Feels like QuakeCon 2008 only just wound up, and here we are talking about QuakeCon 2009. Ah well. That's the slow, inexorable march of time for you, I guess.

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Lord British may have reached for the stars - and given us a cryptic message in space runes - but to do so he had to splurge millions of his hard earned Gold and train for months with Russian cosmonauts. If another Gaming Legend has his way, however, taking in the view from orbit might become a little easier - if slightly crazier looking.

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You know how id's John Carmack said that his company's upcoming shooter Rage just wasn't going to work in terms of digital delivery? And how you'd need to buy the game on a disc, like the olden days? Yeah, turns out he was wrong. id's Tim Willits has corrected his boss, telling 1UP:

John Carmack [id co-founder] made a comment about the media size, which unfortunately wasn't exactly correct because we haven't crossed that bridge yet. He said it was going to be too large to download, and I was thinking to myself, "You know, uhhhhh, people can do lots of things." So I want to correct that and say that... Rage won't break the Internet.

Won't break it, but if the thing needs to ship on three 360 discs, it's certainly going to bend it.

id's Growing Pains [1UP]

id say that user mods of their new driving/shooting things game Rage might not be possible due to the complex way the game engine handles textures.

The id Tech 5 engine uses 'MegaTextures' - huge texture maps (up to 128000x128000 pixels) that require huge amounts of preprocessing to create.

id - and John Carmack in particular - are still very much pro-modding and have confirmed their plans to eventually open-source id Tech 5, but are unsure if there is a way around this technical limitation. Simply put, it is unlikely that any modder would have the computing resources that are required.

Just a thought - this sounds like an area where a project like Folding @ Home could be useful. Sure, cancer might not get cured as quick but, c'mon - MegaTextures!

Id Software's Willits: Rage Mods May Not Be Possible [Gamasutra]

Little bit of confusion yesterday over reports that id's upcoming shooter Rage had seen parts of the game cut - across all platforms - due to the 360's limited storage space. A 1UP report said cuts had been made, id said "nunh unh". Confusing! id have today attempted to settle the matter, with Tim Willits telling Shacknews "As far as game content, I will swear on the lives of my children that nothing was cut". So...nothing was literally cut, they just designed the entire game around the limitations of one of the target platforms? It's taking a different road (Semantics Ave), but don't we still end up at the same place?

id's Tim Willits on Rage, Xbox 360 Disc Controversy: Microsoft 'Not Being Dickheads' [Shacknews]

id have big, big plans for Rage! Or, they did have big, big plans. Plans they've had to cut back on so the game can be squeezed onto the 360. id's Tim Willits explains:

The PC is limitless in the amount of data you can put on it. The PS3 has about 25GB. But the Xbox 360 roughly has 6 to 8 GB of data. We're hoping we can squeeze the game down to two discs for the 360 version.

As an example, Willits says that the game was originally meant to feature "several" wasteland areas. But because they wouldn't all fit on the 360, they had to cut the number of wastelands (on all versions) down to just two.

Rage Held Back By Xbox 360's Limits [1UP]

Ever wondered what your holiday snaps would look like if Hitler decided to hang them on the walls of a secret Nazi base?

No? Oh, well you are going to find out anyway.

Thanks to a talented Javascript hacker who wanted to learn how the Flickr API worked, you can now view your Flickr photo albums through the eyes of B.J. Blazkowicz from the original Wolfenstein 3D.

Just enter your Flickr username and let the app scurry off and search through your photos. It wiill then map them on to the walls of a 3D maze that has been made to look a dead ringer for Castle Wolfenstein. Its a great idea, although it can have trouble with very high resolution pics.

Now, somebody do a Facebook/Thrill Kill mashup..

[WolfenFlickr]

There will be Nazis, but no Hilter. As previously announced, id Software is back at work on another Wolfenstein, which is due out "when it's done". And the game won't feature Adolf Hitler. Id's lead artist Kevin Cloud explains:

No, he's [Hitler's] not in our game. We've got to save something for future Wolfensteins. We can't do him in yet! ...That's one of the cool things again about the Wolfenstein universe: we go back and we pull some of these things from real history and spin this what-if story for some of it, and some of it just kind of blows out... So like the Kreisau Circle originally is more of a group of aristocrats working behind the scenes in hopes to overthrow Hitler. Here, they're gun-toting resistance forces fighting on the streets. But it's kind of nice to take those elements, have a framework of reality, and build it out.

Well, Hitler wasn't in the last Wolfenstein. He can't be in every game, you know.

No Hitler in new Wolfenstein [Eurogamer]

When you say "Apple", gaming is probably the last thing that comes to mind here. And id's John Carmack thinks he knows why:

The truth is Steve Jobs doesn't care about games. This is going to be one of those things that I say something in an interview and it gets fed back to him and I'm on his shithead list for a while on that, until he needs me to do something else there. But I think that that's my general opinion. He's not a gamer... It's difficult to ask somebody to get behind something they don't really believe in. I mean obviously he believes in the music and the iTunes and that whole side of things, and the media side of things, and he gets it and he pushes it and they do wonderful things with that, but he's not a gamer. That's just the bottom line about it.

That doesn't mean that Carmack is down on the iPhone or anything as a gaming platform, he just doesn't think gaming is priority numero uno for Jobs. So there you have it. John Carmack thinks Steve Jobs isn't a gamer. Who doesn't agree with that?

"Steve Jobs doesn't care about games" [Eurogamer via VG247] [Pic]

A Quake-based MMO from id? Yeah, that won't be happening anytime soon. In an interview with Shacknews, John Carmack made it clear there are no racing hearts over massively multiplayer titles at the company, even though it was offered a pretty penny to have a crack:

Saying that id had passed on several offers of "good money" to develop a Quake MMO, Carmack added that the company would not be attempting a similar project anytime soon.

"id has no interest in MMO development", said Carmack, who added that while he is familiar with the technology, he is also "fully cognisant" of the challenges and risks of creating a game in the genre.

Publishers Chase Quake MMO, Offers Rejected by id [Shacknews]