RE: [Algorithms] Breaking geometry

[Tom F. <tom...@ee...>]

The major difference between the X-Com games and Silent Storm is that =
X-Com
had no connectivity between the chunks. In the first games, if you blew =
out
all the supports for a building, it just sat there hovering in space. In
Apocalypse, the instant you destroyed a section, every section above it
would crumble to nothing. Neither is really satisfactory. But I =
preferred
the first version since in most games you couldn't destroy enough =
scenery to
get the "hovering building syndrome" - it just looked cool. In =
Apocalpse, it
was pretty annoying to have stuff crumbling to bits all over the place =
from
a small hole.

But Silent Storm actually has a connectivity network and a (simple)
stress/strain model, so small holes have no impact (apart from =
visibility,
and easier shooting), but large holes cause collapses. Pretty cute.

I think you could do this with a portal system pretty easily - each wall =
is
a portal, and can be marked as open or closed (just like portals that
represent doors - they can dynamically change status). When the game =
starts,
these portals are marked as "closed" . As soon as a bit of the wall is
removed, you mark the portal as open.

That and a cellular automata system for modelling explosive damage and =
fire,
water, etc, and you'd have a crazy physics-based barrel of FPS fun. Or =
maybe
just Red Faction :-)


TomF.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: gda...@li...=20
> [mailto:gda...@li...] On=20
> Behalf Of Megan Fox
> Sent: 06 November 2004 09:29
> To: gda...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Algorithms] Breaking geometry
>=20
>=20
> Silent Storm at least appears to use a fairly simple system of wall
> chunks, with each chunk having a certain number of damage regions.=20
> The holes in the chunk are only used for shooting and visibility
> calculations, leaving the physics side of things with just a box and a
> health value.  Once that health value reaches a certain point, the
> chunk "pops", and a traversal of connectivity begins to see if that
> piece was a significant contributor to the stability of anything else
> (and they spread this traversal over multiple frames, making for some
> very cool staged collapses, and it helps performence as well).
>=20
> Essentially, it looked quite similar to how X-Com did it, Silent
> Storm's addition being in how the damage for a wall chunk was
> calculated (vs X-Com's "either it's there or it isn't" system), and
> taking the locational damage of the chunk into account for vis and
> shot calcs.
>=20
>=20
> Definately a cool system, but I'm not sure it's practical for FPS's
> and the like (where you have to contend with indoor visibility
> schemes, likely BSP rather than chunk-based geometry, etc).  Though I
> guess a portal-based game with chunk-based geometry could be tweaked
> to use it, assuming you got clever with how you defined your portals?
> (you'd need some way of telling each wall what portal it became if it
> was destroyed, I suppose, amongst other things).
>=20
> -Megan Fox
>=20
> > The game Silent Storm did an impressive job of all this.=20
> Definately worth a
> > look - I believe it comes with an editor and suchlike so=20
> you can play with
> > it to your heart's content.
> >=20
> > TomF.
>=20
>=20
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