New Brink Developer Diary Sheds Light on All Things Artsy and Stylish

(badman) #1

A new story entry has been added:
[drupal=535]New Brink Developer Diary Sheds Light on All Things Artsy and Stylish[/drupal]


Following Paul’s entry earlier in the year, the second Brink developer diary is now live, featuring the wise words of Art Director extraordinaire Olivier Leonardi. Olivier talks about the thinking behind Brink’s unique art style, going into great detail about the character design and the environments, as well as some of the inspiration for each. The piece is packed with fresh concept art, so go have a look.

(tokamak) #2

It’s a shame the concept art is so small. Is it possible to see bigger versions?

(badman) #3

When did you look at it? There were only small versions this morning but they’ve since been replaced with the proper images. :slight_smile:

(dohfOs) #4

great stuff. got cravings for more!

(tokamak) #5

Ah yes they’ve got the right size now!

(caliban) #6

yay

so next week gameplay :smiley:

(Joe999) #7

was awesome to read! and finally some underlining with images to what is spread into the public. “… Instant Deep Context. In other words, show, don’t tell.” :slight_smile:

i read “extensive conceptual phase” <= needs to be put into the collector’s edition :smiley:

also this is very awesome: “There has been a big trend in recent games to push for an overly desaturated look, for Brink we wanted ‘colour’ back.” <= i have no idea what bites people when they don’t use color. look at the terminator 4 movie. it’s not good and all, but what makes the movie a total disaster is it’s desaturated look which is depressing for the viewer. or wolfenstein. the game maps are boring and demotivational. not because of the map design itself, but because of the depressing colors that are used.

(engiebenjy) #8

Very good blog, I wonder how different the teams will look, with everyone looking so unique in a fast paced shooter this could be a tricky part to sort out

(Nosebone) #9

Yes, that’s a real challenge but on top of the color restrictions in the palettes we’re using for each faction, a number of HUD elements will show you who you’re aiming at.
So no teamkilling you lot! :slight_smile:

(DarkangelUK) #10

They could be as different as black and white and RosOne will still wipe out his entire team in one go.

(Shiv) #11

It needs a big beeper whenever you scroll over a friendly

“WARNING WARNING, YOU ARE AIMED AT A FRIENDLY UNIT, DO NOT ENGAGE. I REPEAT, DO NOT ENGAGE”
Sort of like the horrific turret beep in quakewars :x

no.6 totally looks like a dildo.

(Floris) #12

[QUOTE=Nosebone;199679]Yes, that’s a real challenge but on top of the color restrictions in the palettes we’re using for each faction, a number of HUD elements will show you who you’re aiming at.
So no teamkilling you lot! :)[/QUOTE]

Please don’t tell me “HUD elements” mean “red arrows” (or maybe only show the arrow when you have your crosshair on the person)

(dohfOs) #13

to quote from the crossfire q&a:

“Q: Don’t put red arrows above your opponents’ heads. And don’t you even dare to think of health bars!
A: Yeah, no red arrows. Myself, I am a fan of letting someone see how close to death the enemy is when you mouse over him, but that’s totally something that you can turn off when setting up hardcore matches.”

guessing that one thing of the “hud elements” mean the crossfire might change colour when hoovering. but suppose there must be something else aswell?

(DarkangelUK) #14

[QUOTE=dohfOs;199693]
guessing that one thing of the “hud elements” mean the crossfire might change colour when hoovering. but suppose there must be something else aswell?[/QUOTE]

If that’s the case then they better get a colourblind option in there! So bloody hard having to quickly distinguish red and green from each other on the fly when you’re colour blind :frowning:

(tokamak) #15

Oh dear …

Exactly my concern. Even a cross-hair slightly colour if aimed in the direction of an enemy is in effect, a red arrow.

RS has it that the crosshair only turns green if a friendly player walks into your spread circle (and displays the name of that player) at all other times it stays red (and doesn’t show the opponent’s nick either).

Ah well, I already voiced this on too many threads already. There are other ways around this than having to resort to hud elements. In the end having as little artificial crutches in your screen is always better.

(Rahdo) #16

Here’s the thing about Brink… you’ve got to remember there’s all these class abilities & upgrades and stuff that can radically change things up… a little small body type enemy who you would expect to die really fast may have been temporarily buffed up to be the equal of a big heavy guy in terms of hitpoints (if he’s been helped out by his teammates, for example). And then you’d be shooting at him, you expect him to die very quickly, but he takes a licking and keeps on ticking, and you’re left wondering “wha? whas i not hitting him?”. Because of situations like that, I think it’s VERY impotant to give player’s feedback about exactly what they’re up against when they’re aiming at a bad guy.

