Dynamic Destruction in AA?

[UNN 0]

Quote[/b] ]And like I said before, I doubt BIS would lie and call them dynamic if they were a scripted event.

I never said, BIS lied If the buildings in the VBS video are created by Col Klink, then it's the same technology as OFP. If BIA have come to some arrangment with BIS, and updated there srouce code. Then perhaps we will see it in Armed Assault. But for anyone who has been following the history of "Dynamic" buildings, they will know it all started in good old OFP

@meyamoti

I would love to see some screen shots of the fuel station, in Elite. That does sound new. But all of what you describe above, has always been possible in OFP.

[robert(uk) 0]

Btw still a bit off topic I know,but do you know anythign that might fix the graphic errors? I remember ingame sometimes parts would be missing,like the M1A1 fron lights and the M2A2 tread rollers,blackhawk wheels and parts of the rotor assembly.

Sorry m8, can't help you with this one. Soldner does still have a lot of bugs. The only thing I can really suggest is posting on their forums, and of course ensuring that your drivers are up-to-date...

[walker 0]

Hi all

Destructable buildings is a quite complex problem in simulation and game physics.

The first thing you have to consider is atom size for the objects. The second is the concept of "Good enough"

Idealy a simulation should go down to, perhaps true atom and even beyond to the subatomic but obviously this takes more processor time. If you do a subatomic particles you wont have much change out of the cost of computers at CERN for the cost of your computer and you might me able to model something the size of a grain of sand.

So in comes the concept of "Good enough" that concept is a bell curve composed of the different customers for the producers product.

In the case of the BIS's family of products things like view distance weigh more heavily than being able to create real dust from destroying a building.

For me ideal atom size would be cinder blocks for buildings with weak points with smaller atom sizes. I would also like texture replacements for bricks round holes to make things look raged and less blocky.

All this takes processor time though.

It also takes development time. Complex destructable buildings take far longer to build than simple walls fall down, roof goes flat, fires start (as is described in the Elite gas station)

Secondly it is possible to cut processor load by LODing on degree of deatruction. So you can replace models rather than go for individuals small atoms in large scale destruction. Some pooh pooh this as just smoke and mirrors but for me it is good enough.

In the end limited processor, the requiremnent for big view distances, realistic lighting, trees that grow, etc. etc. and most importantly if we want the sytem available quicker the shortage of development time all constrain what can be done on destructable buildings.

So the more buildings that are destuctable the longer it will take to develop. I personaly think it is good enough to have some of the buildings destructable to begin with. With BIS laying out the underlying stucture for destructable buildings. While the rest can be replaced over time either by BIS as updates or by the community as a public good. Perhaps BIS might suggest a proper way for such work to be monitored and carried out with them having last sign off. Just a thought.

For a long time now what I have thought what we realy need is a BIS MOD developers certification. To ensure we all develop our content in a profesional manner. With interest from other quaters in BIS's family of products I think this is a concept whos time has come.

Kind Regards Walker

[stakex 0]

Quote[/b] ]And like I said before, I doubt BIS would lie and call them dynamic if they were a scripted event.

I never said, BIS lied If the buildings in the VBS video are created by Col Klink, then it's the same technology as OFP. If BIA have come to some arrangment with BIS, and updated there srouce code. Then perhaps we will see it in Armed Assault. But for anyone who has been following the history of "Dynamic" buildings, they will know it all started in good old OFP

@meyamoti

I would love to see some screen shots of the fuel station, in Elite. That does sound new. But all of what you describe above, has always been possible in OFP.

Im not totally clear on the whole BIS/BIA thing... but aren't they basiclly the same company, just two seperate development branches? And if they are the same company... Im sure they openly exchange technology and anvancements. (we do see to be seeing a lot of VBS1 in ArmA after all)

[eestikas88 0]

join the army to see dynamic destruction

jk.

I think that if transformation is hidden by smoke and you can't see

things falling,then it's still good enough for me.I just want to blow things up in AA and i don't care.

[kavoven 4]

It seemed to work easily enough in Soldner, but then, I think that they didn't have a whole lot of buildings on the terrain at once in that game.

