Brink Q&A

(madness) #61

Everyone on one team wears similar silly hats ?

(Nail) #62

I believe it’s the body type and characteristics stay, methinks “uniform” will change as well as weapon loadout

(badman) #63

Same character as in you keep your XP / rank and such - your Resistance outfit won’t carry over when you join the Security and vice versa. In fact, the two sides have very distinct sets of apparel, so you won’t get confused in the heat of battle.

(tokamak) #64

Speaking of spotting the enemy:

Will the dreaded red arrows return as default setting?

(Shiv) #65

I dont think they will be needed this time, it sounds like there isnt going to be much reason for them, they helped on qw because of the long ranges of allot of the fighting.
Theres no vehicles and smaller maps so woo for you?

(tokamak) #66

Not at all, I’m a big fan of Raven Shield and UT.

Oh another question:

  • With all the ingame acrobatics, how is melee combat handled? Adopting COD’s one strike out? Can you kill people using SMART movements (by letting yourself drop on top of them, or sliding against them?), is this possible without turning the game into another Oni?
(gee666) #67

theres been mention of how body type in the coustomsation section affects movment and load out
Will there be a fixed point where there is a trade off between the two or will it be more gradual?

(Floris) #68

Will the game worlds be made a little bit less static than in ET:QW?

In ET:QW most objects were “stuck” in place, even more so than in W:ET, in which you could at least move chairs and destroy glass windows :stuck_out_tongue:

(SockDog) #69

[quote=Florisjuh;193037]Will the game worlds be made a little bit less static than in ET:QW?

In ET:QW most objects were “stuck” in place, even more so than in W:ET, in which you could at least move chairs and destroy glass windows :P[/quote]

I know this is Q&A but I have to voice my agreement with this. By and large it’s eyecandy we can live without but I think it’s adds a huge deal to the credbility budget of a game when you can interact with at least some objects in the environment.

(Rahdo) #70

It’s Q&A Fright NIGHT! Thanks Toka for coalating the whole thread into one easy to answer list.

[ul]
[li]Will learning the movement manually give any benefit over traversing the obstacles with the SMART button?
[/li][/ul]
This was actually talked about on another thread somewhere, but yes. You can use the SMART button to take care of the timing of your jumps and vaults and slides and such, and that’s hunky dory. But all those actions can be initiated using the crouch and jump buttons (or keyboard keys), and doing so will make your overall movement a little more efficient. Note that it won’t let you make moves that SMART can’t do, it just lets you do the SMART moves a bit better.

[ul]
[li]Is player customisation confined to only in-game assets or can player created textures be used (Team/Clan insignia)?
[/li][/ul]
We’re not talking about Clan stuff yet, but I can say I always appreciate this feature mightily in other games (the latest SOCOM, for instance), and so it’d be a shame not to allow it :slight_smile:

[ul]
[li]VOIP on the PC version?
[/li][/ul]
Good question, and I’m not quite sure if the coders are planning to have it supported natively, or if players will have to roll their own solution.

[ul]
[li]Mac and Linux ports coming after release?
[/li][/ul]
Too early to say, and really that’s one for Bethesda to answer at the end of the day. We’ll see is the best I can do at the moment there.

[ul]
[li]Any thoughts on tackling the need to tweak via the console by improving gfx configuration options in the menu system? If yes, will there be options to balance “visual clarity vs performance” (i.e. greater draw distance vs lesser texture quality) as well as the usual “visual eyecandy vs performance”?
[/li][/ul]Curses, where’s Arnout when you need him! Let me put this back to you guys actually. What would you all think? I can say I’d hate for players to feel they’ve got to handicap themselves in order to run the game on a lower system (not see everything their enemies and teammates can see). Thoughts?

[ul]
[li]KB+M support on the PS3?
[/li][/ul]Here’s the way I look at it: we enable this, and we end up giving some players a HUGE advantage over the rest, almost as bad as if they were using aimbots on PC. This drives a wedge in the community, makes the majority of players who were satisfied with gamepad unhappy and pushes them out. So to fix that, you let players set up separate matches for those with and those without kb&m, and again, you start to split the community up again, and develop elitism schisms and the like.

So for those reasons, we’re not planning on this right now (and I think it’s these same reasons that you don’t see other FPSs doing it either). Sorry to disappoint, I know on the surface it’d be a cool feature, but we’ve got to think of the overall health of the game, and it’s our job to ensure that everyone has a good time.

I can confirm that KB&M is great on the PC though, but also that our gamepad support is awesome and feels fantastic. Even a crazy hardcore PC shooter nut like Locki has come around to it and it quite comfortable holding a controller in his hand now!

