some cam footage from the brink booth

(tokamak) #61

To me it looks like a handful of months ago, the initial complaints - and I wasn’t the only one- didn’t really get through . So it makes sense to put a bit more effort in getting the point across.

I remember a whole discussion about the prominence of the hud vs that of the environment. Apparently to no avail.

I’m not saying you should listen to this community. Developing games is not a democratic process and rightly so as it would only result in crap. But do understand it’s rather frustrating that discussions, even with the developers on this forum amount to nothing.

I see absolutely no reason for making xp pop out of enemies. It’s cheap, it’s tasteless, it breaks the immersion and it’s compromising the gameplay. It wouldn’t add anything to W:ET or ETQW either. It reminds me of the balloon mutator in TF2, where balloons burst out of the persons you shot. At least in TF2 it was meant to be a joke.

I know you guys had problems. SD was looking for an interface programmer rather late in the progress. Well, it shows.

My concern is that it hands too much information to a player. I don’t want my opponent to see me bleeding “GOOD JOB MAN” points out of my body because it’ll make it easier to trace me. It takes the cognitive challenge out of gunfights.

(Voxie) #62

I’ll just chime in on what tokamak has to say; though I don’t think the XP popups are necessarily a bad thing the HUD sure is a lot less beginner friendly and intuitive than I thought it would be, given that we’ve heard time and time again that Brink is a stark contrast from Quake Wars and its overwhelming HUD elements. Maybe it’s just because I’ve grown accustomed to the E3 2009 demo with its placeholder minimalistic elements, but I actually like that one better. The current one is suprisingly bloated, not only the objective wheel which - somewhat understandably - completely halters the flow of the game, but also the ability wheel in the down left corner and the context-sensitive popups (give X ammo, disguise as Y) are way too obtrusive and distracting.

Please remember the mantra of less is more and slim down the HUD – giving how much you are pushing for a streamlined and refined experience I’m really surprised at how distracting the interface is.

(tokamak) #63

QW’s hud is Shangri La compared to Brink.

(Exedore) #64

Something to remember is that this was a specifically targeted demo; even at the time of E3 there were several significant differences between the proper game that we’ve continued to work on and the E3 demo.

Unsurprisingly, some assumptions are correct and others are not… I can only say that we’ve not ignored any of the points raised here in our development processes.

(Hansel) #65

They just said somewhere that you are not required to view the objective wheel like they do in the videos, you just select your choice just by pushing few keys. I assume that it’s like the voice chat menu in Tribes games.

(tokamak) #66

There’s a quick-select of the most logical objective for you to do.

And since when is expanding a previously made statement with a metaphor considered useless? I’m not even being rude or anything.

(Voxie) #67

Though you can just tap the objective wheel button to let the system decide what objective you’re best off choosing - if you want to see the entire list you’ll have to stop moving. I understand SD’s design decision here; gamepads are are terrible when it comes to operating interfaces whilst traversing the world at the same time (hopefully the PC-version will have a list similar to the one found in ETQW). I’m glad you quoted that part of my post, since I can see in hindsight that it was poorly phrased. My beef with the wheel is that it doesn’t have instant readablitiy – if you have to stop to choose a mission you should be able to just glance at the contents and know exactly what you can choose from. There are simplistic icons there, which is good, but it could be expanded upon more to make it more intuitive to use. Something like a short tagline underneath each icon – “Give ammo”, “Plant mines”, “Defend objective” that expands to a sentence showing more specific info when you highlight it.

(BioSnark) #68

They don’t bleed them out of your body. They come out of the center of the crosshair and so are not functionally dissimilar from traditional hit indicators.

HUD criticizes follow_

Overall:
Liking the minimalist theme, here. However, many elements seem to be blocking an unnecessary large amount of space, particularly compared to the elements of the initial footage. Here I’m NOT referring to the amount of elements but the actual graphical design. What there was of the initial HUD seemed to be built using outlined shapes where the current HUD is built with solid, largely opaque blocks of color. You might consider switching back to outlines for functional reasons. It would not seem difficult to translate the current HUD to outlines given that it’s already made up of minimalist shapes.