Isn't Soldner a 2D game? If so there is a HUGE difference in 2D and 3D rendering, and it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Soldner was an online tactic shooter, which had many good ideas, but to bad developers. And no, it isn't 2D...

[robert(uk) 0]

It seemed to work easily enough in Soldner, but then, I think that they didn't have a whole lot of buildings on the terrain at once in that game.

Isn't Soldner a 2D game? If so there is a HUGE difference in 2D and 3D rendering, and it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Soldner was an online tactic shooter, which had many good ideas, but to bad developers. And no, it isn't 2D...

I think that's a little unfair. A bad publisher more like...

[Spoock 3]

It seemed to work easily enough in Soldner, but then, I think that they didn't have a whole lot of buildings on the terrain at once in that game.

Isn't Soldner a 2D game? If so there is a HUGE difference in 2D and 3D rendering, and it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Soldner was an online tactic shooter, which had many good ideas, but to bad developers. And no, it isn't 2D...

Soldner is stupid future game with ugly graphic

[kavoven 4]

It seemed to work easily enough in Soldner, but then, I think that they didn't have a whole lot of buildings on the terrain at once in that game.

Isn't Soldner a 2D game? If so there is a HUGE difference in 2D and 3D rendering, and it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Soldner was an online tactic shooter, which had many good ideas, but to bad developers. And no, it isn't 2D...

I think that's a little unfair. A bad publisher more like...

Ok, I aggree

[meyamoti 0]

It seemed to work easily enough in Soldner, but then, I think that they didn't have a whole lot of buildings on the terrain at once in that game.

Isn't Soldner a 2D game? If so there is a HUGE difference in 2D and 3D rendering, and it shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence.

Soldner was an online tactic shooter, which had many good ideas, but to bad developers. And no, it isn't 2D...

Soldner is stupid future game with ugly graphic

graphics don't make everything,I reviewed some of Soldner more thouroughly and although the idea is great,the problem with it is people in general,and by this I mean the players.

As for it being future,I seriously doubt the AH-64A would be used in the future unless its by some coalition,if memory serves me right every nation/country that uses the AH-64 are D's,Israel has some AH-64A's but their trying to get the D's,the US still has the largest standing,Britian and the Dutch only use the AH-64D's,I have however seen some Dutch ones without FCR,I think the UAE are the only ones that do not have AH-64D's.

But if it were future surely even the D's would be on market at there would be AH-64E-G's or so with even more capabilities. Or AH-64D Block IV

[shinRaiden 0]

(Z)oldner was/is a quite ingeniously designed game, it's a shame that the publishers slammed it out the door shipping all the defects and bloat it had.

In regards to 'dynamically' destructable components, up until now EVERY implementation has been some degree of smoke and mirrors. HalfLife2 for instance. The experiment to do can be easily done with the HL2 demo. At the beginning of the Ravenholm portion of the demo, gather up a number of boards of the same size, then break them in a well-lighted area. Suprise-suprise, they break exactly the same. Feel cheated yet? Now go find some cardboard boxes and toss them at a wall over and over until they flatten. Or any of the other fun things to do. Pay close attention, and you'll notice that the entities flagged as destructable are all 'pre-cracked'.

Experiment 2 is (Z)oldner. Equip yourself with a sapper kit, hop in a tank and find a suitable 2~3 story house. Notice that while the windows 'shatter' under MG fire, the walls hold up. Now if you put a shell through the wall, you get a nice symmetric repeating honeycomb across the 'destructable' building. So you need some more power. Go place the bomb inside the structure at a central load-bearing point, run away, and detonate. Smoke and scripts.

If you want randomly breakable components, how do you propose to dynamically subdivide and remap textures in a single frame? I don't mean skew, I mean subdivide. There's a big difference there.

(Z)oldner also had instanced villages and blended LOD transitions, very nice tree collision LOD'ing, and deformable terrain. It's a shame that the publishers railroaded it as they did and didn't get the bugs worked out and the engine optimized.

[meyamoti 0]

Indeed,it could have had a good future in store for it but eh *shrug * my big issue was the server loading time,it took forever,the graphics suited me as I'm not really a graphic whore.

