Rage rages against the DX10Id drops big ones in TexasBy Wily Ferret: Monday 06 August 2007, 07:40THE WEEKEND was chock full of announcements from Quakevon, Id software's yearly get-together in Texas. Here's the run-down of everything you need to know.The biggest news was the announcement of Id's new game, titled Rage. It runs on the Tech 5 engine that was saw demonstrated by Steve Jobs at MacWorld, and it looks awesome. It's what's known in the industry as 'original IP', i.e. isn't an existing franchise, has new characters etc. It's being released across PC, Mac, X360 and PS3 but there is, obviously, no date yet.The game was billed by John Carmack as being "not so dark" as previous games, with wide open outdoors sections and a slightly lighter humour. Rage has adventuring and RPG elements as well as traditional FPS ones.Bad news for Microsoft though - Rage won't be DX10. "There's no DX10 feature that's going to be driven in Rage," Carmack said in his keynote.Expect some crazy vehicular gameplay too. Want to have a look at the first footage for yourself? Check it out here. Next, as we wrote earlier, Valve will be distributing Id's games through its own Steam service, which means we'll see the entire Id back catalogue on Windows Vista. However, there does appear to be a fly in that particular ointment - early downloaders have found that Id is using DOSBox, an open source DOS emulator, to make its early games run through Windows. The problem - there is no GPL license for DOSBox included in the Steam downloaded package, making its use illegal. Isn't open source software fun? Talking about back catalogue, Quake Arena Arcade has been announced for Xbox Live Arcade downloadable content - think of it as an update of Q3 - Team Arena, but on a joypad. That's on the X360, but on the PC, gamers can look forward to Quake 3 Arena - in a browser. Dubbed Quake Zero, the game will run in a standard web browser, using as-yet-undisclosed 3D technology, and will be supported by advertising. Sound crazy? Carmack is aware of this, and made it clear in his speech that "It may work, it may not." Hedging his bets, then. Finally, we have word of a release date for the highly-anticipated big-scale FPS, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. That date is October 2, a Tuesday, so expect it on October 5 (Friday) over in Blighty.
