Splash Damage's Paul Wedgwood

Certainly dozens; it's a large number. We're pre-alpha so we put things in that we cut. We had a grenade that did a group-revive and it felt over-powered when we playtested so we cut it and may put it back in with some tweaking. We tend to playtest everything without special effects, without all of the art committed, and when we've got something we really enjoy like the heavy explosive charge or interrogation PDA or hacking into doorways or capturing command posts, then we start to focus on the art and special effects for them.

Certainly for the PC. Our preferred mode of operation is to use dedicated servers, particularly now with more recent versions of Windows they have a somewhat more automated approach to their firewalling, and when a game is full-screen you can't tell that your firewall is or isn't enabled and it's easy for users to get confused by that. Really, peer-to-peer is only something you can do at LAN parties. You really need to have a dedicated server for people who are going to play from a PC and play online.

For consoles, at the moment, we play peer-to-peer and it works.

We spent around four years co-developing id Tech 4 with id Software, and when id branched off to make id Tech 5 we branched off and started working on Brink. So it's founded on id Tech 4 just like id Tech 5, but does a few things subtly different.

Well we have done for all of our games so far; we've always released an advanced SDK. It's a more difficult question to answer now because ZeniMax, who owns Bethesda Softworks, has bought id Software, so it's not just a question of me calling my mate and asking: "Is it alright if I release the source code?"

Oh we would absolutely love to - time allowing and everything else - continue supporting the mod community in the way we always have done. Funnily enough, even now, people are still creating levels and mod-making for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Our support forum for Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is as busy as all our other forums still, today. People can go there and download the SDK and start coding a different game-type. Equally, artists can make low-polygon art and get used to working with skeletons, animating things and the basics without feeling there art doesn't compete with the high-end CG community. And level designers can jump in and start making their house or school as well.

It is a difficult question to answer because we are so early in development. But our track record is of continuing to support titles. We did a further five updates just for Quake Wars and then quite often we then hand over to the community to continue doing updates and patches and things - we give them the code so they can do that stuff. And we've done that with all of out past titles.

I would say that the biggest challenge is that transition from being a pure PC studio to a multiplatform one. To me as a game director there are some things that are just alien, like PlayStation 3 technology and job systems, that I find it really difficult to get my head around. Luckily it's not my job to understand job systems: we just hire really talented people to solve it instead. We have Dean Calver who was lead programmer on Heavenly Sword as lead programmer on Brink. The art director that we hired, Olivier Leonardi, was the art director behind Prince of Persia [Two Thrones] and Rainbow Six Vegas. We got Tim Appleby back in 2007. He'd just finished Mass Effect; he was the guy who created Shepard and the aliens and stuff. He's our lead character artist.

We've done that pretty much across the company. Even our level designer Neil Alphonso was the lead level designer on Killzone 2. We've really tried to bring in people who all have shipped multiple multiplatform Triple-A games, just because I'm such a noob at that stuff. Hire people who are better than me, which isn't hard.