Lower left elements:
Aside from balancing out the radar, I’m not seeing the functional purpose to the lower left circle. Seems like those HUD elements would be less confusing and less obtrusive if configured differently.

Player interaction circles:
The player-to-player interaction circles are extremely obtrusive and particularly so when they’re popping in or out. I’d recommend reducing their size and if you want to retain the the pop in/out zoom at least add fading so it isn’t so startling. The design of the interaction circles also does not match the rest of the HUD design. A more drastic and simpler approach, which I recommend, is changing the blue player outlines to green as well as possibly emboldening or flashing them and eliminating the green circle altogether.

Compass:
The blue arrow compass very distinctly does not match the graphical design of the rest of the HUD (excluding the player interaction circles which it also doesn’t match)

Grenade trail:
Pink-white color is very dissimilar the basic colors of the rest of the HUD palette.

“Combat Intuition” cue:
Aside from looking rather powerful, it’s also throwing up another chunk of color and one even thicker than the other HUD elements. It’s also near the middle of the screen where it blocks more important information and where the player is already focused, reducing the need for that kind of size. Sure, all that may be viewed as a drawback for that skill, but HUD clutter isn’t the best approach to implement balancing drawbacks. For instance, the cue could only be applied for input outside of the field of view of the player to prevent it’s use as an aiming cue (or aimbot, as wedgwood puts it) as seen in the demo or the indicator could simply be flashed and not be continuously updated as the player turns to aim at it.

(SockDog) #69

With regards to the compass. Couldn’t the SMART system be used to plot an actual route to the objective and overlay that on the screen? I noticed in the video the blue arrow isn’t really all that helpful, having a player gps would be a massive learning curve leveller.

Again. I love the XP Petals although I’d like the option to change from XP to HP.

(MILFandCookies) #70

Personally not a fan of the XP indicators, even if the objective of having these indicators is to encourage players to shoot more often. Secondly I dont value the idea of Kill Assists, or XP for Damage given to a player.

Being close enough, is not good enough. Games have been won and loss - because players could[not] ‘close the deal’ on another player in the dying stages of a game.

(murka) #71

Actually i can see the reasoning behind it now.
Console players/casuals will need to trace a whole enemy so xp helps in keeping track. Proficient players need to trace the head and floating xp is an added layer of distraction.
1m vs 1k players…

(BomBaKlaK) #72

XP popup >>>> turn off
Outlines >>>>> turn off (an arrow it’s ok I think !)

question : can we drop the buff on the ground (like ETQW) or only direct buff (like we see in the différent videos) ?

(tokamak) #73

[QUOTE=BioSnark;230598]They don’t bleed them out of your body. They come out of the center of the crosshair and so are not functionally dissimilar from traditional hit indicators.
[/QUOTE]

It definitely comes from the target, not the crosshair. You can clearly see the numbers shift appropriate to the camera movement. This info is environment-sensitive. So I ask why not just make it appear in the environment right away? Environment based info is always the best option, Farcry 2 lifted it to an art.

That would take a huge chunk out of the fun of finding the fastest route over random terrain.

(MILFandCookies) #74

With regards to the compass. Couldn’t the SMART system be used to plot an actual route to the objective and overlay that on the screen? I noticed in the video the blue arrow isn’t really all that helpful, having a player gps would be a massive learning curve leveller.

To me, I think a game that encourages players to think outside the box - is fantastic. And the SMART system, is a great opportunity for players to do that I think. Investing a bit a time into learning how to use smart manually, while trying to find the most efficient route to each and every objective - will be a challenge that a lot of players will enjoy conquering.

Secondly, the upside to learning these routes yourself is a tactical edge. By having a system that tells you the most efficient route - it doesnt completely eliminate that edge because of the skill required, but it does give away enough information to prevent someone using a particular route.

