Destructable buildings/walls/etc

[armandobronca 0]

Can you release an alpha version of your work?

I really want to test this in a small ctf map with some friends.

Last vid looks great

Cheers

[deanosbeano 0]

*quick update*

i have not done as much as i would have liked,but made some progress,after lots of thinking about the fact that this project would not be ok for wrp,i have an idea to make a four storey building as well as 1,2 and 3. the 2,3,4 may be built on a base and this base can be put in wrp, the scripts can then be added using the (object) to create the storeys above the base.i dont use wrp so maybe it will work or not ? ideas welcome. anyway i have a small video of where it is now,i am having to spend lots of time on coding in order to get minimum lag.so far all is well ,but there needs windows and doors still and some walls have doors and they should not.

Storey* so far.

as always best viewed in I.E and will take a few mins to cache before playing. critisicm and ideas welcome. reason for no alpha yet is because this my first addon and i want it right b4 any release.

[NeMeSiS 11]

*quick update*

i have not done as much as i would have liked,but made some progress,after lots of thinking about the fact that this project would not be ok for wrp,i have an idea to make a four storey building as well as 1,2 and 3. the 2,3,4 may be built on a base and this base can be put in wrp, the scripts can then be added using the (object) to create the storeys above the base.i dont use wrp so maybe it will work or not ?

object added with WRPedit/tool cant exec scripts, but if you make a logic/init.sqs which execs the scripts needed on the object IDs of the buildings it will work fine..

Good idea btw

[Fragster 0]

Ah, looking great! i like the water effect when the building has been blown up. Looks awesome.

[HotShot 0]

I gotta agree with Fragster, that water effect is very nice, really makes it look like a real explosion, just a small thing like that.

Only trouble is that going by that video it does look very laggy, maybe could tone down the explosion effects?

I can see that you may need to keep all the smoke to make the switch, but you could take out the explosions and debree and i dont think it would make too much difference.

Very cool though whatever.

[mr burns 131]

This is coming along relly great, looking forward to it as to Klinks DIB before

Do you guy´s think it´ll run fine in MP? Not going to excess, just 3 or 7 buildings additionally thrown into a cqb map for fun´s sake

[Al Simmons 0]

Maybe stupid q. Will the single walls be destroyable, without destroying the whole building? Or is that building one single Object? E.g. When i destroy the top story of a 3 Story Bld. will then the whole Building collapse?

[deanosbeano 0]

1 its not laggy , its etacctime to 1/3 speed, fps = 76 on look ad walk around 28 - 34 fps on full blown.

2. yes all walls will be individually blown. only base will not dissapear and be replaced.

3.nice suggestion on lesssfire etc on explosions. i hope to release this with param [mpexplo],[singeplayexplo],[fullwhammy].

ok next i am going to create the logic init as suggested by forum.i want to do this before i create windows doors etc, so i know it will work in wrp. just one quetion for wrp noob.in my opinion it will only work if base is placed on flat ground, because the storeys above need to be setposed via script,which must maintain continuity.anyone agree /disagree have advice ?.

ty for all input/comments/critiscism

[deanosbeano 0]

*quick update *

after what i thought was a disater ,after i changed a script and forgot to back it up . i have done some work,i have lost a few randomness in the pieces coming off, not a biggy,,that is easily done. anyway ,this is a quik test for walls and stuff .

quicky

[Average Joe 0]

What lag?

[HotShot 0]

That's awesome. Even just that affect on a door would be great, but on a whole building it looks brilliant.

[deanosbeano 0]

well when i finish the logic for wrp compatability,i will make the doors and window,fngers crossed.i dont expect arma whilst spring 2007,so i got plenty of time i guess.i should be able to release the shell in a couple of weeks.hopefully. ty for the mention at ofpbase. oh and btw its not thier building ,its Hes ,only me on this one,although there are some people i will thank , such as brsseb ,for his tutorials and a few from ofpec helping me with planck to name but one who helped me locate the barrel config...but i`ll save that until i got something to .pbo

[dm 9]

1 its not laggy , its etacctime to 1/3 speed, fps = 76 on look ad walk around 28 - 34 fps on full blown.

