d9dc646342f&ItemID=153

2. Latest Nvidia Drivers (Yes, the current 285.62 as of this post works great.)
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

3. Nvidia Control Panel Tweaks
- Right-click your desktop and open the Nvidia Control Panel.
- Go to 'Manage 3D Settings' on the left.
- Add 'RAGE.exe' to the 'Program Settings' list since it wont automatically be there in most cases.
- Override the following settings from default:
-- Multi-display/mixed GPU acceleration -> Set to Single display performance mode
-- Triple Buffering -> Set to On.
-- Vertical Sync (vsync) -> Set to Force on

4. Custom Game Config
- Open the following folder where you installed RAGE to; with steam it defaults to: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\rage\base
- Create a new file here and name it 'rageConfig.cfg' (without the quotes.) Make sure you turn on file extensions in the folder so you are sure its making a file named that and not rageConfig.cfg.txt (See below how to do that.)
- Paste the following into the file, tweak as needed for your card and setup:

seta com_videoRam "3072"seta com_maxfps "60"seta image_anisotropy "16"seta image_usecompression 0seta image_filter "GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_LINEAR"seta image_preload "1"seta image_lodbias "-1"seta image_ignoreHighQuality "0"seta image_ignoreLowQuality "1"seta image_useCache "1"seta image_cacheMegs "125"seta image_cacheMinK "50"seta r_aspectRatio "1"seta r_fullscreen "1"seta r_swapInterval 1seta r_useHighQualityPostProcess "1"seta r_shadowsHighQuality "1"seta r_displayRefresh "0"seta r_renderer "best"seta r_multiSamples "8"seta r_useHBAO "1"seta r_useRenderThread "1"seta r_visDistMult "1"seta r_useMotionBlur "1"seta r_skipBump "0"seta r_skipSpecular "0"seta r_skipNewAmbient "0"seta r_shadows "1"seta r_cgFragmentProfile "best"seta r_cgVertexProfile "best"seta vt_lodBias "-1"seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly2 "8192"seta vt_pageimagesizeuniquediffuseonly "8192"seta vt_pageimagesizeunique "8192"seta vt_pageimagesizevmtr "8192"vt_restart

5. In-game Settings
- Open the Video Options in the game options and set the following:
-- Turn vsync on.
-- Enable GPU Transcode
-- Adjust other options as you see fit.


Doing this made the game playable for me. I've been playing for a few hours with no issues so far and the game looks good too.

Here's how the game looks for me now:
http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/4031/2011111000001.jpg

Well good detective work before your purchase. This game has no support and was dead on release.

Already knew the game had problems before buying it, any game that Bethesda touches does. However their games are still very fun to play.
Issues aside once you can get the game to run, it typically runs well so I'm not going to let a possible issue prevent me from at least trying.


Hardly; feel free to choose your opinion on the manner simply because it wont run for you but that's definitely not the case.

this mess isnt bethesda. they're just the publishers. You cna blame ID or AMD for this pile of poo. Though at least amd is making an effort to fix the problem... Id's been all but silent about any kind of fix. all we've hered is a graphics patch and modding tools

After fixing my problem and finally being able to play, I beat the game in just over 10 hours. What a terrible story.

This game was a huge let down...

Given it was post-apocalyptic and a Bethsda release I felt this was going to be the next Fallout, or at least really similar to it. But 10 hours of content.. really?
Waste of $40

The first set of DLC better be free with all these problems the game has as it is too.

Bethesda SOFTWORKS is just and only A PUBLISHER
Bethesda GAME STUDIOS (Oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim) is a GAME DEVELOPER owned by Bethesda Softworks (which belongs to ZeniMax Media).

It's like this:
1: Zenimax Media (parent company)
2: Bethesda Softworks (video game publisher)
3: Bethesda Game Studios, id Software, Arkane Studios, MachineGames, Tango Gameworks (game development studios owned by Bethesda Softworks)

You wouldn't expect every EA game to be a FIFA just because "EA Canada" does FIFA. So stop whining about RAGE not being a new Fallout, it was never supposed to be.

To put it more kindly: this is a failure of basic research on the poster's part rather than anything you can blame the developers for or accuse them of. Rage is an id Software game, developed by the same guys who did Doom and Quake, and to expect anything else from it is wrong.

10 hours by the way. Must have been a headlong rush through the game.

Really? Had no idea. /sarcasm


Lol.. please just stop posting. Obviously you didn't read my post fully. I said 'the next Fallout, or similar to it. Notice that? SIMILAR
If you can't piece together how RAGE and Fallout are similar in almost every aspect, you probably have never played them. So please, gtfo of my topic.



Failure to research lol. Seriously.. rofl..

For one I don't research the full story of a game before purchasing it because it destroys the point of playing it. I've watched all the demos / previews for RAGE which is what my assumption of a new Fallout or Fallout similar game came from.


I have a feeling most of the people that respond to these threads have never played a Fallout in their life.. jezz....

I'm not talking about a Fallout game, and I'm not talking about a Bethesda game. I'm talking about an id Software game. It's even there on the box that Rage comes in: "From the creators of Doom and Quake". That should be enough to clue people in on what kind of game to expect and it won't spoil the story.

For what it's worth there are potentially 30 hours of play in a first playthrough if you don't rush it.

I didn't rush through the game, I played the mission/story line as it progressed and moved through things as I was supposed to.

I don't know where you are coming up with 30 hours of gameplay from.

There are a total of 64 quests in the game. (http://rage.wikia.com/wiki/Quests)
Of those 64, 36 of them are required to be completed to finish the game.

That's almost half of the games content marked as optional. Not to mention two quests are just always activated.

None of the side quests are needed to beat the game and are there to help with money and supplies. If you aren't wasting ammo/supplies you don't need to do them and therefore typically either don't or wont because you want to progress with the actual story and not some side quest that has no story to it.

Seems you didn't have, as you expected "the next Fallout or something similar" from id Software



The one thing they have in common is the setting (apart from the asteroid/nuke difference), but RAGE is an first-person shooter (Willits and other id guys said this multiple times ahead of the release) and Fallout a RPG. So they are two totally different genres. So please tell me what "every aspect" is, when Fallout is about discovering an open world, talking to characters or leveling up your character while RAGE is about shooting enemies in the first place.
Yes you can talk to some people and build gadgets, but those are just minimal RPG elements added to the classic id formula.

I'm posting here, because people are whining about things that were never announced or planned for RAGE.



I've played Fallout 1-3 and New Vegas so I know a little about Fallout and the gameplay, though I admit I'm not a die hard fan or even expert. The other way round it seems to me that you don't know much about id's history.


I am not saying people must not be unhappy about RAGE, but they should regard and rate it as the product it is. A FPS.

Just for the record: id Software only joined Bethesda in June 2009, but development of RAGE already started back in 2006. So Bethesda didn't have any say regarding basic design or artwork, as this was already done when they became publisher.