So, the wood really DOES splinter?

[Top Secret]

I know when Half-Life 2 was first announced, it was said that wood splintered and broke.... like wood. :cheese: But then as the months went on, people pretty much decided that wood didn't really break like wood does in real life because supposidly technology today coudn't handle it. And a lot of people, including me, came to the conclusion that wood could only break at specified points. But I hear these people with the beta talking about how they did 'this' and 'this' and some even mention splintering wood. I don't want to, and am not going to download the beta, so would someone set me (And the other goodie-goodies that didn't download the beta) straight on this. Does wood really splinter.... like wood?

 

[nw909]

No, we decided it doesn't break where you hit it, its pre-set.

yeah it splinters.

 

[Top Secret]

So Valve lied then? Not trying to flame Valve, I think they are a great company, but I remember quite vividly them talking about "If it looks like wood, it breaks like wood, it even splinters like wood." I guess that doesn't mean... 'dynamic wood' but it certainly is misleading.

 

[Tek]

i heard in the beta you have to shoot the wood a lot for to break, but it eventually does, this is not the case in the e3 movies though, so thats another reason i think its older than e3.

 

[Skammich]

wood will splinter if it's designed to... i remember reading somewhere that the wood has the potential to splinter as much as you want it to...

 

[mad max]

Then it is true what Valve promised - unless somebody interprets what Valve said differently.

 

[Unnamed_Player]

In some of the actual game levels certain pieces of wood will splinter and eventually break apart under gunfire but it doesn't happen where you shoot the wood and it doesn't usually deform the wood until it shatters (at which point there is usually nothing left).

You can't shoot out certain pieces of glass and bullets do not pass through walls no matter how flimsy (unless the designer of the level designed it that way).

 

[Dr-X]

ok, there are some bugs with the e3 demo, basically you cant break wood with gunfire, but you can with explosives.

it splinters EXTEMELY realistically when you blow it up. believe me, it really does, it's quite amazing to see it.

 

[CheapAssStrat]

[Edited]
Wait, isn't discussing details of the beta not allowed here?

Edit: Yep, it isn't.

From Do NOT Discuss The Illegal HL2 Release thread
Do not:

Request the illegal release or post download links.
Post or request links to sites hosting any content from the release.
Post screenshots of the release.
Post spoilers or information contained in the release.

 

[AmishSlayer]

I think just talking about it in great detail angers the mods...but then again...this is detail.

Maybe it's just screens...

 

[DaveKap]

"You can't shoot out certain pieces of glass"

Yes you can. Just trust me on this one.

"basically you cant break wood with gunfire"

Once again, yes you can, whatever wood you are shooting probably has a higher HP than that of the wood in the e3 demo (which obviously had a low hp, as one bullet would break it).

Wood does splinter and break realisticly, it does break at a specified point, but it's so beautiful it just doesn't matter.

How do I know all this? You have to just trust me because if you can't trust me, you can't trust anybody. And if you can't trust anybody, then why bother asking the question.

 

[AmishSlayer]

Originally posted by DaveKap
"You can't shoot out certain pieces of glass"

Yes you can. Just trust me on this one.

"basically you cant break wood with gunfire"

Once again, yes you can, whatever wood you are shooting probably has a higher HP than that of the wood in the e3 demo (which obviously had a low hp, as one bullet would break it).

Wood does splinter and break realisticly, it does break at a specified point, but it's so beautiful it just doesn't matter.

How do I know all this? You have to just trust me because if you can't trust me, you can't trust anybody. And if you can't trust anybody, then why bother asking the question.

Yeah. The glass breaking is really cool. Each piece is affected physics-wise too. If I put a bullet into a shop, then throw a grenade inside, glass pieces fly out from the shop. It's really cool.

 

[Cheetarah654]

i dont trust that guy...he keeps hitting that poor printer

 

[DaveKap]

Originally posted by Cheetarah654
i dont trust that guy...he keeps hitting that poor printer

HE HAD IT COMMING TO HIM, I SWEAR! *smack smack smack*

 

[AmishSlayer]

Originally posted by DaveKap
HE HAD IT COMMING TO HIM, I SWEAR! *smack smack smack*

Lol. Office Space is awesome. I love it when Michael Bolton is rapping to Scarface in the beginning.

"I got my pistol point cocked, ready to lay shots non-stop until I see your monkey-ass drop!"

"I got this killa up inside 'a me....I can't talk to my mother so I talk to my diary!"

 

[Unnamed_Player]

Originally posted by DaveKap
"You can't shoot out certain pieces of glass"

Yes you can. Just trust me on this one.

