I have been working with a few other guys to get the ball rolling on our mod before the tools drop. Right now we have scripting nailed down and can do quite a bit with the shaders. We have scripts in early development and are working on modeling some new items. Our initial focus will not be on creating new levels - there is plenty to work with right now - but rather on opening up the hub worlds (as much as we can before the texture quality nose dives) and opening up existing mission areas. Right now the primary goals of our mod is to : Encourage and reward environmental exploration, increase player involvement in the storyline by having their actions directly influence it, add in more RPG elements (proper leveling and character development trees, no more infinite backpack, no more health re-gen, no hud, proper world map, proper crafting system, karma system), add in several more quests from multiple characters, critical decision moments that effect the entire story line, and the ability to make morally questionable decisions. Essentially our goal is to turn RAGE into the game we thought it was going to be and then add in a healthy number of RPG elements while making combat interactions much more challenging. Eventually we will have to add in new mission areas but that is down the line a ways. The plan is to iterate rapidly on core game play mechanics and then begin adding in story and interaction elements while polishing previous additions. Right now our team has 100 man hours per week to put into the mod - with the 4 guys working on it that have made commitments. We plan on releasing builds monthly. Of course all of this depends on when we get the tools that were promised at launch.


Given that this is the general direction we are going to be heading with our mod: What are some things you would like to see implemented? Changes?

Open world multi-player in your mod would be nice, if do-able.
Something like borderlands multi-player but without a level up involved.

Sounds like a cool mod but it would not be the game I thought I was going to get. I got what I expected a FPS that sort of felt open world, I was not expecting a full blown RPG.

Some mods I would be interested in though would be even more weapons and ammo types. Things like a grenade that explodes into more grenades sort of like Borderlands or a crossbow ammo that lets you control the flight path of the bolt after leaving the crossbow like bulletstorms sniper rifle.

and I am sure everyone would agree that an FPS deathmatch mod would be pretty cool.

and a new SP map that includes the portal gun. Imagine sending a bandit into an infinite loop or shooting pop rockets through a portal on the wall next to you and they come out of a portal you stealth put above a group of mutants, that would be fun.

Instead of leveling your character would something along the lines of a proficiency system be more suitable? No level requirements on getting a weapon/item/plan - just money. How well you can use the weapon/item/crafted item is determined by how proficient you are with it. Initial proficiency can be built through training but ultimately you get better as you use it more. Spread reduction, increase in max effective rage, wider sight picture for quicker target acquisition, quicker reload, and so on. Sort of like real life - I have shot around 400k rounds out of my AK so I am a dead shot with it and can swap mags really fast. Other shoulder fired automatics are similar enough that a portion of my proficiency with the AK carries over(namely accuracy) but its no replacement for hands on experience.

Yeah that would work out, the more kills the more money.
As well if you could trade or buy with the other players.

You guys are undertaking a major overhaul, highly ambitious. Very RPG. Good luck.
I'm more of a core shooter player, which is why I'm a long time id devotee.

Could you let me know if you think it's possible to have a higher enemy count in game?
Basically, increase the number of enemies on screen, or have many more spawning, at any time.
I often felt that there just weren't enough of them for my personal liking.
Is it even possible?
Your help is appreciated.

I really loved this game - it has become nerd fashion to hate on it by all the PC elitetards.
Having said that I have a clear idea of how I'd like to have seen the story evolve - which would not have included the Authority.

The way the spawning is handled is through the scripts that control the players physical interaction with the enviroment. For example - in the dead city there is a script called 'deadcity2.script' and it has the line "int streetsMutantWaveCounter = 12;" What this does is set the number of mutants that spawn when you begin to move through the slums under the bridge. You could set this number to 700 if you really wanted to. What would be the optimal approach would be to create a ai_horde_spawn entity that randomly spawns mutants within a certain range (lets say 10 to 25) when its trigger is activated.

What seems to be really nice is that the world is separated from it's script in a way that you can add in game play with a minimal impact. Back in the old days adding in a new entity meant re-building your levels. With rage - the scripting is separated out into layers that can be edited and tested quickly. You can go in and change scripting without having to re-build entire chunks of the game. Hell, you might even be able to do it entirely inside notepad if your really bad ass at memorizing world space coordinate sets.

So, the short answer is: Oh hell yes.