[esti_the_big 0]

In regards to 'dynamically' destructable components, up until now EVERY implementation has been some degree of smoke and mirrors.

Well, almost every implentation. The only true dynamic destruction system up to date had to be red faction (http://www.redfaction.com/images/screenshots/013101/ps2/01_31_01_02.jpg). While parts of the environment did react realistically to damage in terms of parts being blown away, it still lacked a descent physics engine for debris. The system was improved in red faction 2, but the devs didn't truely use the system to its full potential since red faction was primarely a ps2 game, ps2 which had very limited ram (and ram was what the destruction system most of all needed). But nevertheless, there was no scripting included in the destruction there, no predefined breaking points. You just had tell the game what was to be destructed dnamically and what not. The rest was made by the engine, which substracted on the fly polygons from the level, the substracted parts were rendered according to the damage the player induced.

From what we've seen of game2, it seems to use a lego-system for buildings, which could mean that it doesn't truely modify meshes like red faction but just moves the single bricks away from each other...the bricks themselves stay as they are. But not sure there, since I thought some of the first pics released showed ruins which actually didn't seem to be based on a lego thing, since there were diagonally broken edges etc which wouldn't be possible with a rectangle brick system.

They also announced terrain deformation, which of course won't work with bricks. But afaik, dynamic destruction for terrain isn't as hard to program as true dynamic destruction for complex models like buildings (where the destruction of a part can produce chain reactions and new passages etc.) ... a lot of games featured dynamic terrain, like sacrifice from shiny entertainment 5 years ago, and many strategie games.

[Dwarden 1124]

pfft ... someone forgot to mention ooold Magic Carpet 1 and 2... that got also quite well done "close to dynamic" destruction of structures and terrain ...

but most of people don't even know such genial game exist ....

and it's over 10 years old ... it's 3D engine was breathtaking... details like water reflections ... physics (mana balls falls off edge to lower placed areas)... deformable terrain and structures ... huge outdoors and indoors (caves) .... etc.

IMHO it was one of best optimized and written 3D games with extremely innovative ideas and huge block of fun (both singleplayer and multiplayer

i suggest everyone to download and install DOSBOXemulator and then MagicCarpet 2 and try it ...

for more info read e.g. http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=4659

it will change Your opinion about 99% today "hyped" games ...

it were times when EA was releasing good games too ...

[stakex 0]

From what we've seen of game2, it seems to use a lego-system for buildings, which could mean that it doesn't truely modify meshes like red faction but just moves the single bricks away from each other...the bricks themselves stay  as they are. But not sure there, since I thought some of the first pics released showed ruins which actually didn't seem to be based on a lego thing, since there were diagonally broken edges etc which wouldn't be possible with a rectangle brick system.

Well they said that if your system is struggling (the example they gave in the article was if a large city was carpet bombed) the game would remove the actual "bricks" and building pieces and replace them with generic piles of rubble to remove strain. Idk if thats why thoes pictures show that or not... but it could have something to do with it.

Also it could be possible that the edges are made smoother and the bricks on the end are cut in half. That way the edges don't look sharp and rough. Or perhaps each lego brick, is constructed of a couple parts itself...

[robert(uk) 0]

I think it's also possible that even using lego, they could somehow create diagonal sections, so that it would look more realistic...

[Heatseeker 0]

The experiment to do can be easily done with the HL2 demo. At the beginning of the Ravenholm portion of the demo, gather up a number of boards of the same size, then break them in a well-lighted area. Suprise-suprise, they break exactly the same. Feel cheated yet? Now go find some cardboard boxes and toss them at a wall over and over until they flatten. Or any of the other fun things to do. Pay close attention, and you'll notice that the entities flagged as destructable are all 'pre-cracked'.

Thats how i expect that bridge in the new aRma screens to blow up, no matter where you hit it will look and blow up the same way and even if they randomised it the efect still wouldnt be trully dynamic. Honestly i dont care all that much about it anyway.

I hear everyone talking bout bricks and legos and dynamic destruction and i imagine how hard it would be to make a building blow up like that and colapse if the foundations took critical damage, im not expecting to see something like that anytime soon and the hit on PC resources and data transfer increase in online MP makes me think twice about how worth it would really be, atleast on a game has huge and decorated has Flashpoint's, even if the PPU thingy becomes standard PC HW i just dont see it happening in the near future.

