Destruction

[doom3d]

Hello, i've been watching the battlefield bad company videos lately and i am surprised at the sheer scale in the the destruction of the builds. I have ideas and theories on how this is done, but i would like to know if anyone has done this before on a project or has any ideas on how this can be done?

[Talon]

I was watching some vids of this the other night... I can't say I'm overly impressed by it. It's cool and all but I don't think it's nearly as fluid and free-forming as they'd like you to believe. All of the damage looks pre-built and conveniently centred/cornered in the walls with similar-sized holes. I'm sure they'll have a few more variations to it by the time it comes out, though.

But there's no flying debris that hurts you or tumbles about (I guess because it's an online game and that would kill the server and bandwidth, but it's still noticeably missing) so the wall just vapourises on impact. In some of the videos people just open up an HE 'nade at a wall at nearly point-blank and nothing happens to them. No matter what you do, the building's structural integrity remains solid.

[Pankake]

Something like the destruction in Red Faction, but a bit more advanced would be great. That was completely dynamic, you could carve tunnels and stairs up walls with any form of explosive weapon, haven't seen anything like it in any other game yet, that that's an old game, 2001!

[Ghostscape]

The destruction in bad company is interesting, but it's nothing more than a LOT of damage model swaps. The impressive part isn't in the technology or the execution, but rather the sheer number of damage models they've built. It looks nice, but nothing they've really demonstrated that I've seen is really gameplay changing, it's really just a lot of nice looking eyecandy.

I really dug their version of the "meet the demoman" type video, though.

It looks like it'll be fun.

[doom3d]

I think we are a few years away from super interactive buildings and what not. I feel for the artist on the Bad Company team, if they seriously made all those destruction models and collision meshes. Also i was looking at some screen shots and i think alot of it is projected textures and decals. A buddy of mine and myself are looking into developing a small system like this. So i've been trying to do alot of research, there just isn't anything out there really.

[doom3d]

So i did a small wall with some destruction states, it's not in engine yet. However i did a mock up of what it should look like with the projected textures, mind you this does not have any of the physics objects that would be involved with it.