How about better and more sensible weapon attachments? Why does a gun with a zoom-in dot sight need a laser guide as well? And how about ammo upgrades for the sniper rifle? Maybe even elemental damage rounds?

As peripheral to your mod idea; which I like, here are some elements to add flavor to the root experience. Apologies if my brain overly expels:

Fire selector - A three round burst on the SAR and a four round burst on the AMG as an engineering item that the player automatically gets. It would need the hot key function of engineering items.

Reduced power bandages - for any MP where DM elements apply (1/2 - 1/3 potency) or for the sake of more suspenseful gun battles in SP.

Ricochet Grenades - for the geometrically minded player who also would risk a proximity detonation if the grenade happened to bounce back in their direction.

Hordes - between 25-50% increase to the established quantity of opponents for the SP campaign. Especially if there were two respective increase options (25% and 50%) whereby a game on easy with a 50% increase would be comparable to a normal play through on Nightmare. Give people options and the flavor of replayability expands in a dramatic fashion.

Minibosses - conversely to Hordes, the increased presence of miniboss types mixed into the standard quantity of opponents would also make the game more difficult in an acceptable fashion... if both were done then the two mods would be best set up as mix and match (eg. Normal difficulty, 25% increase in opposition numbers plus Minibosses would make for an interesting run as to players who were only proficient enough to complete Nightmare difficulty)

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Streamlining the open endedness of play is certainly a good way to enthrall players and likewise, your teams' plan to expand the RPG side of the game is fantastic. As a word of caution (restraining my excitement) the depth of your ideal overhaul may be more substantially time consuming than anyone has a right to speculate upon as the Tech 5 appears almost overpowered and probably not a little complicated. I doubt not the technical skill of your team but perhaps it may be prudent to start small and learn to crawl before you run.

The notion of so much more RPG involved would make this game ageless and I pray this is the direction things take.

@ IMMAROBOT

thanks for your reply!
Much appreciated - I think this game is immense, beautiful & has obviously major modding potential!
Regardless of all the complaining, id are still masters in my eyes.
RAGE has been wasted on many imo!
Best of luck.

So you recon we might be able to change enemy numbers in notepad,eh!!

thanks - The Guv

The biggest issue I can see right now is forcing rage to load assets from directories instead of the .resource files. I have tried forcing my edited files back into the archives but it promptly blows the game up..... Of course when the tools drop it should take a few min to do it properly. I'm sick of waiting so i'm trying to find alternate routes.


Whoever mentioned select fire: YES.
Also, the crafting system we are prototyping (in UDK- but the principals remain) would let you just add rubber to a grenade with the resulting physics fun. We want a more organic system as opposed to the 'buy this plan' system currently in place. We hope to have roughly 40 raw material classes spread out around the wastelands.

I remember something like that happened with Doom 3. It is not that the single player suffered that much problems, but one of the things players were raging about I remember was the flash-light system, which was kinda of forced by the designers. Other thing I remember was the feeling that you have lots and lots of ammo, too much to be shot. It was just unbalanced. Maybe an year later, there was this precious mod all-in-one that combined ultra sharp texture settings, some modifications in the levels and weapons, like the machine-gun flashlight attachment and a couple of others things which were altering the gameplay little, but were making the whole experience a lot more balanced and enjoyable. On the play through with this mod the game felt much better, and the gamers sighed that this should have been the game that came out back then. Obviously no matter how good and talented artists and designers of a game are, it really comes to the community and the guys who actually play the game to make the final touches and polish the game experience. At least this is the case with some of the games of Id.

So, still no news on when the sdk is getting released?

Im not even a PC gamer, but I cant wait for the mod tools to be released to you all.
If I had a bit mroe expendable cahs, i would get a rig for that sole purpose alone..
I dont even know if i would actually care about playing, because i dig the idea of creating a trully unique environment.

Cant wait for this tro come out and see waht you all can come up with.

Sounds awesome man, i'll be stoked for anything you're willing to put the time into to create. Looking forward to this!

another mod Idea I would like to see.

after finding the Wolfenstien room I went back and played Wolfenstien 3D for a few hours and thought how cool would it be to play Wolfenstien 3D with the Rage guns and enemy's.
so the mod I would like to see is a corridor by corridor remake of Wolfenstien 3D with ammo drops and bandages where the health packs and food are but with the guns from Rage and bandits, mutants, and authority to replace the nazi's.