Brink Q&A med Media Director Richard Jolly
Q: What is your role in team?A: I am Richard Jolly, Media Director here at Splash Damage. When we started Splash Damage over 8 years ago my role was Artist/Game Designer and I served as Art Director on Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. Now working on Brink, I'm in charge of our Media Team, which is responsible for the external perception of both Brink and Splash Damage as a whole.
Q: What is the story of BRINK?
A: Brink takes place on the Ark, an artificial floating city at sea, which was initially built as part of a contemporary "green" vision. The Ark has since lost contact with the outside world and the reported rise of the world's sea levels has driven tens of thousands of refugees there. The resulting massive overpopulation and ever-increasing resource shortages have literally pushed the Ark to the brink of an all-out civil war between the island's Security forces and the civilian Resistance movement. That's when you, as a player, come in and play through the story as a member of either side.
Q: What is the most important feature of BRINK?
A: Even though we're only pre-Alpha at the moment, there's already a lot about the game we're pretty happy with. We've got a setting that people haven't really seen before along with a unique and very memorable look for our player characters. Our SMART movement system is already working really well and with our automated Squad Commander, you always know how to best help your team, no matter what class you're playing as or where you are on the battlefield. But probably the thing we're most proud of is just how solidly Brink performs as a shooter. Whatever else we're trying to achieve in terms of redefining single/multiplayer and online/offline, or introducing people to team-based gameplay, Brink first and foremost has to deliver as a fun shooter, and right now every weapon is fun to shoot and we think the game feels really immersive and solid.
Q: Can we improve our character, if so how?
A: Character advancement in Brink is persistent across all modes; you advance the same in-game character regardless of whether you play offline on your own, co-op with friends or in full-blown multiplayer online. You earn experience points all the time, from actions performed as any player class or in either faction. Every time you level up in the game, you can "purchase" a new ability for your character. Some abilities are fairly traditional character improvements while others are completely new items and actions you can perform. Additionally, you'll also unlock cool new outfits, hairstyles, tattoos, etc. Which you can use to customise the look of your character and show off your achievements to other players. We've calculated that there are around 19.2 billion different combinations of assets there, so the chances of seeing another player online who looks exactly like you are pretty low.
Q: Will we obtain experience points in single player game, that we could also be used in multiplayer?
A: Yes, you always play with the same character, no matter what mode you're in.
Q: How many hours can be finished in scenario mode?
A: Right now we're still pre-Alpha so it's hard to give definite numbers at this stage, but we expect single player gameplay length to be comparable to what players have come to expect from other FPS titles. Add to this the ability to play co-op or online as each of our four classes, from both factions; perspective, across all districts of the Ark and you've amassed a large play time indeed.
Q: Is Co-op supported in BRINK?
A: Yes, we have drop-in and out co-op support, for you and up to seven friends.
Q: S.M.A.R.T. What is it? Would you please explain?
A: We knew we wanted players to be much more mobile than in previous games. It just made no sense that they couldn't get over shoulder-high walls, or they could get over waist-high walls but not waist-height-plus-one-pixel-high walls. So we let the lighter body types get over them, and perform other manoeuvres they'd be able to do in real life. Aubrey Hesselgren, one of our Technical Designers, was a Parkour runner in a previous, less-production-crunch-pizza-afflicted life, and appeared (fleetingly) in the Jump Britain movie. He was delighted to strap a video camera to his head and plunge and bound about to examine how first person agility can and can't be visually communicated. The result is the SMART system. The aim of SMART is to get players good at playing the game, without having to get good at using our interface. If you're running towards an obstacle, you can just hold down the SMART button and it will automatically mantle over or slide under it as appropriate. This lets players get into the game fast and without frustration so they can concentrate on making smart tactical choices rather than sweating about button presses.
Q: Will vehicles be used in the game?
A: Players will not be able to control vehicles in Brink. They will appear as part of certain missions similar to those we had in Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. However, players will not be able to control them directly. We wanted to return to more up close and personal infantry-focused gameplay (which coincidentally also helps show off your customized character much better), so we decided very early on that Brink wouldn't have player-controlled vehicles.
Q: BRINK, uses the id tech 4 engine. There was a misconception that the engine did not work well outdoors, until proved otherwise with Quake Wars through the successful use of the Megatexture. What improvements have you made to the engine for BRINK?
A: Brink's technology started out as the version of id Tech 4 developed by us for Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars. We've since upgraded major parts of the technology and it now runs on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 from the same codebase and tries to share as many assets as possible between those platforms. As part of this process, the renderer has been revamped to be friendlier for consoles and modern graphics cards. Multi-threading is also more important, both for the asymmetric architecture of the PS3 as well as for the more symmetrical PC and Xbox 360. We are parallelising more and more areas of our code to try and utilise all the available hardware resources. Aside from the core technology, an entirely new toolset with tighter integration into the engine was written to aid development. It contains heavily updated versions of tools people might be familiar with, such as our level editor EditWorld, as well as entirely new animation and scripting functionality. There are many benefits on staying with already familiar technology. Being able to start on day one without re-training people is a big plus. The engine has also proven itself by being used in several shipped games, with the added bonus of us knowing exactly what its strengths and weaknesses are.
Q: How will multiplayer work?
A: One of the high-level design goals of Brink is the blurring of the lines between what was traditionally considered either a single or multiplayer game. As a result of this, you'll be able to play all of our levels either by yourself, cooperatively with your friends, or competitively against other people online, and you can transition between these modes at any time you like without, say, having to go all the way back to the main menu and selecting a different mode.
Q: What is the main platform of the game?
A: There is no lead development platform - Brink is being developed as a true multi-platform game. We try to share as much code and as many assets as possible between the platforms. During work on our previous games we already had a solid understanding of doing cross-OS development and this experience partially translated over to working with multiple hardware platforms in writing portable code. We also know what the strengths of each of the platforms are and we make sure that all of them receive the attention they need in order to fully utilise them. We don't want any of them to feel like they are "just a port".
Q: Is PS3 difficult platform to develop for?
A: Knowing that Brink would be our first multi-platform game at Splash Damage, we made a concerted effort to grow our team specifically with experienced members that had shipped multi-platform games. In the case of the PS3, we went out and hired talented people like Dean Calver (previously lead programmer on Heavenly Sword), and Neil Alphonso (Killzone 2's lead level designer), and they brought with them the required know-how for successful production on that platform.
Q: The id tech 4 engine supported game mods. Do you plan to prepare modtools for BRINK?
A: There's a very vibrant community of modders for our previous Enemy Territory games and growing from the mod community ourselves, we've always made sure to provide the editing community with tools and documentation. We expect to do the same for BRINK.
Q: Do you think a demo for the game?
A: Right now our focus is on finishing the game and making it as good as it can be. We have no announced plans beyond that at this time.
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