"basically you cant break wood with gunfire"

Once again, yes you can, whatever wood you are shooting probably has a higher HP than that of the wood in the e3 demo (which obviously had a low hp, as one bullet would break it).

Wood does splinter and break realisticly, it does break at a specified point, but it's so beautiful it just doesn't matter.

Once again, if the level designer decides that you can break/move/manipulate something then you can, otherwise it doesn't matter what you do to the object, it's not going to break or move.

You can break windows, but only the windows that the level designer decided you should be able to break. Shooting a non-breakable window just throws up a bullet hole decal. Throwing heavy objects at non-breakable windows simply causes the object to bounce off of the window.

You cannot splinter or break anything that the level designer did not specifically setup for it.

The wood that does shatter doesn't do so at the point where it was shot. I have tested this several times. The objects that were designed to "breakaway" (i.e. you have to break through them to continue on) always do so in exactly the same way.

 

[Mr. Redundant]

Originally posted by Unnamed_Player
Once again, if the level designer decides that you can break/move/manipulate something then you can, otherwise it doesn't matter what you do to the object, it's not going to break or move.

You can break windows, but only the windows that the level designer decided you should be able to break. Shooting a non-breakable window just throws up a bullet hole decal. Throwing heavy objects at non-breakable windows simply causes the object to bounce off of the window.

You cannot splinter or break anything that the level designer did not specifically setup for it.

The wood that does shatter doesn't do so at the point where it was shot. I have tested this several times. The objects that were designed to "breakaway" (i.e. you have to break through them to continue on) always do so in exactly the same way.

correct
and if you notice, not everything has physics applied to them, on some levels objects that you know you can manipulate (eg barrels) are static... and you cant do anything to them.
now I come to the conclusion that either the beta was not complete (ahahah perish the thought eh?)
or models go through some process that makes them editable.

as for glass wood etc, same applies.. I just dont think they got around to it yet.
because valve did make it seem as though everything made from the material would act like it should.
(like breaking/burning down doors, was a specific example... however I wasnt able to burn/break down one door in the entire beta)
I see the beta as more of a "storyboard" for things they were going to implement.. than anything else. realize its old
older than the hills.

 

[antistructure]

Originally posted by DaveKap
HE HAD IT COMMING TO HIM, I SWEAR! *smack smack smack*

perhaps one of the best movies ever, in fact at work im now like milton, they keep moving me further and further back... yay, but theyr not taking my stapler.

 

[Bobo Vieri]

On the e3 vid, when the strider is shooting the building in City17, notice that only certain windows show sign of realistic damage when the strider hits them. The level designer obviously didn't intend every single window in City 17 to show realistic damage, and the non-breakable windows would either not inluded any damage, or just throw up a defult decal for bullet and object damage. If every object was able to be destroyed, u'd have the whole map end up as rubble, people could take short cuts through levels by simply blasting through wall ( ala Mark 'Jacko' Jackson's energiser ad, where we just storms through the walls of the hedge maze (Australian's may know of this)).

But then again, i haven't played the beta, only going by the E3 videos.

 

[Dr-X]

If every object was able to be destroyed, u'd have the whole map end up as rubble, people could take short cuts through levels by simply blasting through wall

you say it as if it's negative. The day this happens in games is the day we gamers are finally free of restrictions.

 

[Styloid]

Oh good, I was under the impression that you had no choice whether something was breakable or not and that whatever material you choose was set in stone...

"you say it as if it's negative. The day this happens in games is the day we gamers are finally free of restrictions."
If you look forward to it then enjoy it but I can't say that I will. I like continuity, story, depth- UP WITH STRUCTURALIST GAMING!!

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Bobo Vieri
On the e3 vid, when the strider is shooting the building in City17, notice that only certain windows show sign of realistic damage when the strider hits them. The level designer obviously didn't intend every single window in City 17 to show realistic damage, and the non-breakable windows would either not inluded any damage, or just throw up a defult decal for bullet and object damage. If every object was able to be destroyed, u'd have the whole map end up as rubble, people could take short cuts through levels by simply blasting through wall ( ala Mark 'Jacko' Jackson's energiser ad, where we just storms through the walls of the hedge maze (Australian's may know of this)).

But then again, i haven't played the beta, only going by the E3 videos.

Anything that isn't a world brush (made in hammer and part of the .bsp structure) can be broken up, have physics applied, animated and so on. so thats all models and props, and since props can make up all the detail in a map, and brushes make up the basics (floor, walls, water) you can pretty much blow up what the heck you like,( if it was made that way of course). And if you wanted to blow up actual walls I imagine you'd do it the traditional way with a func_breakable.

