brink

The Official Xbox 360 Magazine have once again made a preview of Brink the game. Last time was back in early December. This time around the preview is longer and among other things they talk about the new level Shipyard.

  Gewinne ein BRINK TShirt
  SplashDamage Ltd. & gamingpalace.de
  bis 01. Mai 2010

An dieser Stelle eine Danksagung an SplashDamage Ltd., die uns einige TShirts zusandten.
Ihr - unsere liebe Community - könnt nun eines dieser offiziellen BRINK TShirts abstauben! Dazu müsst ihr lediglich folgendes tun: Registriert euch in unserem Forum. Dies berechtigt euch zur Teilnahme. Jeder Post gibt euch zusätzliche Gewinnchancen.

If you’re a regular to our forums, you might have noticed they went down this afternoon. Don’t worry, we’re still were (and hopefully your post counts are, too ) — our IT department is just working on putting some square pegs through round holes.

Once the forums are back up, we’ll let you know.

The latest Hall of Fame mods (from February) have been announced at Planet Elder Scrolls. Here’s a look at the six newest inductees — including two Oblivion mods from Centurion.

Morrowind Mods

• Animal Realism by Sal Maker: Released way back in May of 2002, Animal Realism is a simple modification that allows for more believable animal behaviour (i.e. less suicidal rats, fish, cliff racers, etc.)
• Silverware Enhancer by GhostNull: Like my apartment after registering at Williams Sonoma, this plugin replaces the standard in-game silverware items with reflective and higher-poly versions.
• SWG’s Skies v3 by starwarsguy9875: This mod s the day and night skies, the Dwemer observatory sky, the moons, and adds something Oblivion players have had for a while; beaming sunglare. Go ahead and stare directly into the sun in the image above…I won’t tell.

Oblivion Mods

• Castle Highrock by Centurion: This plugin adds a buyable Castle and a small village a few steps west of Bruma. This is where Queen Amidala stays when she visits Cyrodiil.
• Castle Dunkerlore by Centurion: This plugin adds a Castle on its own island located in the “Topal Bay”, meant as a player’s home and can be obtained by doing a short quest. Sounds like a good place for Dumbledore to frequent, but after a blow out with He-Man, he’s been banished from the premises.
• Exnem female Body Replacer (Reloaded) by Exnem (Creator) / MasterNetra (Uploader): I think this one’s pretty self-explanatory.

Congrats to all for their contributions to the Elder Scrolls modding community.

It was a tough week here on TESting Your Knowledge. First, the Elder Scrolls trivia we posed to you last Friday:

When the sun rises near one of the constellations, it is that constellation’s season. Each constellation has a season of approximately one month. There are twelve months, and thirteen constellations. Which month does the serpent belong too?

As many of you wisely detected, this was one of those nasty trick questions. In fact, the serpent belongs to no month; according to The Imperial Library, “The Serpent has no season, for it moves about in the heavens, usually threatening one of the other Constellations.”

Our big winner this week was Katy Grove of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A signed copy of Greg Keyes’ “The Infernal City” to her, and a thanks to those that entered. Check back on Friday for the next chance to play.

  Ed Sterns Entwicklertagebuch 3
  Die Konstruktion der Arche
  Der Konflikt

 
Publisher Bethesda Softworks veröffentlichte das dritte Entwicklertagebuch zum kommenden Action-Titel Brink. Dieses Mal erzählt Ed Stern, Lead Writer beim britischen Entwickler Splash Damage Ltd., über die Hintergrundgeschichte von Brink und deren Entwicklung. Viel Spass beim Lesen!

WIN a #BRINK T-Shirt - http://bit.ly/bqImcq (via @inBrink)

Italian gaming-site GamesNation have published their Brink Preview. It's rather short but among other things they talk about what makes Brink stand out.

Thanks to the AWESOME folks over at Splash Damage, we've got some BRINK T-shirts to giveaway.

 

How to Enter Registering on the inBrink forums will give you one entry to win. Every post you makes gives you an one additional entry.