BTW, as an addendum to this question, can anyone list for me which PS3 shooters do allow this? And I’m not talking about those 3rd party adapters, but rather real native support for a mouse in game. Just curious. Thanks!

[ul]
[li]Does the new engine support dynamic day/night lighting and weather or is global lighting baked in like ETQW?
[/li][/ul]Actually, Arnout’s still working on our final lighting solution for the game, so I’m not sure what the answer is to this.

[ul]
[li]Map making more, less or equally involved as ETQW?
[/li][/ul]I would say more involved overall, specifically because we’re not a heightfield based game, unlike ETQW. Everything in the world is modeled and imported. BUT, it’s not my job to actually build levels, so maybe I’m speaking out of turn. I’ll ask Hoffa next week what he thinks.

(Mustang) #71

I’m sad about the lack of user playable female characters though :frowning:

(Mustang) #72

I have some questions actually
Sorry if they’ve been answered already, as I haven’t had time to read every single preview/post

[ul]
[li]Can players select from multiple characters before starting to play (i.e. with different hair styles, tattoo’s etc.)?
[/li][li]It has been publicied that character progression (XP, abilities, etc.) will be persistant and that the different body types (normal, muscles etc.) will result in very differnet player experiences.
[/li]Will body type be allowed to be selected on-the-fly, as it were, while you are playing (e.g. at spawn points/base stations or similar)?
[li]I hope the answer to the above question is yes…
[/li]However if not, will it be allowed to change a character’s body type whilst not in-game?
[li]Similarly (while not in-game) will it be allowed to give your character a haircut, remove tattoo etc. without deleting him and starting again?
[/li][/ul]

(timestart) #73

[QUOTE=Rahdo;193054][ul]
[li]Any thoughts on tackling the need to tweak via the console by improving gfx configuration options in the menu system? If yes, will there be options to balance “visual clarity vs performance” (i.e. greater draw distance vs lesser texture quality) as well as the usual “visual eyecandy vs performance”?
[/li][/ul]Curses, where’s Arnout when you need him! Let me put this back to you guys actually. What would you all think? I can say I’d hate for players to feel they’ve got to handicap themselves in order to run the game on a lower system (not see everything their enemies and teammates can see). Thoughts?
[/quote]
Some sort of automated benchmark that lets players enter a desired average framerate and have the game run through a benchmark on different graphics settings to get as close to the target as possible might be really helpful for players. I think most games just look at system specs and try to reason something from that which usually doesn’t give the best results.

Also, I think SD have done a great job making you creative :wink:

(Mustang) #74

@timestart: IMO that’s a great idea actually

For me as long as the game is “playable” (and I do mean playable, not just it will run at 5fps and with 10 minutes of lag between each step) with maximum visual clarity, minimum visual eyecandy on a computer of “recommended specification”, then all is good in the world of Brink.

(SockDog) #75

I think certain graphical options need to be weighted. Something like ‘draw distance’ would be a 10 in Eyecandy (E) and also a 10 in Clarity ©. End result, you always get the best draw distance. Whereas something like ‘model complexity’ would be say 10(E) but only a 2 ©. So if you wanted a more clarity biased config use just use a slider over to clarity and the system shuffles those options up or down as necessary.

Of course, it might be less work to just create 50 different configurations and weight/rate those for a user to select/benchmark.

I’ve also heard mentioned in the past about actually getting all those console commands into a GUI. It might be a very scary place for the uninitiated but would be so nice to have them right there, with drop boxes or radio buttons and just some clicks away. :slight_smile:

BTW - Love Timestart’s idea too. Let us input a ‘Min FPS’ and ‘Min Avg FPS’ and then have the game suggest the best config to meet that. And if all else fails, please include some official timedemos so we can all benchmark on the same levels.

Oh and if I can go on a little longer. What about offering this to console owners? They have single hardware platforms, why not offer them the ability to select 1080p at 60fps but reduced eyecandy?

[ul]
[li]KB+M support on the PS3?[/li]> [/ul]
Here’s the way I look at it: we enable this, and we end up giving some players a HUGE advantage over the rest, almost as bad as if they were using aimbots on PC. This drives a wedge in the community, makes the majority of players who were satisfied with gamepad unhappy and pushes them out. So to fix that, you let players set up separate matches for those with and those without kb&m, and again, you start to split the community up again, and develop elitism schisms and the like.

So for those reasons, we’re not planning on this right now (and I think it’s these same reasons that you don’t see other FPSs doing it either). Sorry to disappoint, I know on the surface it’d be a cool feature, but we’ve got to think of the overall health of the game, and it’s our job to ensure that everyone has a good time.
Totally understandable from a developer’s POV and I couldn’t argue with the negatives associated with such a move. My problem is that until it is offered as an option [elitist mode on] and console gamers realise it’s infiniitely better [/elitist mode off] we’ll never see even the slightest progress in it gaining acceptance. Hell we’ll never see that trackball (Darkangel?) suggested should be in controllers, a fair compromise if you ask me.

