Brink's GUI aka a missed opportunity...

(adelante) #1

Alrighty…first off, hats off to the guys at SD for creating a game of such visual appeal…Its damn refreshing to see it looking both gritty and vibrant at the same time, without inheriting too much of the visual monotony that you’d usually associate with a game that has an apocalyptic setting…

However, there is something that’s bothering me a little, and that’s those darn radial menus. I know the game’s built on ID Tech 4 and one of the things I love about the engine is the ability to make seemless in-game GUIs. To me, the floating radial menus in Brink stands out like a sore thumb when you can have them on those nice hi-res terminal displays in the game’s world that can easily be made interactive (one of the gameplay videos released even shows a bomb-planting animation that takes advantage of this particular feature). How bout having the player bring up portable interactive display in situations where an access to a terminal is not needed? It makes even more sense since the game almost has that HUD-less approach going…Radial or not, I don’t care as long as they’re implemented seemlessly like Doom3’s interactive display panels and pdas

I know I’m probably on a lone crusade here for more seemless GUIs but it doesn’t hurt to at least voice it out I suppose =P

Looking forward to the game next fall…

(radiator) #2

i think by the time that video was made, splash damage didn’t even had an gui artist.
but they do now, and i hope they’ve got some pretty cool ideias by now

(DoubleDigit) #3

Yea, the radial thingie is not that appealing. I like the idea of having a doom like pda.

(radiator) #4

and if they combine the pda with the radial system, they get and ipod lol. they already have an iphone with an information extractor app. in the future, apple will rule the world. :infiltrator:

(Free2game) #5

I think the radial menus are there because it works better on a controller, and one of the devs said before the game is totally designed around a controller.

(system) #6

I really hope the PC is getting a nice keyboard & mouse fitted GUI, I hate those games that come without any adjustments for the PC.

If there’s no other possibility, the PC may get a GUI of its own?

(tokamak) #7

Round menus in consoles are awesome (like Metroid).

(adelante) #8

Yeah, well I don’t mind them being round…I guess my point is to have them on a display of some device, rather than just pop up as a HUD like so many other games are doing…and since the engine is evidently capable of letting developers do exactly that, why not =D

(Free2game) #9

[QUOTE=YoungGuns;203089]I really hope the PC is getting a nice keyboard & mouse fitted GUI, I hate those games that come without any adjustments for the PC.

If there’s no other possibility, the PC may get a GUI of its own?[/QUOTE]
I’d hope so, but given ID’s recent history with quality control and Bethesda’s general indifferent nature to it, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Honestly I think the days of mouse and keyboard designed FPS games is over at this point.

(DarkangelUK) #10

Sorry m8 but iD has nothing to do with this game apart from the fact it’s their engine… heavily modified as it were :slight_smile:

(Free2game) #11

Or the fact that they’re publishing it basically…

(system) #12

??? id doesn’t publish this one, as id has never published any game at all. id had their games published by Activision and are now a developer belonging to the publisher Bethesda.

(Free2game) #13

The head of ID is on the board of directors at Zenimax now. Which is the company who owns Bethesda and ID Software.

(system) #14

The fact that one out of a whole bunch of directors on Zenimax’s board is from id, doesn’t mean that id is publishing BRINK or is involved with it any other way.

That id-guy on Zenimax’s board is only there, so id can have a say concerning their IPs and interests.

But coming back to topic:
Would be interesting to hear what you guys at SD are thinking about GUIs on PC/consoles

(Floris) #15

I find that hard to believe, as ZeniMax doesn’t even have people from Bethesda in their board: http://zenimax.com/bod.htm

And even if there would be one guy of id in the ZeniMax board, that’s still just one guy. What you’re basically saying is that Google co-owned the Macintosh because they had a guy in Apple’s board.

(Slade05) #16

Todd Hollenshead is simply aiming at world domination in around 2020, don`t get too worked up, there is nothing you can do.

Considering nice and sexy DooM 3 ingame GUIs, you won`t get them on the sole basis of actually pressing buttons being too slow for fast-paced(I hope, lol) multiplayer shooter.

(RR2DO2) #17

in-world guis could work, however you also have to consider older 480i style televisions for console game play - you want an as crisp and forward ui as possible at that point. Fullscreen UI/overlay works the best for that. The alternative using in-world guis would be to get an in-world gui so in your face that it’d be pretty much the same size. Magic hud overlay is the smoother/cleaner/faster option at that point.

(Bezzy) #18

Also, there’s a modal control change (on console, movement becomes selection; on pc, aiming becomes selection) when you start interacting with a control point or bring up the mission wheel. Putting it full screen on your hud helps re-enforce when that modal change starts/stops. An in world approach could still change up graphics on the monitor to indicate this, but as Arnout says, it’s going to be pretty small on the screen, and I’m guessing, unless you pull the player’s view right up to the screen, that’d make text difficult even from a distance.

We wanted to get some re-use out of the radial systems so that we can make one radial system be as nice to use as possible, rather than having to create two completely separate ones and polish them less. The mission wheel is accessible anywhere, without a control point, so it didn’t make sense to choose an in monitor menu.

Besides, this is the future, and augmented reality is ubiquitous!

(MLG X9) #19

Sounds good. I really liked that timer in game. I don’t particularly like radial menus. but they’re manageable enough, especially since I’m a console gamer.

(adelante) #20

It seemed to work for the xbox port of Doom 3, and that ran at 480i. So I’m thinking unless having the display zoomed in that close hinders the gameplay for some reason (be it an animation delay, in which case its a matter of tweaking the speed?), its still a more visually pleasing and cohesive alternative to an overlay UI…

I guess the radial menus stood out for me after seeing the bomb-planting sequence, which showed off a crisp UI that had an animated countdown. Then everything else starts to feel kinda disjointed.

Anyway, this is obviously a nitpick of mine, since a lot of us are pretty happy with how the game looks at this point. Again the art direction really is something to be commended for; I love little details in the airport level like the hazard tapes, and flock of birds flying in the sky. On the technical side of things, the game already impresses with its excellent lighting and shadowing, motion blur effects and sound design. Thanks for taking the time to reply fellas!! =D