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

(Rahdo) #21

And yet, in TF2, when playing a medic, they have to use traditional HUD stuff to let a medic do his job effectively. And they’re right to do so, because it’s not a binary on/off situation like most of the examples you suggest (either they’re supercharged or not, either they’re urined or not, etc.). There’s a lot more incremental information in Brink about both your team and the enemy than in TF2. There’s a lot more going on in general because of all the myriad of class abilities and weapons that players may or may not bring into a match. And then you add the additional complexity of character customization to boot! It all makes for a very rich and tasty soup of gameplay possibilities, and the danger is in it getting too soupy :slight_smile:

So when the player’s got situations where they’re making life or death decisions in literally split seconds, I think they need information is the fastest, easiest to read, most effecient means possible. Much like a medic does in TF2…

(Rahdo) #22

I should add, that as much as possible, i do want to represent this stuff in game… an upgraded gun has a deeper bass than normal, whereas upgraded ammunition has more intense tracer fire, for instance. i just worry that subtle stuff like that alone might not be enough in all cases, with so much dynamic ebb and flow in the game…

also, what’s a guy got to do to get a 5 star rep around this place!!! those 4 stars haunt me!

(majestiqo) #23

Rahdo: Talking about upgrades. Will you be able to turn off such upgrades (or, a few selected ones) on “non ranked” servers? If it proves to be unsuitable for competitive game? (like in CoD4 when some of the upgrades are just… “too good”).

Hopefully it won’t be needed, but I’d still appreciate an answer =)

(Floris) #24

[QUOTE=majestiqo;199735]Rahdo: Talking about upgrades. Will you be able to turn off such upgrades (or, a few selected ones) on “non ranked” servers? If it proves to be unsuitable for competitive game? (like in CoD4 when some of the upgrades are just… “too good”).

Hopefully it won’t be needed, but I’d still appreciate an answer =)[/QUOTE]

I’m more interested in knowing whether we can turn them all on by default (ehh, I mean, allow players to customize their character with unlockables they have not achieved yet). That might make matches a lot more interesting while still not destroying the balance. And I think it will help blur the lines between casual and online competitive play.

I’m not sure if SD is interested in blurring that line though, considering competitive players like me (or at least like I used to be when I still had time to play several hours a day) are in general far from the easiest customers to please :slight_smile:

(majestiqo) #25

[QUOTE=Florisjuh;199739]I’m more interested in knowing whether we can turn them all on by default (ehh, I mean, allow players to customize their character with unlockables they have not achieved yet). That might make matches a lot more interesting while still not destroying the balance. And I think it will help blur the lines between casual and online competitive play.

I’m not sure if SD is interested in blurring that line though, considering competitive players like me (or at least like I used to be when I still had time to play several hours a day) are in general far from the easiest customers to please :)[/QUOTE]

Well yes, that’s equally interesting. So I’d like an answer to Both questions now :stroggbanana:

(Rahdo) #26

Well, I dare not deny the strogg banana! To both those questions, what I want to do is give as much flexibility for players to make their own preferred server settings, allowing/disallowing weapons/abilities/game features etc. as they see fit. When we get to the point where we’re actively working on setting up the interface for these things, I actually intend to start asking on the boards about what kinds of choices players really want in detail (hopefully being able to talk openly by that point about the kinds of things that are on the table).

So there’s your vague non-committal answer for the evening :rolleyes:

(Nail) #27

ability to restrict/set value of weapons, upgrades and numbers per class would be a universal choice imho

as well as the usual speclock, pause, brinktv, etc. that all games need

(majestiqo) #28

Thanks, you get a tapir for that :stroggtapir:

Also, I agree with the post above me (Nail) this time aswell =)

(darthmob) #29

[QUOTE=Rahdo;199734]I should add, that as much as possible, i do want to represent this stuff in game… an upgraded gun has a deeper bass than normal, whereas upgraded ammunition has more intense tracer fire, for instance. i just worry that subtle stuff like that alone might not be enough in all cases, with so much dynamic ebb and flow in the game…[/QUOTE]Deus Ex just came to my mind. You could upgrade your eyes ingame. If I remember correctly you could only see if someone was an enemy or not per default. Upgrades allowed to view the health status, loadout and other more or less important information.

I may imagine something like that in Brink. If you are experienced enough to get all the information from visual / audio cues you may do that and save some upgrade points for other abilities. Others may choose to invest them in an upgrade that shows information about your enemies buffs and status on the hud. Showing buffs / debuffs should not have that much of an impact on balance but viewing a health-bar or not is a major difference. My standpoint is to not have any hud information about enemy health at all.