(SockDog) #75

@Tok
The XP petals key off the crosshair not the player hit. Check the video at 6:38 onwards, you can clearly see shotgun blasts hitting then the xp petals following the cursor off target.

No it would guide people who haven’t a clue where they are going in the right direction, the purpose of the compass if I’m not mistaken. Using SMART code to produce an overlay wont necessarily give the best, fastest or safest route, it will however get someone to where their objective is rather than following a compass point in circles or turning up long after it is necessary.

@M&C
Oh I agree and I don’t think giving a simple route to the objective would hinder anyone from making alterations of their own. To me it would just be one of those things that brings down the learning curve on a new map. Maybe after a while you just switch it off (or at least for the fixed location objectives), but when you’re new to a map you can have that little assist to keep you in the right direction but deviate from it when you choose to.

Of course this would depend on SMART and probably the Enemy AI being able to do it on the fly and smoothly enough to not be some TomTom, “turn left of the helicopter platform. You have hit the ocean” type thing.

(Seyu) #76

Point taken.

Its just that seeing the devs change things (for the worse, in my opinion) that were perfectly alright the first time is really frustrating. I mean, look at the highlight-opponent-in-red thing, its something that’ll eradicate the use of stealth in the game and make the light build near about useless, given its low hp, cause whichever place you climb up to you’ll always be lit up.

I viewed the Container City vids again and its that what I suppose we all (PC gamers, atleast) wanted from the game.

No visual cues as to where the opponent is
XP only coming up after killing the opponent
Gritty art style
No health bar or names over the opponent
Normal movement speed

I’d give away a million just to know what made the devs change all of this into what we saw at E3 this year.

(tokamak) #77

[QUOTE=Seyu;230640]Point taken.

Its just that seeing the devs change things (for the worse, in my opinion) that were perfectly alright the first time is really frustrating. I mean, look at the highlight-opponent-in-red thing, its something that’ll eradicate the use of stealth in the game and make the light build near about useless, given its low hp, cause whichever place you climb up to you’ll always be lit up.
[/QUOTE]

That’s another incredibly cheap measure indeed. No point in hiding in the shadows if you got a red contour.

[QUOTE=Seyu;230640]
I viewed the Container City vids again and its that what I suppose we all (PC gamers, atleast) wanted from the game.[/QUOTE]

Agreed (except from the xp-pop ups again) Maybe console gamers want something different, they sit further away from the screen after all so things need to be clear. But all this stuff really shouldn’t be necessary for a pc game.

(darthmob) #78

[QUOTE=tokamak;230645]That’s another incredibly cheap measure indeed. No point in hiding in the shadows if you got a red contour.[/QUOTE]Are we talking about Splinter-Cell or Thief here? :tongue:

Hiding in the shadows… seriously guys. Hiding in mp shooters is all about staying behind objects or walls so that you aren’t visible. Shadows basically don’t exist when everybody can use his own config. It’s even possible to hide in games like Q3 and it allows showing enemies as brightly glowing pink robots.

(Seyu) #79

[QUOTE=darthmob;230647]
Hiding in the shadows… seriously guys. Hiding in mp shooters is all about staying behind objects or walls so that you aren’t visible. [/QUOTE]

That may be the case in games where the objective is to kill as many players as you can thus hiding is behind stuff is good enough. In Brink its about going from point A to B and finishing the objective you have. So the best strategy for a light build player is to stay out of sight while he goes from A to B that is the reason why he can climb up farther than other and has more speed. Anyway, a light build won’t benefit from waiting and hiding behind stuff unless he’s going to engage another light build player.

(darthmob) #80

You are just confirming what I just said; there isn’t even anything to discuss. There may be reasons not to use a red glow to distinguish your teammates from your enemies but stealth or sneaking definitely isn’t one of them. That’s all I wanted to say. :slight_smile: