id releases more details on Rage

id Software has released more details on its upcoming shooter/racer hybrid Rage in the current issue of Game Informer, which hits just ahead of next month's QuakeCon.

We already know a fair bit about Rage thanks to two successive QuakeCons of revelations (check out our 2008 preview for a fair summary), but the GI piece (with thanks to Shacknews) nails on a few more specifics.

Striking out from hub towns, which provide access to races and missions, players will get involved in vehicular combat - complete with power-ups and ammo dotted around tracks - and build their character and vehicle over the course of the game.

There's also an engineering system that allows you to build things like sentry turrets and remote-control car-bombs if you've gathered the requisite blueprints and parts.

Naturally there will be weapon upgrades too, including a scope and aiming stabilisers for a crossbow, and car upgrades include bombs, a magnet for power-ups, tyre-shredders and EMP shields, along with more traditional car parts upgrades.

One weapon mentioned is a three-tipped boomerang called the "wingstick", and we're also promised alternative ammo types, including a crossbow bolt that gives you brief control of a victim before he or she explodes.

We still don't know much about your character, other than you're one of the survivors of an asteroid striking the earth in the mid-21st century, and that you're prowling the wasteland like everyone else, except the new preview mentions that your regenerating health is connected to your background.

Mission-wise, all we're told for now is that, besides quest-givers in towns, there's a gladiatorial game-show called Mutant Bash TV - presumably connected to the arena combat mentioned elsewhere - and stealth will be an option along the way too.

As at QuakeCon last year, multiplayer modes are being finalised, but id's Tim Willits and John Carmack told us 12 months ago that the multiplayer element of Rage would be divorced from single-player. Multiplayer was billed then as a discrete, two-player co-op mode, with split-screen options on consoles to complement the online elements.

Rage is due out on PC, Mac, PS3 and Xbox 360 "when it's done", and John Carmack apparently told Game Informer that PC bonuses will be higher resolutions, more anti-aliasing and faster texture page-in.

He also reportedly expanded on the aim to release the game on one Blu-ray or three DVDs depending on your choice of platform, but the new details suggest the structure of the game is causing difficulties there, with two major wastelands that don't split helpfully across the DVDs.

Look out for much more on Rage around the time of QuakeCon, which takes place between 13th and 16th August at the Gaylord Texan hotel near Dallas.