Fully destructible buildings

[RogueShadow]

I am fairly certain they also said they wouldn't allow important area's to be destroyed. So yeah, that pretty much rules out total destruction

 

[ShinRa]

But a MOD of half-life 2 will.

 

[Pi Mu Rho]

A very bad mod that kills your framerate.

 

[vicefredav444]

If computers could take it, this could really be used for a dbz mod. kamehamemamaha, yeh I don’t know how it goes but you can imagine the mayhem. The Grand Canyon being torn apart, flying boulders taking down trees next to you, the earth deforming before your very eyes.

 

[RogueShadow]

*sigh* Don't be me started on DBZ games.

I enjoy DBZ and all... but you know how impossible it would be to simulate the experience of a real battle in DBZ?
ok.. ignore that.. don't wanna get into it....
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[Neutrino]

farcry has deforming!! You shoot at the ground and you have a crater, bigger explosion bigger crater. The deforming aspect is definitely there in hl2. I remember valve saying stuff like barrels won’t deform. You will have to have different versions of the barrel if you want it to look dented.

They also said entire buildings can catch on fire and you would have to evacuate the building. Now since they're saying levels are fully destructible and we see striders taking down huge amounts of concrete and pillars and what not, maybe they are.

I want a mod with a huge nuclear bomb going off in a city and you get to see the fallout, or an earthquake, or both. I guess I would need a super computer for that.

Just wondering...but did you not read a single thing that people have said regarding a BSP compiling system?

 

[urseus]

But a MOD of half-life 2 will.

A multiplayer game with destructable terrain is a very bad idea.

Imagine playing Wake on battlefield 1942.

After 10 minutes with 20 guys in there, dropping bombs on houses, running over trees with tanks, blowing holes in the ground, guess what youll be left with.

Tiny pieces of flat sand. Destructable terrain is cool in single player, but in multiplayer when you are going over the same areas constantly over a period of time your going to be left with 30 guys spawning on 2 ends of a flat island running at each in a streight line. This is not fun at all. You cant have fully destructable terrain in a multiplayer game.

 

[Cyanide]

If all buildings are fully destructable, then it removes all limitations to the player in the game. Fully implementing something like this is a very bad design decision, because there's nothing that governs how far a player can go before reaching some sort of barrier to stop them. in order for it to work, maps would have to go on and on and on and on ad infinitum, which we all know is impossible.

I'm pretty sure Tribes2 used fractal terrain generation to continuously create terrain no matter how far a player went. Even if Tribes2 didnt do that, it's certainly possible for a game to do it. HL2 doesn't do it, but it's definately possible. There is pretty much nothing that's impossible given sufficient processing power.

Anyway, fully destrucatable buildings and terrain is not a bad design decision. All you have to do is limit the fire power available to the player. If you don't want the player blowing up every wall in sight, don't give him a TOW missle launcher and 50 extra rounds to play with. You could sit all day and shoot your pistol at a concrete wall and hardly make any headway. No single decision is a bad design decision. It takes at least 2 decisions to make a bad design.

About destructable terrain in multiplayer. It certainly is feasable. You just have to adjust the levels of destruction that can be done. For example, not every single bullet is going to deform the terrain. Maybe a tank shell creates a crater that's a few inches deep. Maybe you simply enforce a maximum deformation level.

There's way too much uninformed "that can't be done" and "you can't do that" talk going on here.

 

[Mechagodzilla]

Frankly, fully destructible terrain is nigh-useless. In red faction, the most you could do with it was trap NPCs in holes. I like the way HL2 has it now. Chunks fall off, parts you'd expect to be structurally weak can break off, but you can't restructure the entire level at your whim.

 

[Parasite]

I think level design is too important to a game like HL2 (or pretty much any game for that matter) Fully destructible terrain essentially negates any effort made by a designer to guide gameplay, restrict access or most other design considerations made to build story. I think "selective" destruction can add to gameplay on many levels, but Allowing a player to simply destroy any obstacle in his/her path is counter productive to a game like this. That said, I have no doubt that some creative team could make a fun multiplayer game with fully destructable environments (wether computers could handle it is another question) Maybe someone could even find a way to drive a story, and allow for effective level design...but I cant think of anything short of cheezy gimmickery.

