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Då det för stunden råder nyhetstorka i väntan på att Bethesda Softworks ska bestämma sig för att släppa gameplay footage från Brink har doffelicious.com grävt i trådarna på Splash Damage officiella forum för Brink. För den som inte följer forumet dagligen kan detta vara ett snabbt sätt att uppdatera sig lite om vad som har sagts på deras forum.

Notera att frågorna eller kommentarerna (markerade med "Q") är i vissa fall omformulerade och är skrivna av olika medlemmar på officiella forumet. Svaren (markerade med "A") är alla från Splash Damage, men olika personer. Samtliga "frågor" med "svar" är hämtade från SplashDamage.com. Kom även ihåg att detta inte är någon intervju utan ska snarare ses som en sammanfattning av den senaste månadens aktivitet från Splash Damages forum.

Q: 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.
A: 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! :)

Q: Please don't tell me "HUD elements" mean "red arrows" (or maybe only show the arrow when you have your crosshair on the person).
Q: 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). 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.
A: 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? :-)

Q: 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.
A: 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 :( 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!

Q: 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.
A: 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 :) 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.. 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...

Q: 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").
Q: 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.
A: 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 :s

Q: Someone hiding behind a table or wall or in a dark place shouldn't be given away by GUI features on your screen. 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.
A: Completely agreed! Both of these are bad outcomes that I intend to avoid!

Q: 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: 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 :)

Q: About escort missions and NPC's in Brink. Oh dear, NPC's on the battlefield? Objectives revolving around them? Please don't make me do escort missions with useless twat AI npcs. They rarely ever work in singleplayer and in multiplayer I can envisage it being a nightmare.
A: I was a bit skeptical as well at first, but the implementation we've ended up with is actually lots of fun. Can't give away too much at this stage, but I can't think immediately of any real similarities to the way other games have used NPCs. You'll of course be able to decide for yourself, though :)

Q: Ok, I've just never had any good experiences with npc escorts in the past. Most of the time its the gaming equivalent of pulling teeth.
A: I think some of the escort missions we did on Syphon Filter 1 and 2 back in the day were fantastic (getting Lian out of the catacombs below the church, or breaking Gregorov out of the russian Gulag). the secret to it working well is ensuring the escortee doesn't screw around, get stuck, or do dumb crap. Our civilians basically have fixed paths they'll move on while the team protects them with their guns and abilities, and medics keep them alive if they go down. They're like faster, weaker versions of the normal 'tank' style escorts, with medics keeping them moving instead of engineers.

Q: Can we get a time estimate on the release of some official gameplay footage?
A: Wish I could give one, but it's all up to Bethesda PR...

Q: Will the console version allow multiplayer split screen? If so can you allow a left to right split as well as top bottom split? much prefer left to right when playing on a large widescreen TV.
A: Hard to say. I *really* hope we can pull it off technically, but it is a very hard nut to crack. Still to far out to say one way or the other at this point...

Q: Will Brink allow for custom client side sound packs that won't make it fail a "pure" validation? If not for all sounds, more specifically will custom hitsounds be allowed?
A: Request noted! :)

Q: Is movement speed a determining factor in accuracy and does crouching improve accuracy?
A: There are several different accuracy states based on your current movement state. Crouching does indeed improve accuracy, as does standing still. SMART moves tend to kick up inaccuracy, though some weapons feel more penalty than others (i.e. assault rifles are really rather accurate while slow. Pistols don't have great accuracy at the best of times, but they don't really lose much accuracy while you're sprinting around - excellent for closing on enemies).

Q: Will spread change instantly for stances or will it take a short while (maybe even dependant on weapon, I can imagine a pistol to stabilize faster than a machine gun)? Obviously both ways have their pros and cons, but which direction will Brink be taking?
A: There is some tweening over time in Brink.