 

When will the draw be made? We will select five lucky winners on April 30

 

So head over to the forums and get posting! The more posts you make the more chance of winning! For full terms and conditions please click here.

The Bethesda Blog has been updated with the Brink Developer Diary #3. This entry features Lead Writer Ed Stern who discusses how Brink's environment communicates the game's narrative.

 

At Splash Damage, we believe that a game’s environment is the best narrative medium we have. Compelling environments allow players to pull in information from their surroundings without having to be held hostage by an NPC lecturing them on The Way Things Were..... Continue reading over at the Bethesda Blog.

The UK-version of PC Gamer is giving away a awesome 3 meter wide Brink Poster (see video above) in a competition launched late last week. The competition is open for UK-residents only. Do you live in a cathedral or other long-walled building? Are you in the UK? Do you agree to these exciting competition rules? Then [...]

Recently, single-player games like games like Mass Effect 2 and Heavy Rain have consumed our teams for hours on end — so the release of Battlefield: Big Company 2 was the perfect return back into multiplayer for many. It’s far from the only game in town — other popular multiplayer games includeBioshock 2, Borderlands, the Starcraft 2 beta, and Plants vs. Zombies on iPhone.

Take a look at the games we’re playing, and share with us the games you’re playing — whether you’re playing them on your own or with friends.

Pete Hines: Bioshock 2, Bad Company 2, and Plants vs. Zombies iPhone.

Peter Sokal: Lots of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Matt Weil: Bad Company 2, more Bad Company 2.

Jon DeVriendt: StarCraft II and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Ryan Lea: Demon’s Souls.

Adam Adamowicz: Robot Unicorn Attack.

Matt Ponton: Heavy Rain.

Michael Musick: Finishing up a God of War II refresher, indulging destructive tendencies via the Just Cause 2 demo and runnin’ over zombies in Zombie Driver.

Jon Paul Duvall: BFBC2.

Devin Winters: Playing Borderlands.

John Pisano: Bad Company 2, Fallout 2, Ballad of Gay Tony, and Assassin’s Creed 2.

Matt Grandstaff: Assassin’s Creed 2.

Greg Hounsom: Chrono Trigger DS and PS3 FIFA 10 – Live Season.

Dave Ratti: Starcraft 2 Beta.

Dan Ross: Mechwarrior 4, White Knight Chronicles, and Darksiders.

Megan Sawyer: Plants versus Zombies!

Dane Olds: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Plants vs. Zombies on iPhone, Mass Effect 2, and the awesome Infectionator: World Dominator.

Andrew Chang: Endless Ocean 2 and Lego Indiana Jones 2.

Aaron Mitschelen: Borderlands. MUCH BORDERLANDS. Must get level capped, must kill Crawmerax the Invincible. MUST.

Mark Lampert: Grand Theft Auto IV and Agricola.

Rob Bartholomew: The Blur Beta and Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

Mike Dulany: Finishing BioShock 2 and starting Heavy Rain.

Michael Lattanzia, QA: Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PC), Entropia Universe, Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce, Borderlands, Red Faction: Guerrilla, and maybe Toy Soldiers if I decide to download it.

Ryan Salvatore: Lord of the Rings Online, Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Peggle Nights.

Justin Schram: Dante’s Inferno this weekend and traveling next week so playing Scribblenauts and Final Fantasy IV DS. Oh, plus Final Fantasy XIII when it comes out.

William Shen: Heavy Rain and Mass Effect 2

Nate Purkeypile: Heavy Rain, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat and Plants vs. Zombies.

Sean Palomino: Mass Effect 2 and Ninja Gaiden II.

Orin Tresnjak: Maybe trying out Heavy Rain if I can find some time in between looking at new apartments.

Ryan Jenkins: Darksiders. Gamefly also just sent me Matt Hazard, even though it was at least 8th on my queue…

Nick Breckon: StarCraft II beta, Silent Hunter 5, Plants vs. Zombies iPhone.

Matthew Dickenson: BF: Bad Company 2!