If the damage model looks better than the old cardboard efect and hit detection is more realistic (shooting glass, round penetration thru soft materials like wood structures, etc) it would be good enough for me, anything above seems too HW demanding and complex for the time being. Even in current small games this isnt being used and we should consider how large OPF environments are and will be in the future compared to other games.

There is just so much to improve in the game that would improve gameplay so much, caves and trenches, complex building interiors with proper colision detection and where a.i. can interact too, water, rivers, lakes, waterfalls at diferent heights, vehical damage detection and yet everyone is so concerned about blowing up holes in buildings .

I think people get carried away with this stuff but when they have the games instaled on their machines they fall back to earth complaining about erratic a.i., FPS and lag and realise that the features they once prioritised above everything else turned out rather futile in terms of gameplay .

[David 0]

Actually, quite af ew games have dynamic destuction. Soldiers: Heroes of WWII and Black and White 2 both had dynamic buildings. I love crashing Tiger tanks through a house.

[Jawillut 0]

And then theres this rumour about the destructable gas stations in OFP elite... Could help some clearing that up as well?

Hi everyone! My first post on these forums , though i've been a "silent" member for quit a while.  Been a huge fan of Ofp and the mod community since it was realeased all those years ago  .

Anyway, i booted up Ofp:Elite on my xbox and went around blowing things up . And this is what i found.

Buildings in Ofp:Elite stands solid an does not crumple after hits from FFAR, Hellfires, satchel charges...they don even burn.

The gas station found on the "old" islands, the ones with a huge fuel tank next to it, falls a part when hit. But it always falls apart the same way. I guess that doesnt qualify as Dynamic.

The fuelstation on nogova the "civilian" ones, the fuel pumps start to burn when they are hit...they dont fall apart

Hope this is a answer to the destructable fuelstation rumor

[esti_the_big 0]

There is just so much to improve in the game that would improve gameplay so much, caves and trenches, complex building interiors with proper colision detection and where a.i. can interact too, water, rivers, lakes, waterfalls at diferent heights, vehical damage detection and yet everyone is so concerned about blowing up holes in buildings .

I think people get carried away with this stuff but when they have the games instaled on their machines they fall back to earth complaining about erratic a.i., FPS and lag and realise that the features they once prioritised above everything else turned out rather futile in terms of gameplay .

True to some point, though you forget that world interaction is the next big thing to come. Imagine the possibilities of good dynamic destruction system, a constantly changing battlefield where every AI and player action leaves its traces in the world, where bombings open completely new tactical options in urban areas.

The problem is, people seem to think dynamic destruction would be too hard to make. Well, if the ppu thing ever gets used in ofp, the lego system would suddenly be a very realistic thing, since the ppu IS specifically made for rendering huge amounts of physical objects interacting with each other. Something normal processors won't be able to do.

If another system than lego would be used, well, its not impossible as well. For me its not that important to actually see the building collapsing, seeing how stories break down etc, but more important to see the result. It's the result of a bombing with which the player will have to cope with. If he wants to see the collapsing building in all its macabre detail he'll have to be really close and he'll be probably dead then anyway.

So I wouldn't care if you only see a big dust cloud and a bit of explosion effect but not the actual destruction taking place (just like the vbs1 videos showed). When the dust cloud goes away, a realistic ruin should be there, rendered accoring to the physical interaction which has taken place. That'd be dynamic enough for me. And pre-generated rubble piles are perfect enough for me to add to realism.

And its exactly that system which has already been used in more games than people think. Not in Half Life 2, the engine only allows a lego system there which is too processor demanding for huge buildings to collapse (without ppu). But Red faction, soldner, black and white 2 (though without real physical effects taking place), magic carpet 2 etc. all already had that system (even ages ago). It demands clever programming, but when made right I'd say it would be perfectly possible even without ppu as the past has shown.

