Development on RAGE has taken longer than Carmack would have liked

John Carmack has said Rage has taken a bit longer than he would have liked, and that the game's delay can be attributed to id Software's desire for the best tech and tools to be used during the game's seven years of development.

Because of the length of time spent on the game, Carmack said it caused his opinion to change regarding the desire to constantly be focusing on better technology, and from here on out, such matters should not get in the way of game development.

“That’s the biggest thing when we look back on this generation,” Carmack told CVG. “We had, at one point or another, seven years of work that went into it. It’s a foregone conclusion that we’re never going to throw out that much of the code base ever again. If we have eight times the resources on a next gen console, we can’t spend a decade writing the optimal technology for that. We need to be able to be at a point where we rewriter sections that matter and have an impact, and reuse as much as we can.

"A lot of the things we do nowadays, with the AI and the animation, is really good enough. Every aspect of Rage could be made better if we wanted to spend another two years on it, but it’s not the optimal use of [our] resources. I’d be happier if we produced two games in that time. And that’s actually my personal marching orders for technology development going forward.

"I made the conscious choice that we can do something that looks arguably best of breed here [with Rage] and still run at 60 frame per second, and saying ‘I foregone all of these graphics algorithms in favour of a game that’s going to be more responsive’. You can look at that as the turning point where we no longer think that building the prettiest pictures is the best way to deliver value in games.”

The full 20-minute interview with Carmack can be viewed through the link to CVG.

Rage is set to arrive on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in September.

Thanks, Develop.