A number of sites received massive, mural-length Brink posters in the mail this week. Yes, they are super cool. No, they are not for sale — but there is a chance to win one.

PC Gamer UK is offering their poster to one lucky participant in its latest contest. Head over to the site for information on how to enter. They also shot a quick video (shown above) to show off the scale of the thing. Impressive, no?

And if you don’t win, you can at least admire the artwork — and the challenge of hanging it — by way of pictures from the following outlets: OXM UK, GamingOnly, GamingXP and Gamers.de.

If you spy any more mural sightings, be sure to let us know in the comments.

On Tuesday, March 9th, you’ll be able to pick up the April issue of Official Xbox Magazine (US), featuring an 8-page cover story on the game. In addition to the article, written by Ryan McCaffrey, the included Xbox Game Disc includes exclusive Fallout: New Vegas Gamer Pics.

An all-new Brink developer diary has been released, with Lead Writer Ed 'BongoBoy' Stern exploring Brink's setting and backstory, and how they came about. The diary covers everything from the very initial inception of the Ark (where Brink is set) to how the game's final environments convey backstory information to the player. It's a very fascinating read and garnished with plenty of new concept art - head over to the Bethesda Blog to get reading.

If you missed them earlier, don't forget to check out the inaugural Brink developer diary by Game Director Paul Wedgwood and the second instalment covering art direction penned by Art Director Olivier Leonardi.

Id, Bethesda announce dates for annual Texas confab featuring tourneys, game presentations.

Id Software may no longer be the stalwart independent development house that it once was, what with its acquisition by Bethesda Softworks parent company Zenimax Media in 2009. However, that doesn't mean it will be making any substantive changes to its annual QuakeCon confab, announcing today that the free, open-to-the-public event will return to the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas, from August 12-15.

As in years past, QuakeCon 2010 will feature the BYOC LAN party, which allows thousands of gamers to bring their own gaming rigs and synch up at the event. The expo also features pro tournaments and booths from a number of hardware and software manufacturers.

Today's announcement was short on hard information of what gamers can expect from the show, with id promising to dole out more details over the coming weeks. However, the studio will almost assuredly be showing off its postapocalyptic combat racer Rage, which is in development for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Mac but has yet to be dated.

Id may also show off Doom 4, which it officially announced at QuakeCon 2008. As part of chief technical officer John Carmack's QuakeCon 2009 keynote address, the soon-to-be Lifetime Achievement Award winner said that details for the next installment in the seminal sci-fi shooter series will arrive this year.

Bethesda Softworks may also use the opportunity to display some of its upcoming wares, such as Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas and Splash Damage's Brink.

Read and Post Comments | Get the full article at GameSpot

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If you fancy covering your walls with a huge Brink poster, our friends over at PC Gamer UK have you covered. Earlier in the week, the chaps got their hands on a Brink print measuring some 3 metres in length and featuring a group of Security characters facing off with a mob of Resistance fighters, which they're now giving away. All you have to do is be located in the UK and post your top five games of all time here on the PC Gamer UK website - the most exciting submission gets the print. Short video of the print being unrolled after the break. Continue reading »

Ieri è stato rilasciato un nuovo articolo che parla di Brink e della sua creazione .

Vengono elecanti sopratutto i vari passaggi che hanno deciso la storia e l universo di questo nuovo titolo della Splash Damage.

Traduzione  Automatica

Articolo In Inglese :

In the first two Developer Diaries for Brink, Game Director Paul Wedgwood introduced you to Brink and the team behind it, while Art Director Olivier Leonardi talked in depth about the direction of the game’s art style.

In this third diary, Lead Writer Ed Stern explains how Brink’s environment communicates the game’s narrative.

Here’s Ed!

The Writing on the Wall

At Splash Damage, we believe that a game’s environment is the best narrative medium we have. Compelling environments allow players to pull in information from their surroundings without having to be held hostage by an NPC lecturing them on The Way Things Were. We knew we wanted to use our game environments to tell the story, so they’d need to be packed with detail.