The system shown in the vbs1 videos would be perfect enough for me. I mean, better to have a bit of dynamic destruction than have completely nothing and just static buildings which stay whole even after a carpet bombing. I do hope some dev reads this

[robert(uk) 0]

The system in Soldner is as you said above. Even large buildings can be completely destroyed. All you see is dust, and then a building with a gaping hole in it. This was perfectly adequate, you didn't need to see falling rubble or the 'half-way' stage to believe it was realistic. There were also pieces of rubble you would see after, actually inside the building, which I take it would have been pre-coded in the damage model. Although Soldner used this system, there was still one hell of a lot of variety. The only issue came with trying to jump through windows in a damaged building, as this didn't work correctly. Something to do with the collision detection system, I believe...

[stakex 0]

The experiment to do can be easily done with the HL2 demo. At the beginning of the Ravenholm portion of the demo, gather up a number of boards of the same size, then break them in a well-lighted area. Suprise-suprise, they break exactly the same. Feel cheated yet? Now go find some cardboard boxes and toss them at a wall over and over until they flatten. Or any of the other fun things to do. Pay close attention, and you'll notice that the entities flagged as destructable are all 'pre-cracked'.

Thats how i expect that bridge in the new aRma screens to blow up, no matter where you hit it will look and blow up the same way and even if they randomised it the efect still wouldnt be trully dynamic. Honestly i dont care all that much about it anyway.

I hear everyone talking bout bricks and legos and dynamic destruction and i imagine how hard it would be to make a building blow up like that and colapse if the foundations took critical damage, im not expecting to see something like that anytime soon and the hit on PC resources and data transfer increase in online MP makes me think twice about how worth it would really be, atleast on a game has huge and decorated has Flashpoint's, even if the PPU thingy becomes standard PC HW i just dont see it happening in the near future.

If the damage model looks better than the old cardboard efect and hit detection is more realistic (shooting glass, round penetration thru soft materials like wood structures, etc) it would be good enough for me, anything above seems too HW demanding and complex for the time being. Even in current small games this isnt being used and we should consider how large OPF environments are and will be in the future compared to other games.

There is just so much to improve in the game that would improve gameplay so much, caves and trenches, complex building interiors with proper colision detection and where a.i. can interact too, water, rivers, lakes, waterfalls at diferent heights, vehical damage detection and yet everyone is so concerned about blowing up holes in buildings .

I think people get carried away with this stuff but when they have the games instaled on their machines they fall back to earth complaining about erratic a.i., FPS and lag and realise that the features they once prioritised above everything else turned out rather futile in terms of gameplay .

Well game2 already has the "brick" system thats fully dynamic implimented as has been said countless times already. All the reports from E3 say it was quite cool watching tanks fire shells into a town and watch the buildings collapse dynamicly. So its been done, its here... perhaps not released to the public yet, but there is no question if its possible right now. As for PC resoures, the devs have said if your system is struggling from the explosions, the bricks are removed and replaced with generic rubble to remove strain on your computer. Nice and simple.

As for things to improve gameplay... thats really a personal opinion. Personally rivers, lakes, and waterfalls dont add anything other then better looking terrain. As where destructable buildings make attacking a town a lot more intresting. Instead of going into a CQC battle to clear a building, put a few tank shells in it. I mean it really hurts the game when people hide in buildings to avoid missles and bombs that would surely destroy the building they are hideing in. In OFP... when my friend was coming to bomb the area I was in, I would just hide in a building and likely wouldnt die. In a game thats suppose to be realistic, thats deffinatly a major issue. Destruction is a major part of war... things like rivers and lakes don't do a whole lot in terms of realistic warfare.

We know ArmA has better collision detection... so no one complains about that. Better interiors? Well we'll just have to wait, but thats likely up to the modders out there after the game comes out. Vehicle damage detection could be a lot better, but at least you can kill the vehicle with the system as is. Bad AI will also hopefully be fixed in ArmA. As for lag and FPS... thats really going to be up to the server your playing on and your connection/PC. ArmA is going to be optimized and probly run very well on moddern PCs... so thoes issues are likely going to be the users problem.

