Destructable Surfaces?

[Hombardo]

Hey guys. I'm kind of new to hammer (followed IchI's tutorials, and thanks they were great). What exactly do you have to do to make a destructable wall or surface? I've seen on plenty of maps walls and grates that you can shoot out to unlock new tunnels, etc. Can someone show me how to do this?

By the way, I'm trying to make a map thats modeled after the lobby scene from The Matrix. So I'd like to have columns that are constructed of a whole bunch of small 'boxes' that can be destroyed. Thanks a lot...

EDIT: I've *solved* about half the problem haha. I was reading through the faqs at the top of this forum section, and I found a question that said that these had something to do with brush entities. I'm still looking into it, but any help would be great. Thanks again...

 

[Limpet]

1) Select your brush and then hit ctrl+t or tie to entity
2) Open up the properties for it
3) Select func_Breakable
4) Choose the values for each thing you want

That should do it but I think all those small breakable objects would wreck havok on most computer set ups.

 

[Hombardo]

Yeah thanks dude. I gave up on trying this after about 10 minutes of trying to get in there and set up all the func_breakable's. That was one of my major concerns about making that kind of a map. What I was originally working on was a single column that i could eventually group together and copy to make a room. Thanks anyway for the help, man.

 

[suicyde]

Beware of making copies. Remember if you name any part of the original, the name will be copied exactly aswell.

So if you have things tie'd to its name, you might see some funny occurances unless you fix it.

What I am doing, after I have made an 'object' (group or other items that are tied together, what ever you call it), I follow the tip from IchI, and name all the items with a common root (in your case 'columnXXYY_....', ie 'cloumn0101BottomBricks','column0101middleBricks','column0101TopBricks'.).

Then after I have grouped all them items that I want I would then make a prefab out of the group - this gets saved in the <path to SDK>\sourcesdk\bin\Prefabs (if you look you will see a subdir called "Prefabs HL2". Have a look here for some interesting stuff).

You then go into there (via windows explorer) and make a number of copies of the file that you saved. Then using your favourite editor, open the copy(ies) and do a search replace for the common string and increament it. (ie search for 'column0101' replace with 'column0201') Save the file off.
Repeat for each copy with a new increament.

Then go back to hammer, and import these new prefabs. Bingo. They are then unique.!(will they will still be imported into the same location, but you can then more them).

Any questions let me know.

Suicyde
<watch for my coming Xcom level - Its going to be unique I have some tricks that havent been discussed yet>

 

[Hombardo]

Good point. I'll try to use that from now on. I doubt I would have needed it with this, though, because this was simply a group of small func_breakable boxes that fit together to form the column. They weren't tied to anything (right? haha), but I should make a prefab out of it anyway so I can use it in other maps. Thanks.