We created a design goal internally called IDC:  Instant/Deep Context. Basically it’s the old axiom “Show, don’t Tell”. If we get IDC right, then when the player looks at a game asset they immediately and intuitively grasp where they are (that’s the “Instant” part). And the more they look at the assets, the more the cumulative narrative detail builds up, and the more they see how the game world works and how it came to be that way (that’ll be the “Deep”).

So, how did we go about creating the story and setting for Brink?

The Problem

When we began, all we had was a blank piece of paper (oh alright, it was a beer coaster, what of it?). We already knew our next game’s setting had to accomplish several different things: the game had to be set somewhere players hadn’t been before, and show them something they hadn’t already seen. We wanted the setting to inspire our character artists, environment artists and level designers, and suggest cool map and objective ideas. We also needed a story that would explain why the factions are fighting, why they couldn’t just leave and also give us a rich variety of environmental contrasts.

We were making an action shooter, so we didn’t want to set it too far in the past (melee and magic) or too far in the future (lasers, which can feel like distance magic).

Where could we set this game and tick all our desired narrative and design boxes?

A Salt Solution

After having spent a lot of time reading Geoff Manaugh’s brilliant architecture/futurism/infrastructure website bldblog and researching the sci-fi towers of the Burj Al Arab hotel, the Masdar Initiative, the buildings of Santiago Calatrava,  Paolo Soleri’s visionary (and unfinished) Arcosanti, Patrick Salsbury’s Oceana and the Shimizu Pyramid, it became clear that some sort of seagoing  eco-city would give us everything we wanted. It was familiar enough to draw on zeitgeist-ish current concerns, but distant enough in time and space that players wouldn’t have seen it before. We’d be building a location that was a constructed, confected place with plenty of geometry suitable for gameplay. Like any city, it would be a place where many stories could occur, but it would also have its own creation story.

It was only after we’d mocked up fake press releases and investor prospectuses for our fictional Ark project that I remembered that back when I first joined Splash Damage in 2002, Paul had mentioned that one day he’d love to do a game set on an Arkology. I was elbow deep in World War II research and reference photos for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory at the time and couldn’t quite see his point. Suffice it to say, I do now.

Constructing the Ark

So we started our IDC process, developing the story and sketching concepts for a floating eco-city named, naturally enough, Ark. In the Brink universe, a group of eco-visionaries and hard-headed venture capitalists start building a testbed, a floating habitat to showcase and further advance sustainable development; a zero-carbon, fossil fuel-free blueprint for future cities.

Ringed by a protective wave-absorbing breakwater, the Ark is a combined luxury eco-resort and floating R&D lab, producing new materials and technologies such as Arkoral, a revolutionary carbon-trapping construction material derived from genetically modified coral. With a population of around 5,000 visionaries, technologists, scientists, engineers and VIP guests, the Ark is towed to a secret location (you can’t get billionaires to pay for an exclusive luxury resort that anyone can turn up to). But in the 2020s, as the seas rose and nations fell into chaos, ships overloaded with desperate refugees set out to find the Ark. Most ships ran out of water and the passengers perished, but some did find it. Suddenly the Ark and its inhabitants, who had lost all contact with the outside world, had to find room for an additional 40,000-odd souls. The Ark’s founders would end up ironically referring to the new arrivals as Guests — much like the former VIPs, only vastly more numerous and not quite as fragrant.

I’ll use the Container City level to illustrate how our IDC approach works. We began with a written backstory brief of what started out as a fully automated shipping terminal and secure archive facility for the Ark’s private and corporate tenants. But in the Brink universe, when the seas rose and the refugees started arriving in droves, the Ark rapidly ran out of accommodation space. As it had the most horizontal space available, the terminal was used first as an emergency holding area, then a temporary camp, and finally, as all contact with the outside world was lost, a shanty town. By the time Brink starts, Container City is a rusting Guest slum, a dangerously overcrowded and corroded  tangle of converted container homes perilously close to toppling into the sea. It’s the heart of the Guest political movement, and has the highest concentration of Resistance sympathizers. Security forces don’t even want to fly over it, let alone patrol on foot.

With our written brief, and rafts of reference images and concept sketches, Splash Damage’s environment artists and level designers began the tricky process of turning Tetris-stacks of plain blocky shipping containers into a cluttered living labyrinth of homes and shops. Because Brink’s backstory is so firmly rooted in real-world developments, there was very little we needed to invent outright. We could extrapolate from what was already out there: super-buoyant spar platforms, OTEC plants, wind turbines, solar panels, wave generators, vertical farms, bioreactors, breakwaters and a lot more.

Creating Conflict

Of course, one of the main stories the environment had to tell was who our factions are and what they are fighting about. We could have made it Hero Cops vs. Evil Terrorists, or Hero Freedom Fighters vs. Evil Stormtroopers, but it seemed much more interesting to let players make their own mind up about what’s taking place on the Ark. In the real world very few people agree entirely on what’s going on, who’s to blame and what should be done about it. Man is not a rational creature, but rationalizing. We come up with reasons why we’re right. So we decided to make the game world as various as the real world and let our factions be right (at least in their own opinion) and let the player decide what side they take

What’s the motivation of our factions? On the Ark, the refugee Guests live in cramped and crowded slums. They’ve been taken in by the Ark’s Founders, but their initial relief and gratitude has turned to resentment and anger at their unequal status. They’re doing most of the work to keep the Ark afloat, but are on restricted water rations while the Founders — who don’t contribute that much to the running of things — live in relative plenty. Increasingly the Guests are coming to doubt the Founders’ claims that all contact with the outside world has been lost, and are agitating to use the Ark’s remaining resources to find help. Some of them organize into the armed Resistance. At the other extreme, the original corporate police force has had to expand to become Security, the ones who maintain order and manage the Ark’s resources so that all can survive. Security fight to save the Ark. The Resistance fight to escape it. And looking around the place, it’s not hard to see why both sides believe they’re right.

I hope this has given you a taste of what we’re trying to achieve with Brink and leaves you hungry for more. Stay tuned for more Brink developer diaries in the months to come.

This week’s Elder Scrolls trivia question is one of stellar proportions. Do you have what it takes to decipher the constellation-based nomenclature of the Tamriel calendar? Then venture forth into our quizzical dungeon:

When the sun rises near one of the constellations, it is that constellation’s season. Each constellation has a season of approximately one month. There are twelve months, and thirteen constellations. Which month does the serpent belong too?

Think you know the answer? You could win a copy of “The Infernal City” by Greg Keyes. Click through to find out how to enter.

TESting Your Knowledge – Contest Rules

1. Send your answer to bethblog@bethsoft.com. Be sure to include your full name, email address, and mailing address.
2. Only one entry per person. The first submitted answer will be your official entry, additional entries will be removed and not considered for the random drawing.
3. All entries must be received by 11:59 pm EST on Monday, March 8, 2010. Any entries submitted after the Cutoff Date will not be considered.
4. The winner will be chosen in a random drawing of correct answers received by the Cutoff Date.
5. All participants must be 18 or older to enter and verification may be required before winner is announced.
6. The winner will get a copy of The Infernal City signed by Greg Keyes.

While it’s only March, it’s already time to get ready for QuakeCon 2010. In a media alert this morning, we’ve announced that this year’s fragfest will take place August 12-15 at the Hilton Anatole Hotel in Dallas, Texas.

If you’ve never been to QuakeCon, I can tell you it’s a great time (last year was my first trip). The event allows you to play in world-class tournaments, meet and interact with game developers, be the first to learn new information about upcoming computer and videogames, and have the opportunity to frag with friends on QuakeCon’s massive Bring Your Own Computer network. And don’t forget, attending QuakeCon is free!

As we have more news on QuakeCon 2010, we’ll keep you in the know here at Bethesda Blog, as well as on QuakeCon’s official site, Twitter feed, and Facebook page.