(tokamak) #30

Aye, but I already made that distinction between team interaction and engaging an enemy. Use all the GUI stuff you like if it helps interacting with the rest of the team. It’s just when it comes to engaging with the enemy things get really delicate. Someone hiding behind a table or wall or in a dark place shouldn’t be given away by GUI features on your screen. In that way the player should only have his cognitive skills to rely on.

And if you want to use GUI on enemies, it should be really simple. You could use one single indicator that indicates how the opponent player matches up to you. In a similar way like WoW displays colours in the enemy player’s name. A player you simply can’t beat is a skull, a very dangerous player is red, a nearly beatable player is orange, equal player is yellow a green player is a piece of cake and a grey player is like beating up kids.

These colours are all relative to your own level. The same can be done for brink. A player equal to you is yellow, if he has more upgrades than you he’s orange, and if he has less than you he’s green.

This means that a player with a lower ‘level’ of experience but with upgraded weapons (through class abilities) to compromise he can still be indicated as ‘equal’ to you.

So in that way, the GUI will tell you whether there’s something going on or not, and then it’s up to you to find out what’s really going on judging the player model.

The point is, elaborate GUI features to help in enemy engagement can quickly turn a shooter into a semi-turnbased RPG. That’s just my concern.

(Rahdo) #31

Completely agreed! Both of these are bad outcomes that I intend to avoid!

That’s a VERY interesting idea which I hadn’t considered (and I should have… I played enough WoW). Thanks for the idea! Don’t sue me if we use it :slight_smile:

(timestart) #32

Agreed - the radar/command map in ETQW is basically useless for me due to the tinyness of the arrows :frowning:

(deadlights) #33

exellent! :slight_smile:

(Joe999) #34

from irc:

[2009-10-09 19:57] <Joe999> RR2DO2: what does “mix and match any and all …” mean? can all different body types pick clothes from the same collection?
…
[2009-10-09 19:58] <RR2DO2> Joe999: exactly

how is that achieved for the different body types? is the same texture stretched or are there multiple textures for the different body types, like mip-mapping or sth?

(tokamak) #35

Check World of Warcraft for that. Gnomes and Taurens can wear the same stuff. Or in this case a dwarf and a troll.

Note how the shoulder pads are also scaled and positioned differently.

T5_Priest_Troll.jpg800x640

T5_Priest_Dwarf.jpg800x640

T5_Priest_Draenei.jpg800x640

You won’t have to worry

(Wolfmeister) #36

[QUOTE=Rahdo;199744]Well, I dare not deny the strogg banana! To both those questions, what I want to do is give as much flexibility for players to make their own preferred server settings, allowing/disallowing weapons/abilities/game features etc. as they see fit. When we get to the point where we’re actively working on setting up the interface for these things, I actually intend to start asking on the boards about what kinds of choices players really want in detail (hopefully being able to talk openly by that point about the kinds of things that are on the table).

So there’s your vague non-committal answer for the evening :rolleyes:[/QUOTE]

Thats really encouraging to read :slight_smile:

The competetive scene usually sets their “standards” after a couple of months (which makes sense) how do you plan to respond to that?

  • Some sort of presets system could work but needs to be planned way before release.
    That way you can release a new preset several months after release based on how its really played at the time.
  • A patch works too but could hurt non-competetive gamers.

It needs to be said that the competetive scene can decide on some pretty stupid rules sometimes depending on whos the most vocal or respected at the time. (i dream of a game where i dont have to download small plugins that changes tiny little features that really dont matter to anyone except those few that needs to boost their pro egos) ops, did i really type that? :wink:

Anyway, its really nice to read that youre atleast thinking about these things before the games shipped :tup:

(tokamak) #37

I still hope that Brink will be so good it doesn’t need any change for competitive play.

(Joe999) #38

i have to bump this regarding: “There has been a big trend in recent games to push for an overly desaturated look, for Brink we wanted ‘colour’ back.”

^^ did you change your opinion? the e3 videos look overly desaturated compared to earlier footage :frowning: gief color back! and gief beta!

(LyndonL) #39

Man, stop saying “gief”… you sound like a spoiled rich-kid brat lol.

(Joe999) #40

go here: http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/profile.php?do=ignorelist and put “Joe999” into the textbox below “Add a Member to Your List…” and hit the Okay button