I think building a HL2 map will be very similar to building sets in CG films, I'll use Monsters Inc. as an example. The CG guys will create a basic scene from designs, just basic walls, floor, ceiling, very simple stuff. Then its lit and textured but looks at this point like a newly decorated room (only the paint work wouldn't often be perfectly painted and wallpapered, unless thats what was wanted) After that the scenes had the props fitted and placed around the virtual set, doors, windows, chairs, desks, light fittings, pipes, radiators, beds, whatever really. Lighting and placement is checked, fixed, checked fixed and so on. Finally the other things go in, characters, events etc.

So in that respect if you wanted, in theory you could have absolutely everything breakable in your map, even down to walls, though IIRC func_breakables don't play well with shadows and such and can screw optimisations in the map, so their probably best avoided for each and every wall I think. It's not to say its impossible though, could always use a prop that appears like a wall, it'll cast a shadow and if you can get that realtime shadow to match the baked map shadows then you've got a wall you can break up that can also have physics applied to it. I imagine trying to match things up would be the hard part though, and of course too many and it might slow things down, unless props are capable of cutting whats behind them. Normal methods with .bsp is if you cant see it its not calculated, models don't hide things behind them, I've no idea if the Source engine is still like that or if it works. If it does work right, then in theory you could build an entire map that everything could be destroyed in.. It could make for some very interesting multiplayer games wouldn't it. Until about five minutes into the game where most of the map has been raised and you can see anyone and everything from any position on the map heh.

As for wood splintering accurately, yep appears it does. Either a lot of work has gone into modeling the wood for most eventualities or something in the engine can splinter wood on the fly, splitting it up accurately and using premade splinters n stuff. Glass I'd imagine is something in the engine, I can't see it being good for the game with a pane of glass shattering, hundreds of different bits all with physics being being calculated at once, seems like over kill with panes of glass so its likely more an effect made to look good and not super realistic.

It will be interesting to see what people come up with while experimenting with this stuff. From what I know about the capabilities of XSI that they will have made use of, its highly likely most doors will be destructable, in a more interesting way than the usual hit it a few times and it crumbles away to nothing. I'm guessing they'll be more like that door early on in HL1, where the slave begins to kick it through. Only in HL2 it wouldn't have to be scripted or set pieces, so long as the prop itself was capable of it and had the keyframes required it would be simple to drop it in wherever you wanted.

Oh and something else that just occured to me, their making great use of these DX shaders. Who's to say someone wont create a shader that can do some fancy effects the game hasn't got yet. It's very modular, for example shaders take care of the eyes, shaders do those funky liquid effects, and at the same time other shaders can even handle cables and wires that are simple to setup (according to Valve its just a few points, like points in a spline and the shader fills in between creating the cable or the wire or whatever it is.

Very modular and many possibilities for what these realtime shaders are actually capable of. For anyone who doesn't know, Shaders aren't only for effecting the surface of an object, the name fits for most things, basically their more commonly known as plugins, just shaders sound cooler cause of Pixar Anyone who's used a high end 3D program will know the things that are possible with shaders in those programs, so will be drooling at the thought of what will be possible with realtime versions. If one kind can do realistic eyes and another very realistic cables that are effected by wind and gravity, imagine what else can be done, and imagine what else HL2 uses them for that we don't even know about. Checking the stolen code wont help neither as AFAIK there are no shaders included with it, not beyond the very basic ones anyway

 

[Chris D]

Surely if what you're saying is true then it does actually mean that if you smash some wood with a crowbar it does actually fragment like wood?

Who cares if it's not dynamic? We've discussed it before, it just really wouldn't be possible without some serious processing power. Once again, you untrusting people, Valve have not lied. You've just prevceived something differently from what they actually meant.

 

[Styloid]

I think the key is effect: does it seem like real wood? I don't care if the movie Aliens didn't film on a real, working spaceship, I care if it 'feels' like one.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Styloid
Oh good, I was under the impression that you had no choice whether something was breakable or not and that whatever material you choose was set in stone...