Q: Can you hang off a ledge and then drop/climb as a separate movement. Someone said that if you make a jump can you grab the ledge with your hands and pull yourself up (in one fluid motion). This seems totally in keeping with the movement philosophy in Brink so I hope it's in there.
A: Yep. The point of the movement is to keep you involved in the game, not involved with the movement. It's a means to an end. The modal approach of grabbing and shimmying was one of the first things we experimented with, but found that it'd be a lot of work, and not intrinsically enjoyable - sudden change in core controls, slowed, non analogue speeds, unnecessarily complex control issues (Do you fall off the ledge if you try to reload? can you only use pistols? Or no weapons at all?), way too much susceptibility requiring massive baiting of the player to ever get them to use it. In level design terms, to make shimmying useful and worthwhile, you'd have to really contrive some geometry - like a ledge you can only shimmy under to get to some massive reward (i.e. good vantage point, control panels etc.). But if you're only shimmying due to that reward... that's not really particularly enjoyable or in keeping with the philosophy of the movement system.

Q: Sorry. I'm at a loss with my basic english skills and don't really understand your answer. Can you hang at ledges or not?
A: Oh sorry. You can mantle up and over things, yes, but you can't "hang" and stay there. You'll just get up and over swiftly, (you can also cancel the move and drop back down if you fight the direction, and you can also jump back away if you want to be Pro).

Q: I was more querying the falling short but grabbing the ledge and pulling yourself up motion without actually hanging. More so for smart button move cos that would indicate i definitely wanted to go to that ledge, else i could just fall without grabbing the ledge.
A: Ah, okay then! Yes, you can jump/fall into a ledge grab in the way you are describing.

Q: So I could attempt a jump towards a platform, fall short of a foot landing and instead SMART to grab onto the edge of the platform and start climbing back up, then jump out of that mid-climb, potentially SMART grabbing onto another platform?
A: Yes.

Q: Are there limits to the chaining I can do between those kinds of moves? I'm thinking back to the kind of movement on Jedi Knight 2/3 where it was possible to do stuff like force speed > jump for a long jump, chain into a wall stick thingy when you hit a wall, then jump off upwards again to some higher platform. Or wall stick > jump > wall stick > jump to climb corners of rooms. That movement was slightly clunky but also ace.
A: On wall hops, there are diminishing returns on the velocity for for each wall jump you use and you can't wall jump twice on the same surface without touching the floor once to reset.

Q: Will there be G15 keyboard support similar to what ETQW had? (the awesome red one, forget that blue crap one).
A: Good question, and I have to say I'm not sure. If the code for it is still rattling around in there, I wouldn't rule it out. Not making any promises though :)

Q: Do all classes have their own voicesound/pitch? Can you regocnize which class spoke by the sound of their voice?
A: No plans for that at the mo'. But in most cases you can tell which class it was from the dialog spoken: medics don't often say "c4 charge planted", for instance...

Q: Will there be in-game advertising?
A: No one's talked about it so far, afaik...

Q: Will there be different weapons for Security and Resistance? It would make sense to see the Security with a well equipped modern armory and the Resistance rely on weapons from the black market.
A: Same weapons, symetry is maintained. But each side's weapons hopefully will look and sound different (security new and well maintained, resistance beat up) so there's aesthetic differences. But stats and function identical.

Q: Bullet penetration, is it in Brink?
A: There's very little "soft" building materials in the Ark (no wood or stucco etc), and so no terrain penetration for Brink.

Q: Are there melee attacks using the weapon Halo/CoD style? It's a very satisfying and dangerous attack... great when it lands but life threatening if you miss which I think is a great tradeoff.
A: Yes there are weapon melee attacks, and also other more acrobatic stuff.

Q: Are body graphics permanent?
A: The intent right now (and bear in mind, this isn't final) is that for every one of the characters you create, you've got a "permanent" layer and a "temporary" layer. The permanent stuff is basically scars and tattoos. Once you put on on, that's it. It's a permanent thing, like in real life. Doesn't matter if you switch sides or body types (which you can change but not during matches, and not without an XP cost), it's a part of you. The temporary layer is stuff like warpaint and camouflage and whatnot. Those things can change any time (between matches, anyway).

Q: Would be interesting to know what (if) you guys got planned for common things, ie stuff that all players of a single clan can wear together. I hope the grouping of people goes beyond having the clan tag in front of the name.
A: Yeah, basically the intent is for clans to be able to define a "clan uniform", and when you're representing your clan, you'll be wearing that instead of your own customized outfit combinations. That's the intent, anyway :-)

Q: Will there be any avatar exclusive clothing for xbox version?
A: At this point, all I can say is these are very cool and we're big fans of the feature...

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