Which is very different that simply putting a GUI thing over everyone’s head before you’ve even seen them. This is a case of “you’ve already spotted him, and by looking at him, we’re giving you the additional ‘bonus’ information you need to know to make informed decisions”

Am I crazy? :slight_smile:

(Zhou Yu) #17

Hmmm, I’d say that that sort of thing is all in the implementation. Too much info in too garish a fashion simply increases screen clutter until it is no longer useful. On the other hand, too little info given too subtley and the HUD element might as well not be there at all.

(Rahdo) #18

Most def. And I’ll be honest, if you guys could see the game today, we’re a little too much in the former state, but that’s largely because we’ve been having to make due with programmer art for all our HUD for over a year now. :frowning:

That’s why I so happy that we’ve FINALLY got a full time devoted GUI coder (just started last week, hey Russ!) and GUI artist (really talented guy who starts in a few weeks), so they can start working on iterating on exactly this problem. I’d say it’s be FAR the single biggest challenge for the HUD and GUI design. But I’ve now got high hopes!

(Floris) #19

[QUOTE=Rahdo;199708]Here’s the thing about Brink… you’ve got to remember there’s all these class abilities & upgrades and stuff that can radically change things up… a little small body type enemy who you would expect to die really fast may have been temporarily buffed up to be the equal of a big heavy guy in terms of hitpoints (if he’s been helped out by his teammates, for example). And then you’d be shooting at him, you expect him to die very quickly, but he takes a licking and keeps on ticking, and you’re left wondering “wha? whas i not hitting him?”. Because of situations like that, I think it’s VERY impotant to give player’s feedback about exactly what they’re up against when they’re aiming at a bad guy.

Which is very different that simply putting a GUI thing over everyone’s head before you’ve even seen them. This is a case of “you’ve already spotted him, and by looking at him, we’re giving you the additional ‘bonus’ information you need to know to make informed decisions”

Am I crazy? :-)[/QUOTE]

I’ve seen plenty of HUD’s which are just horrendous because they try to convey too much information to the player. I hope you guys don’t make the same mistake.

Good that you guys finally found someone, too bad his name seems to be quite generic which makes me have trouble with my regular new SD hire stalking :frowning:

(tokamak) #20

[QUOTE=Rahdo;199708]Here’s the thing about Brink… you’ve got to remember there’s all these class abilities & upgrades and stuff that can radically change things up… a little small body type enemy who you would expect to die really fast may have been temporarily buffed up to be the equal of a big heavy guy in terms of hitpoints (if he’s been helped out by his teammates, for example). And then you’d be shooting at him, you expect him to die very quickly, but he takes a licking and keeps on ticking, and you’re left wondering “wha? whas i not hitting him?”. Because of situations like that, I think it’s VERY impotant to give player’s feedback about exactly what they’re up against when they’re aiming at a bad guy.

Which is very different that simply putting a GUI thing over everyone’s head before you’ve even seen them. This is a case of “you’ve already spotted him, and by looking at him, we’re giving you the additional ‘bonus’ information you need to know to make informed decisions”

Am I crazy? :-)[/QUOTE]

Of course it’s important to give the player all the information he needs, otherwise it would be a game of chance.

But the GUI should be the last resort in these manners, the information should come from the battlefield itself. If a player is buffed, debuffed, wounded, full health, charging, whatever it should be visible on the model itself and not trough a bar a meter or number flashing in your screen.

Look at TF2, there’s no doubt about whether that heavy is übercharged or not, you can see him coming from miles away. You can see when a player is in a critting state (his weapon has lightening around it and he has temporarily double damage), and you can see to what degree a player is wounded, or when has a jar of urine thrown over him (making him more vulnerable).

In fact, TF2 makes no use of the interface at all here it’s all in-world stuff. The only exception is team-mates, then it suddenly makes plenty of use of the GUI with little exclamation marks, and all that.

I think that’s the right direction to take. Use the GUI however you like in order to make the interaction inside a team as smooth as possible, but keep it out of the fight against opponents itself, then it should be the player who judges the world instead of doing what his GUI tells him to do.

I understand it takes way more resources, time and energy to take the in-world approach. But that’s an economical decision, not a gameplay one.