Topic: Brink

[ratty redemption]

character customizaton Walkthrough video:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/character-customizaton-brink/60975

[kat]

A bit more interesting from our point of view is an article in TechRadar that one of Splash Damage's level designers was quoted in. It's not  hugely insightful if you've been into modding and level design for a while (read that as "us lot"), but it's an interesting read nonetheless as it confirms a lot of what we've been saying about the state of play with map making.

[ratty redemption]

@ kat, that was definitely an interesting article.

also sad to hear rage will join the ranks of games the publishers don't want us modding, or do you think the modding communities will find a way of using 3rd party tools?

in the gvz forums, I've been impressed with how creative those guys are considering they don't have any official tools to import custom models into games like re5. it's as if this has encouraged them to think more laterally.

[kat]

Yeah modders will continue to mod, but really it's going to depend on coder types to do most of the more in depth stuff as they're more likely to be the ones to crack open any encryption.. look at Wolfenstein; you can't make levels but thanks to TinMan you can create script mods and such like that don't require art assets to be made.

[ratty redemption]

understood and can we assume this is also going to be the case with brink? no official support but modders still being able to tweak things?

[ratty redemption]

ign have a new article on brink:

http://uk.xbox360.ign.com/articles/108/1087530p1.html

[kat]

This has been bothering me for some time with Brink. Given that we're talking about a Post Apocalypse type world I could never figure out why there weren't any female characters available in game. Well apparently there are reasons for this that don't have to do with '****' - as in fe/male - it's all to do with development time, apparently. The last link is especially telling about game development overall.

http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?p=203448#post203448
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?p=203705#post203705
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?p=203457#post203457
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?p=208442#post208442

[ratty redemption]

kat, i've heard some of those official reasons before but tbh i don't believe them, i just think sd don't want to include any female characters in their games playable or npc. i'd like to be proven wrong but i expect the same from their next game and so forth.

[kat]

Yeah, seems a little 'odd' to me, very "1990's" thinking when boys pretty much were the only gamers. Granted that when using such stylised character design you can't realistically use the same rigs and animation with different 'shells' because the proportions are so exaggerated so I do get that, but I'm just not wholly convinced by that argument, especially for a big (50+) dev studio.

Having said that, there's a lot of movement in the industry to after sales/release "added value" so it may be that they could include females, not in Brink 2.0 as those post hinted, but as DLC additions that have to be purchased.

[ratty redemption]

agreed, that would be more plausible to hold them back for dlc, i just still think we're not going to see any females in their games. maybe they just don't want people arguing over what the female characters should look like, or what skills they have etc. but it's not as if this is their first game, they could of allocated at least one person from the initial design concepts if they really wanted to.