"you say it as if it's negative. The day this happens in games is the day we gamers are finally free of restrictions."
If you look forward to it then enjoy it but I can't say that I will. I like continuity, story, depth- UP WITH STRUCTURALIST GAMING!!

yeah story and structure is very important.. But you gotta admit, if you've played Red Faction.. that a worrying amount of fun can be had by basically digging through the ground with rockets and grenades. That engine is far from perfect I admit, but it is fun for a while. Though annoying when they tout it as completely deformable environments, and then prevent most area's from even being effected that way - obviously for a reason, otherwise people could just blast through to the end of the level and miss set pieces and interesting stuff, even then that would be more realistic, if you had to get somewhere, and the easiest way was through the wall, and you had the means, you'd take that route, not wander across a map just to get to the area next to where you started. Course I don't see truly deformable maps until they work out something with fluid that works without slowing the engine down too much, eg: what would happen if you destroyed a chunk of rock with a river of lava next to it. Current engines would just have the lava sit there, or would use scripted events (thus removing the random factor of doing what you like) to have the lava pour out. But imagine it if it was truly interactive. Enemies on their way toward you, a river of lava to the left, blow out a chunk of rock so the lava comes spilling over, either killing the bad guys in its path or just blocking their way toward you. Throw in smart AI where they then go and find something to put across the new stream of lava to get to you and you've got one hell of a fun immersive game engine. Hire a decent writer, the best artists and designers and programmers in the business and you've the greatest game of all time.. which probably wont run on anything less than a 10Ghz PC with 20Gig of memory and a $8,500 nVidia card running DX3000

 

[The Dark Elf]

Originally posted by Chris_D
Surely if what you're saying is true then it does actually mean that if you smash some wood with a crowbar it does actually fragment like wood?

Who cares if it's not dynamic? We've discussed it before, it just really wouldn't be possible without some serious processing power. Once again, you untrusting people, Valve have not lied. You've just prevceived something differently from what they actually meant.

Originally posted by Styloid
I think the key is effect: does it seem like real wood? I don't care if the movie Aliens didn't film on a real, working spaceship, I care if it 'feels' like one.

I doubt very much that the fragments from a pane of glass will be respecting the laws of physics, its just too OTT and only the anal will even notice that their just simulated, faked etc.. But the wood does or atleast looks like it obey's correctly and reacts and interacts with other objects in the world. If its faked or not with the wood fragments I've absolutely no idea, it just looks very very realistic and thats more than enough for me

I think some people don't believe Valve's claims cause Valve are claiming their doing stuff that wasn't until now possible in a realtime engine, pre-calculated yeah, been possible for years, CG guys have been using rigid and soft body dynamics for ages now, throwing our 3D creations around realistically, but its all had to be calculated first if we wanted anything realistic in that area.

Valve claims more advanced AI, their not lying, those so called scripted events in the E3 presentation were of course going to be scripted to some point, it makes no sense that they'd keep recording someone playing it time and time again until they got the shot they wanted, script it to happen how you want it instead, its the best way. Doesn't mean the AI sucks, most of the clips in the E3 stuff was real AI.

The physics are what they claim them to be. In all honesty Valve haven't lied, they probably expected people to not believe them though. I mean, they go along after 5 years of silence, and show some amazing footage of this game. showing stuff that hasn't been seen in a realtime engine before. They must have known there would be people out there who'd refuse to believe its possible. Just like some people refuse to believe we've been to the moon, or refuse to believe that aliens could exist in the universe, or refuse to believe that I once played a game of pool potting every ball on the table while drunk without the other guy getting a chance to take a shot and becoming known as a pool shark just cause of that one game (but it was funny at the time ). People in general don't want to believe the new. But give it a year or so and if a game comes out without features like HL2 it'll get a roasting for being too basic. Few years we're gonna laugh at ourselves cause features like this will be standard and we'll wonder what all the fuss was about

 

[Sporky]

Originally posted by Dr-X
you say it as if it's negative. The day this happens in games is the day we gamers are finally free of restrictions.

To be fair it's also the day the creators of games have to build every room of ever level of a building that you might otherwise walk straight past. Complete freedom of movement in anything even faintly resembling a real environment means an astronomical content creation overhead.

Bleh, we'd end up with something even more devoid of content than SW:Galaxies.

 

[mallet]

Originally posted by AmishSlayer
Lol. Office Space is awesome. I love it when Michael Bolton is rapping to Scarface in the beginning.

"I got my pistol point cocked, ready to lay shots non-stop until I see your monkey-ass drop!"

"I got this killa up inside 'a me....I can't talk to my mother so I talk to my diary!"

And then he turns it down and locks the door as the black bloke walks by Excellent film.


As for wood - having it splinter is great.
Not having it splinter at the point you shoot it would be pretty poor.

