Some time ago we asked the BRINKish readers to send us questions to Brink game developer Splash Damage. The response was overwhelming but we where happy to pass on a large bunch of question which have now been replied on by Splash Damage Creative Director, Richard Ham and Lead Game Designer, Neil Alphonso.

BRINKish.eu: What gametype/s comes with Brink?
A: Brink is an objective-driven game – all of the levels are built around a series of core objectives that the attacking team must complete within the timelimit in order to win the map. This type of gameplay is core to what our games are, and everything about a given level is tailored and balanced to suit this end. The different levels essentially have different gametypes contained within them, and these are all linked together into a larger overarching narrative. Brink will stick to these principles, as deviating from them would compromise both our unique gameplay and our story.

Brink will also feature the competition-friendly Stopwatch mode, in which both teams get to be on the attacking side in succession and try to beat each other’s time. Lastly, players will also be able to set up custom matches with many possible configurations.

BRINKish.eu: Will you provide full support for modders with SDK Tools?
A: Both Splash Damage and Bethesda have a history of providing an SDK and support to go along with it; it’s hard for us to forget our roots. We can’t give specifics on an SDK at this stage as we’re fully focused on getting Brink finished, but it’s something we’ll be talking about more once the game’s production is close to done.

BRINKish.eu: What are your thought on the idTech4 engine? How aware are you of previous issues such as the ‘microstutter’ in ET:QW and how do you plan to overcome them in Brink?
A: We’ve done a lot of work on the underlying technology, and over the course of Brink have rewritten virtually every major system of it. We were aware of the ‘microstutter’ issue that some players experienced in Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, and so when we started working on Brink, one of the things we did was to try to track that down. While we weren’t able to reproduce it reliably, we suspect it was either in the game timing and/or the network frame timing. The good news is that both of those have been rewritten since.

BRINKish.eu: Would you say Brink is playable with less than 8vs8 players even though that’s your recommended number out “on the field”?
A: We’re planning on including options to play Brink with less than eight players on a team. We’re mindful of the fact that competitive gaming gets more difficult from an organizational standpoint with team sizes greater than six, and we’re happy to say that Brink still plays great with fewer combatants as long as there’s good teamwork.

BRINKish.eu: How are you planning on supporting the competitive Brink community after release?
A: We’ve always enjoyed supporting all manner of community events, including online and LAN tournaments (some of you might remember that we even participated in an Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars exhibition match against Team Dignitas at Multiplay’s i-series!). We can’t wait to continue that with Brink, and Bethesda will be our partner in these efforts.

BRINKish.eu: Will Brink support a television client similar to ETTV and HLTV?
A: This is something we had hoped to do, but due to time and resource constraints chose to focus on other areas of Brink instead. We would certainly be happy to support a mod team if they were interested in making one!

BRINKish.eu: What measures are you (Splash Damage) taking to ensure the game is released as stable and exploit/bug free as possible?
A: The release of a Beta for Brink is something that is still being discussed, but no decision has been made one way or the other at this stage. At the very least, we’ll be doing a ‘family and friends’ closed Beta with Bethesda and id.

However, exploits and bugs are potential problems we’re very conscious of, and we approach some of our in-house testing with this specifically in mind. Anything goes in our playtests, so if anything is a candidate for abuse, it gets noticed fairly quickly. We also have a full time production testing team here at the office, paying special attention to exploits and griefing opportunities.

BRINKish.eu: How hard would you say it is to kill another player in Brink? Is there bullet penetration?
A: Keeping in mind that damage is something we’re constantly tuning, in our current play-testing setup it takes around half a clip to take down an enemy if they’re not evading, with headshots doing extra damage on top of that. This is before potential weapon damage buffs and health buffs are taken into account. Brink does not use any bullet penetration for players or the environment.

BRINKish.eu: Can you please explain how the deployments in Brink work in terms of gameplay?
A: The main deployables in Brink are the turrets. Any Engineer can put down one turret in a location of their choosing; deploying a second turret removes the first.

Turrets can miss fast-moving players, but smart Engineers will place them where evading is hard for opponents to manage. They have limited scanning both horizontally and vertically, and a limited range. When used tactically they are extremely powerful, and their raw lethality can be adjusted by how an Engineer chooses to spend their ability points. However, a smart player can always stay one step ahead of them if he’s paying attention to his surroundings.

BRINKish.eu: How many voice packs will players have access to and what are they?
A: Since the Ark is a true melting pot of ethnicities and cultures, you’ll be able to choose from eight different voice packs for your character, and there will also be a few Commander-only voices.

BRINKish.eu: What are your thoughts on Brink Split Screen on console?
A: We will not be supporting split screen play for Brink.

BRINKish.eu: Will you be able to play your own music from your play-list when playing Brink on a console?
A: As this is actually a requirement for any game that comes out on the Xbox 360, yes, you’ll be able to play your own tunes while playing.

BRINKish.eu: What kind of visual effects are you using to give Brink that extra intensive edge? Will there be gore?
A: We really wanted to give a very intense feel to our firefights, with shot impacts that come across as punchy and powerful. That said, we didn’t want it to be gratuitous – excessive gore doesn’t really fit with the tone of Brink, a world where friends and brothers are reluctantly battling each other for what they see as a better future for all on the Ark.

BRINKish.eu: How will levelling up and unlocking different weapons affect the player in teams of how powerful he or she is?
A: Unlocked weapons are not more powerful than the ones you start with – they just have different attributes that are potentially more useful for different styles of play. The abilities you can select as you level up work similarly, and you can choose to specialize in a particular style or keep your character balanced for any occasion. The more powerful abilities are available very early on, whereas the ‘endgame’ ones are far more specialized to complement your preferred playing style.

BRINKish.eu: What can we expect from Brink compared to your previous title Enemy Territory: Quake Wars in terms of matchmaking, movement speeds, and system requirements?
A: We’ll be competitive with other games in terms of matchmaking features and we’ll allow custom matches and dedicated servers on PC. We had a lot of feedback about the Ranked Servers in the PC version of Enemy Territory: QUAKE Wars, and we’re looking to address a lot of that in Brink. Can’t share any specifics as yet, but look for more details closer to release.

As for movement speeds, the videos available online give a good idea there, although they’re slightly slower than what we have in the game currently.

Lastly, we don’t have a final set of PC minimum specs to announce at this time, but we’re optimizing Brink to run well on consoles, and those optimizations keep it running well on PC also.

BRINKish.eu: At what gaming convents during 2010 can we look forward to see more of Brink and can we expect hearing about while there?
A: You can definitely expect Brink to be at all of the biggest shows throughout the year. Keep checking the website for announcements.

BRINKish.eu: How will the narrative be told in Brink?
A: The primary vehicles for the narrative are the cinematics that encapsulate each level, and environmental storytelling within the levels themselves. Most of the cinematics are skippable as they are part of the levels in all modes, but they focus on the perspective of the chosen faction before the action starts. A quick example of environmental storytelling is how graffiti is used by the refugees to express how they feel about life on The Ark.

BRINKish.eu: At this time, say you where us, the BRINKish community – what question do you want us to ask?
A: There’s plenty of things I can think of, but if you had asked, we probably wouldn’t be able to answer anyway. So it’s probably just as well you guys didn’t think of it!

BRINKish would like to thank Richard Ham and Neil Alphonso for taking their time to reply to BRINKish community. Hopefully we’ll get more of these in the future. And while talking about the future, make sure to stay tuned to BRINKish for opportunities to win official Brink merchandise. You can follow BRINKish through Facebook, Twitter and our RSS.