Destructible terrain/buildings

[Thatrius]

Any plans for destruction physics of terrain/buildings? I think it would be a serious improvement if everything was made up of individual bricks - not to mention it would be super satisfying watching stuff collapse.
Couple that with the ability to make the buildings as well, and you've got a groundbreaking new game (no pun intended).

[zastaa ❀]

not everyone has good computers...

[Thatrius]

Originally posted by mano_vitinho:

not everyone has good computers...

If a clump of 1000+ bricks is treated as one individual object, no more cpu would be needed than if it was just 1 brick. Splitting that clump apart is when it starts to weigh down on the RAM.

Besides, Brick Rigs is made in Unreal Engine... A software which literally advertises dynamically destructible cities in their show-reel compilations.

[EngineerTF2]

my pc is already slow enough

[Tuthenutter]

most computers should be able to handle this

[kagenlimkz |trade.tf]

Originally posted by Theoden:

Any plans for destruction physics of terrain/buildings? I think it would be a serious improvement if everything was made up of individual bricks - not to mention it would be super satisfying watching stuff collapse.
Couple that with the ability to make the buildings as well, and you've got a groundbreaking new game (no pun intended).

This. It would make pvp combat more fun.

[nothing_cool]

When you say "destructable" do you mean knocking them over or having the building made of pieces that can be broken apart?

[zastaa ❀]

aslong its battlefield destruiction its ok

[kagenlimkz |trade.tf]

Originally posted by nothing_cool:

When you say "destructable" do you mean knocking them over or having the building made of pieces that can be broken apart?

I suppose Its more of the buildings being made up of individual bricks that can be knocked off, but that would be way too laggy. I guess we'll have to do with more advance damage models

[Tuthenutter]

would look good as an improvement to my 9/11 screenshots

[Thatrius]

Originally posted by nothing_cool:

When you say "destructable" do you mean knocking them over or having the building made of pieces that can be broken apart?

I mean the buildings being made up of individual pieces. And contrary to what seems to be popular belief, this does NOT have to be laggy or cpu-intensive.

I'm relatively new to Unreal Engine, but this is how I understand the program being run:
Before a vehicle is broken apart, the computer sees it as one object. That means rather than simulating physics for every brick in the vehicle, it casts a single collision mesh over the entire construction.
As far as the computer sees it, 1000+ connected bricks may as well be 1 brick. This is what makes Brick Rigs possible in the first place.

If you had 1000+ bricks that were disconnected - or simulating each their own instances of physics, then sure, the program would lag and probably crash. So you'd need a way to get rid of those individual pieces before they start weighing down the system.

One solution is to just delete all the individual pieces, after a certain amount of time of being disconnected.
Alternatively, you could take all the pieces that have stopped moving, and snap them back to a grid, reconnecting them to the ground plane in a shared physics mesh. That way, you'd be able to keep the pieces while optimizing cpu.

But before the building is broken, you don't have anything to worry about cpu-wise - no matter how big or how many pieces.

And as I said before, this concept is literally one of UE's features. Take this demo video, for example:
https://youtu.be/efA0HsK92Tc

You can find similar videos all over YouTube; all demonstrating the same concept, and all made in Unreal. In Brick Rigs, implementing this would be even easier; as you wouldn't have to figure out where to fracture the vehicle/building/chunk of whatever - the model would already be separated into bricks.

Thanks for reading!

[EngineerTF2]

my cpu would be dead if they added that type of destruction

[Thatrius]

Originally posted by Back2FutureFan6:

my cpu would be dead if they added that type of destruction

That's exactly what I've just explained won't happen. Your cpu would be no more 'dead' than it is in the game's current state.

[Cause56]

I think that even if this was possible with reduced lag it would probs take a long time to make.