 

[Dr-X]

Obviously if you want to ahve totally destructible environments, you'd need to rethink the way we look at gaming. Not many people are capable of this (least of all me), much like valve redesigned the way we looked at 'levels' in a game.

Think outside your squares

 

[Mr. Redundant]

actually the wood "feels" more like cork...
you have to play to understand what I mean.
its still satisfying however.. it just feels "light".
however none of us truely know, till the game is released.
on the physics side of things, you can snap thin wood that cant support your weight... thats detail. but it doesnt snap immediately if you do it right.. if its thin and you walk across it it bends... then snaps.

 

[azz0r]

You on about the level with shit loads of headcrabs?

 

[figge]

It's not a technical issue, it's a designers issue

(I hope)

 

[Davis]

you guys are arguing about emergent gaming vs scripted gaming. it's become a fairly common debate on gaming forums recently. the best examples I can think of would be gta 3 (emergent) vs moh:aa (scripted). there is definatley a grey area, probably were hl2 would sit.

 

[ferd]

Originally posted by Tek
i heard in the beta you have to shoot the wood a lot for to break, but it eventually does, this is not the case in the e3 movies though, so thats another reason i think its older than e3.

wood isnt like carton, it quite hard
so its kinda normal you have to shoot it a couple of times, depends on the thickness ofcourse

 

[ferd]

Originally posted by Mr. Redundant
actually the wood "feels" more like cork...
you have to play to understand what I mean.
its still satisfying however.. it just feels "light".
however none of us truely know, till the game is released.
on the physics side of things, you can snap thin wood that cant support your weight... thats detail. but it doesnt snap immediately if you do it right.. if its thin and you walk across it it bends... then snaps.

i call that ownage

 

[GhostValkyrie]

Once again poeple are basing the final release's content off of a lame-ass, ILLEGAL <-You shouldn't even have it), beta. Please, why are wasting time with the whole "Valve lied" stance? Let's see...nearly all of the maps, many textures, and chunks of AI are missing,...but I bet we can make an educated guess off of the content here. WRONG! I really don't like it when people flame, but you people don't seem to have any reasoning. Where did you get the idea you could determine a game's content, when you aren't even involved. And even if some of the things don't turn it out the way they said, big deal. I remember Gearbox saying you could commandeer the spider-walkers, (Large yellow machine at beginning of Hl1) but did we get to? No. Besides, in the Strider video, Gordon launched a dresser at the first one, and the dresser shatter realistically. I didn't say splintered, shattered. They've managed to create a parent relationship between objects to create a larger one. I think having a dresser stay together, seamlessly, and fall apart on hard enough impact, is worth it...rather than it being a sold chunk of wood.

-Ghost.

 

[BoA_Wrath]

Splintering Wood

I believe the wood breaks a specific preset points so you cant for example splinter a long plank of wood into multiple bits, unless it has been preset to have multiple fracture points. Other planks cannot be splintered but are still able to be manipulated with physgun and pistols etc making them fall over but cannot sustain the players weight and you walk through them like invisible walls. Unlike the fractureable wood which can sustain the players weight while on water.

I believe that the wood responds to weight and pressure and will snap if say you jump up and down on the middle of a long plank.

Can't wait for the game will be too much fun playing with the physics engine that we probably wont get the game complete for months

 

[Aknot]

Hey Ghost,

Looking from the outside in this was a very nice and tame discussion going on. I dont believe it was getting out of hand. Course that is my opinion, as yours is yours.

Back on Topic. THEY LIED... .sorry....

Back Back on topic:
I agree with the cork statement. If you look at it in its current unfinished state that MAY not be a true reflection of the finished product (happy?), it almost appears to act the same way the "old wood" did in HL1. Just with a few more "particles" added. Of course I am basing this on the movies.

Speaking of movies has anyone ever seen a trailer and thought god that movie is going to suck/be good and then was totally wrong? We are just speculating here. Wait to make people eat crow later when the game comes out.

 

[Lobster]

I think people who spend there time playing games just to see how realisticly the wood splinters are very sad and will never truely enjoy a game, Half-Life 2's brilliant and it has nothing to do with fancy use of the word dynamic.

 

[BoA_Wrath]

To Lobster

I see where your coming from Lobster but the new physics engine incorporated with all these neat new effects and ragdoll models for the charaters is only going to help enhance this game to greater heights it's the attention to detail I think people were commenting on in this thread. The smallest things are the things that catch your eye like the wood fracturing but thats only the start. HL2 has reached new territory and looks from the vids more like an interative movie. I'm sure you'll agree this is going to be the greatest game of all time when its released.