Destructible environment

[Marlon®]

Hello, is there any point in the roadmap about destructible environments?

[goalhound]

Last I heard it is an fundamental limitation of the game engine and won't be added. (Unreal engine)

[KDM 16AAB]

The moment a fence, road barrier, or even just a small tree, is able to be flattened by an armoured vehicle/tank and not stop it dead in it's tracks, then I'll start believing that destructible scenery could be a thing and possible.

[Aegmar]

As cool as it would be, it would probably require fundamentally changing the engine and remaking all maps.

Not sure if it would be unfeasible with the current engine, but it would certainly be a tall order.

(Server-)Performance impact would probably be high as well..., every time someone changes the state of an object (Tree, fence whatever) it would have to be updated and sent to every client, the server would need to constantly check the status of potentially thousands of objects.

Maybe when (and if) they ever switch to Unreal 5..., not sure if that is even planned tho.

[Melinda Safitri]

yeah men.. this game need destruction feature..

[Reuben]

The Bundeswehr Mod[bwmod.com]for Squad has destructible environments, OWI is too focused on other projects it seems.

https://youtu.be/D0GnvmhnvmI

[Aegmar]

Originally posted by ReubenUKGB:

The Bundeswehr Mod[bwmod.com]for Squad has destructible environments, OWI is too focused on other projects it seems.

https://youtu.be/D0GnvmhnvmI

This is impressive, but is it just the one bridge, all the bridges, or are many buildings destructible ? Whats the peformance impact ? Would that crash the server if done on a full live server ?

[Aegmar]

Originally posted by podgoreloe ochko kobry:

The best descructuble enviroment ever was in Battlefield Bad Company 2. During the long matches the whole map usually transformed to desert. Trees cut. Buildings collapsed... It was great time.

Yeah, but maps have been much smaller, playercounts on servers smaller as well, engine made for it from the ground up..., its not always comparable.

I would love to see destructible environment in Squad, just not sure if it would be easily doable with the current framework.

[Aegmar]

Originally posted by podgoreloe ochko kobry:

Originally posted by Aegmar:

Yeah, but maps have been much smaller, playercounts on servers smaller as well, engine made for it from the ground up..., its not always comparable.

I would love to see destructible environment in Squad, just not sure if it would be easily doable with the current framework.

You forgot to say it was 15 years ago and performace gain by PCs

Clientside performance isn't the issue here i think, at least not solely. Im no expert on this, but when you do something like this with that many clients connected to a server its an extreme load on the server because status changes have to be checked and transmitted back and forth constantly between server and all clients.

Maybe an expert in network loads and multiplayer client/server frameworks could explain it better, but in a nutshell the more complex the sim is and the more clients are connected the load on the server goes up exponentially, not linear. The more status information on players, vehicles and objects there is to be checked constantly the higher the load goes.

Whats worse in the Unreal engine 4 network process has to run on a single thread on server and clients, the more load you cram into it the worse performance gets, which is already not stellar.

Maybe someone with more expertise can elaborate on this.

[WhitePowerRanger]

Originally posted by Marlon®:

Hello, is there any point in the roadmap about destructible environments?

bro twigs stop tanks in their tracks, this game is outdated and horrible when it comes to destruction.

[Reuben]

Originally posted by Aegmar:

Originally posted by ReubenUKGB:

The Bundeswehr Mod[bwmod.com]for Squad has destructible environments, OWI is too focused on other projects it seems.

https://youtu.be/D0GnvmhnvmI

This is impressive, but is it just the one bridge, all the bridges, or are many buildings destructible ? Whats the peformance impact ? Would that crash the server if done on a full live server ?

Unreal Engine 4 is fully capable of such a feat and fully adaptable via building a custom version from source.

The limiting factor for Squad seems to be terrible netcode, this is evidenced by updates that barely got certain things like helicopters into the game and ongoing desyncs and janky object interactions / gameplay to this day.

Let's also not forget what destruction actual is in video games: a model is set as damageable by something, when that something damages it enough an animation is played, the original pristine version of the model is deleted and replaced by a damaged version of the model.

In short, a netcode overhaul is overdue. Maybe then we can get 200 player servers like BF2042 (which runs the terrible Frostbite engine) does, not to mention destruction, parachuting and multiple air vehicle types.

[SnW]

Battlefield 4 was launched in 2013 using frostbite 3 engine and the "levolution" was posibble in all maps and was able to do it back then, UE4 came out a year later, i'm pretty sure it is doable at least some map walls or hasco walls or sandbags.

I don't really want to get into the OWI hate wagon but it is pretty clear the devs have other plans for this game, like selling skins nobody cares to buy instead of focusing on thing like optimization first.

[JellySoda]

Destruction in BF games is a selling point and needed additional man power in production process.

I suppose this is not cheap element for a game. As example in BF:BC2 they use baked animation for collapsing structure. Without that position of every chunk of building geometry must be synchronized with every player in the server.

The Squad is different. We don't need is so badly because the game take a aim on different aspects of being a soldier. Wall penetration is enough.

[Aegmar]

Originally posted by JellySoda:

Destruction in BF games is a selling point and needed additional man power in production process.

I suppose this is not cheap element for a game. As example in BF:BC2 they use baked animation for collapsing structure. Without that position of every chunk of building geometry must be synchronized with every player in the server.

The Squad is different. We don't need is so badly because the game take a aim on different aspects of being a soldier. Wall penetration is enough.

You are probably right, still destructible environment would be awesome, but only if they can implement it without a major performance drain....