 

[Alec_85]

Hehe if I can't drill a hole to the planet core, the game'll suck </sarcasm>

Edit: The funny game called Natural Fawn Killers had "fully" destrucable environments. That was good fun

 

[RogueShadow]

*shouts* "Bad evil man! I'll show you and your secret lair who's boss!" *whips out the nuclear missile* "Take that evil doer!"
*waves goodbye to entire level*

 

[Totalkrusher]

There's a game that claims to do it and not just in the redfaction sense but actually does it. e.g you shoot a tower at the base with an RPG, bit's fly off the base, the tower becomes unstable and collapses. Doom 3 uses a similiar kind of tech on glass (or so they say) if you shoot it, it shatters in a convincing manner. Obvoulsly ID have made no attempt to adapt the system for other materials.

It's a shame I can't remember the games name (or the engines for that matter) but it's 1 or 2 years away. Graphically it will look outdated compared to UE3 but such a physics system will put everything else to shame.

Are you talking about Söldner? Söldner has fully destructible buildings, terrain, etcetera. If you fire a bunch of RPG's at a tower (or a few tank shells), you can bring the tower down (or knock huge portions off of it at least)... But the overall graphics on this game are not particularly amazing.

http://soldner.jowood.com/

There is a beta demo out if you wish to try it for yourself. (It is fun having all the trees around you fall down when under attack from heavy fire power...)

EDIT: Some shots:
http://soldner.jowood.com/screenshot.php?ss=3 (Terrain)
http://soldner.jowood.com/screenshot.php?ss=ADS1 (Buildings before...)
http://soldner.jowood.com/screenshot.php?ss=ADS5 (...and after)

Now granted, this does not use nearly as sophisticated physics as the havok-engine fully entails...

 

[RogueShadow]

- Occluder entities for visibility blocking
Would this feature of the Source engine have any bearing to this discussion? I thought it might, not sure.

 

[Cyanide]

Are you talking about Söldner? Söldner has fully destructible buildings, terrain, etcetera. If you fire a bunch of RPG's at a tower (or a few tank shells), you can bring the tower down (or knock huge portions off of it at least)... But the overall graphics on this game are not particularly amazing.

http://soldner.jowood.com/

There is a beta demo out if you wish to try it for yourself. (It is fun having all the trees around you fall down when under attack from heavy fire power...)

EDIT: Some shots:
http://soldner.jowood.com/screenshot.php?ss=3 (Terrain)
http://soldner.jowood.com/screenshot.php?ss=ADS1 (Buildings before...)
http://soldner.jowood.com/screenshot.php?ss=ADS5 (...and after)

Now granted, this does not use nearly as sophisticated physics as the havok-engine fully entails...

Soldner's destructable objects are not dynamicly destructable, as he described. Soldner simply removes pieces of the building model depending on where it was hit. There's nothing dynamic about it.

 

[mrchimp]

This is the game I was talking about

http://www.brat-designs.com/solar.html

Here's a Q&A they did

Does Brat have a publisher for SOLAR? No, we are currently looking to be signed.

Why are the screen shots not textured? The screen shots are from our running MP demo (available to publishers only). Textures have not yet been applied as we are focusing our efforts on research and development of game play, landscape, interactive features and lighting techniques.

Can you really use WMDs? Yes, we currently have some nice ICBMs that launch. They will play a large part in MP missions. (See new screen shots. Also check out the fully functional tunneling device! It creates tunnels in the landscape).

Solar or SOLAR? SOLAR is the current working title for the game.

Will Brat be keeping a production diary of SOLAR? Yes we will, it will be on the forum.

They used to have a video that looked pretty nice but I can't find it now.

 

[lans]

This is the game I was talking about

http://www.brat-designs.com/solar.html

Here's a Q&A they did



They used to have a video that looked pretty nice but I can't find it now.

The enemies and environments look like those of half-life 2.

 

[Kerberos]

My PC is already quaking in fear.

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

I think the hotspot idea is feasible. Because in the 2004 e3 video, Striders hit the same building with their high powered cannon more than once, and only the pillars break up after the first hit, nothing happens to the building when it gets hit a second time. I believe the idea that the buildings can catch on fire, but not that you can destroy entire buildings if you had enough firepower, that's a little rediculous.

By the way Kerberos, love the Jin-Roh avatar.