[GBee 0]

As for things to improve gameplay... thats really a personal opinion. Personally rivers, lakes, and waterfalls dont add anything other then better looking terrain. As where destructable buildings make attacking a town a lot more intresting. Instead of going into a CQC battle to clear a building, put a few tank shells in it. I mean it really hurts the game when people hide in buildings to avoid missles and bombs that would surely destroy the building they are hideing in. In OFP... when my friend was coming to bomb the area I was in, I would just hide in a building and likely wouldnt die. In a game thats suppose to be realistic, thats deffinatly a major issue. Destruction is a major part of war... things like rivers and lakes don't do a whole lot in terms of realistic warfare.

You're right that it is just an opinion. Destructable buildings are one thing which would be welcome, dynamic destructable buildings are another. The first is very simple but the second requires a lot of work. Some of us would rather seem elements such as rivers is because they are a major factor in realistic warfare. Rivers and even streams are significant obstacles to ground based vehicles and infantry. In just about every theatre I can think of bridges over rivers have been prized assets .

In World War two securing the bridges in Europe was key to the allied advance. Even in Iraq one of the first things the allies secured was the Shatt al-Arab estuary - because the river was a major transport route directly to the largest population centres. When entering Baghdad itself they secured the bridges as fast as was possible.

Entire engineering units exist in modern armies to bridge rivers and streams!

They also add greatly to the immersion factor, there aren't many landscapes in the world without streams and rivers. They are an intergral part of terrain and a game world without them just can't be considered realistic.

[Scrub 0]

I think ShinRaiden is taking this literal meaning of 'dynamic' to bear here.  He is probably considering things like shear forces, weak points in structures... Material properties in general, to create RL fracture lines in a construct, generate the new seperate poly's and remap the formerly existing textures onto the new pieces.. That would be truly dynamic.  A bit over the top, but dynamic.

The 'lego' system does this, in the brick buildings. They are stuck together it seems, and in the NG2 images, it also looks like it takes a bit of force to seperate them (a big chunk of wall breaks off and falls, but it remains whole and does not, itself, disintegrate)

I'd be happy with the lego system anyday.

Tomorrow would be fine.  I'll be home waiting. Thanks BIS!  

[stakex 0]

As for things to improve gameplay... thats really a personal opinion. Personally rivers, lakes, and waterfalls dont add anything other then better looking terrain. As where destructable buildings make attacking a town a lot more intresting. Instead of going into a CQC battle to clear a building, put a few tank shells in it. I mean it really hurts the game when people hide in buildings to avoid missles and bombs that would surely destroy the building they are hideing in. In OFP... when my friend was coming to bomb the area I was in, I would just hide in a building and likely wouldnt die. In a game thats suppose to be realistic, thats deffinatly a major issue. Destruction is a major part of war... things like rivers and lakes don't do a whole lot in terms of realistic warfare.

You're right that it is just an opinion. Destructable buildings are one thing which would be welcome, dynamic destructable buildings are another. The first is very simple but the second requires a lot of work. Some of us would rather seem elements such as rivers is because they are a major factor in realistic warfare. Rivers and even streams are significant obstacles to ground based vehicles and infantry. In just about every theatre I can think of bridges over rivers have been prized assets .

In World War two securing the bridges in Europe was key to the allied advance.  Even in Iraq one of the first things the allies secured was the Shatt al-Arab estuary - because the river was a major transport route directly to the largest population centres. When entering Baghdad itself they secured the bridges as fast as was possible.

Entire engineering units exist in modern armies to bridge rivers and streams!

They also add greatly to the immersion factor, there aren't many landscapes in the world without streams and rivers. They are an intergral part of terrain and a game world without them just can't be considered realistic.

You have a very good point about the rivers there... but lets not forget, river are sorta possible right now. You just cant change there elevation...

And as I said in another post in this thread, we don't need the "lego" system in ArmA. Thats for game2. We need the system featured in the BIS "dynamic buildings" trailer. Sure it might take some work... but its a major feature that is totally non-existent in Flashpoint. Rivers ARE possible. Its pretty much tiny streams, and mountin rivers that are not possible. Which are not very important in strategic, large scale warfare. Thats what I was refering to... if you want a RIVER in Flashpoint, you CAN have it.

And again if we talk realism... how realistic is it to carpet bomb a town and have the town take no damage? Its pretty sad in the realism department IMO. Id personally rather military realism over economic realism...