One other thing I’ll throw in though on the subject of splitting the communities. If there was cross platform play, then you could punt the M+KB PS3 players over to PC servers. Fantasy perhaps but it would solve that imbalance issue.

I guess what we need is a Halo or CoD to do this. I think those franchises are big enough to achieve a critical mass of acceptance for M+KB. But this is getting off topic so I’ll shush.

BTW, as an addendum to this question, can anyone list for me which PS3 shooters do allow this? And I’m not talking about those 3rd party adapters, but rather real native support for a mouse in game. Just curious. Thanks!
Unreal Tournament 3 is the only one I know of but never tried it. Resistance (demo), Bad Company and Killzone 2 I’ve played and are a no go. It’s pretty much the same argument against it’s inclusion. IMO a huge shame as I stopped playing Killzone 2 on the second play through because the controls just contributed so much to the overal frustration of playing.

Sorry was trying and failed to keep that short. Thanks again for you time in answering the questions. Going to have to think of some more now.

(Shiv) #76

this would also have the added bonus of almost avoiding the whole “configs are for lamers” threads that inevitably pop up.

(DarkangelUK) #77

I’m happy to see there’s at least some benefit to doing movement manually over the SMART button, i’m curious as to how much though? It always seems to be that “slight” or “a little” more efficient is added each time, meaning is it really worth the time and effort to perfect it to get 1 or 2 msecs gain?

I have visions of Mirrors Edge style time trials and speed runs over map districts. I like it when movement can be used as it’s own type of gameplay and extend the life of the game for me even more :slight_smile:

Oh yeah and i like timestarts idea of type in a desired framerate and the game adjusts the gfx for you to achieve that framerate best it can.

(tokamak) #78

Updated the first post with the 2nd answer batch and the third collection of questions so far.

(Rahdo) #79

What better way to spend a beautiful saturday morning than answering questions!

[ul]
[li]Will the dreaded red arrows return as default setting?
[/li][/ul]
I’m not a big fan of them, let’s just say. :slight_smile: They served an valuable and important purpose in ETQW with the crazy long ranges of that game, but Brink is so much more intimate, I don’t think we’ll need 'em.

[ul]
[li]Can players have multiple characters?
[/li][/ul]Definitely! I really hope players will have a variety of characters they’ve made with different specialties and such. Your character is a weapon, after all, and you want to bring the right weapon to the party!

[ul]
[li]Can you adapt body-type on the fly or is it a result of a more or permanent progress?
[/li][/ul]You can change body type, between matches, but it costs XP (like buying character abilities) to do so. So, for example, instead of leveling up and buying, say, the operative’s “interogate” ability (or one of dozens and dozens of other skills), you can instead buy “hit the gym”, which will turn you into the muscle bound big body type. But maybe later on you’re thinking you don’t care for being the big hulk like guy (want to do more acrobatics), so you can “sell back” the big guy ability (just like you can sell back any skill or ability if you change your mind), turning into a normal guy again, and then instead buy the acrobatic body type.

[ul]
[li]And if so, can I do that in-game?
[/li][/ul]See above. I should add that when you ‘sell back’ abilties, there’s a bit of a ‘transaction fee’ you have to pay for the refund. Still working out the specifics of this at the moment…

[ul]
[li]Will there be distinquished between permanent and temporal character features?
[/li][/ul]
Some choices are temporary, some are permanent, but we’ll warn you about permanent things before you do them. The permanent stuff really is the “logical” stuff like “you can’t change into an asian guy if you’ve already chosen to be a black guy” and stuff like that. We really want there to be a sense of “this is who you are” in the game. But you can cut & dye your hair and change your clothes all you like :slight_smile:

[ul]
[li]Can console owners tweak their specs for their own desired frame rate as well? (Even in the fashion of simply typing the desired framerate and let the engine attempt to reach that goal)
[/li][/ul]
Well, hopefully they won’t need to, because we’re tweaking everything to get a solid and consistent framerate at all times on both the 360 and PS3. So it really will be just the PC that needs those kinds of settings. Recently we have been thinking a bit about some unique ways to let console players have some limited control over their FOV though. More on that as it develops :smiley:

[ul]
[li]When can we hear how you guys dealt with the dedicated vs p2p issue?
[/li][/ul]Will definitely try to get more info on that next week and report back!

(tokamak) #80

Ooh so xp is some kind of currency that can buy changes in character style (whether you add or subtract a feature)?

Thanks for answering the third batch, I updated the first post.