I don't want to appear as the constantly negative guy... BUT these "figures" are all well and good, however, we don't know what hardware you're running it on, AND (more importantly) these figures are being obtained on desert island, yes? (I assume that since all the videos are being taken on desert island)

What sort of framerates are you getting on Nogova or any of the CWC islands with the destructable buildings? What framerates are you getting with a mission level of AI (say ~50 AI units) operating on the map? What fps are you getting with other scripts running? All considerations for the addon to be useful upon release.

And what hardware are you running these tests on? (Since you skirted round answering that last time )

[deanosbeano 0]

Lol your like the bas inquisitor ;0.

anyway, first of all, on nogova at petrovice with 50+ ai. is no differnt. between 28-34 fps on fullblown.slight less just looking about 55-60fps cause of petrovice population of buildings.

petrovice fight

My specs vary downstairs i have super pc that i mentioned in first thread. but this video and the last 5 are shot on my upstairs pc, whos specs are as follow:

amd3200+ Å75

nvid6600 pcie Å42

1gig of dual channel mem Å55(cheap standard none eec)

300watt psu Å5

windows home.

case + keyboard Å45

harddrive WD 200 gig Å45

Now i may ask you a question pls, you have told me now it cant be done and that you had lots of trouble and abandoned, pls may i ask ,what was it you was trying to do ,how/what/and what pc was you on ?

[rainbow 0]

Last movie is great !! I want to test it It brings OFP to next generation !

[dm 9]

The projects I was involved in were a much larger scope than you have, naturally that causes problems from the outset. I cant discuss the VBS project I was involved in, but it suffered from mainly the same issues as the OFP project.

I'd also like to point out that my "inquisitions" in this (and the related thread in the ArmA board) have nothing to do with BAS, its just me out on a limb here

Anyway, the projects were to create a large-scale destroyable environment, we're talking halfway between what you see on the BIS islands and Tonal, so approximately 50-100 buildings per town. These buildings were to react to different calibres of weapon (i.e. an M16 would do very little, a 50 cal would punch holes and a tank-gun/rpg would blow out complete walls) and were to also simulate the correct level of ballistic protection (i.e. once a 50 cal had blown a hole in a wall you could shoot through said hole with an M16) Doors, windows and such were also to be simulated.

It was this level of detail which essentially "doomed" the project, as the OFP engine simply cant handle it.

Other issues, such as the sheer number of objects needed to complete the task, the "limited" net code for OFP (it HAD to work in multiplayer) as well as the limited hit-detection abilities were also "nails in the coffin"

Anyho, the biggest issue we came upon early on in development was that in order to "populate" the buildings with sufficient hit detectors (we toyed with pretty much every type of object available, including using specially rigged soldier models) that the spawned unit count would become so high, the game would stutter. That is you'd get a decent FPS for 5-10 seconds, then it would drop to 1-10 FPS for a split second, then repeat.

After this first batch of tests, we streamlined the system, using one hit detector per wall (worked really well with the rigged soldiers) and then applied damage randomly according to what weapon hit it. So for small arms it would simply switch out a damage texture, higher calibre weapons would cause it to switch out pre-damaged models with holes missing etc. And tank rounds/high explosives whould destroy the wall switching out a totally damaged model and spawing debris. This system worked great (in limited numbers - as soon as we went back to the higher building counts the stuttering returned) however, in order to keep the hit detectors in position they had to have an incredibly heavy mass. This meant that the AI would take huge lengths to avoid them, driving/walking massive arcs away from the buildings. Not so good for the already limited CQB capabilities of the engine, and since these projects were to "enhance" the CQB, that was a stumbling block.

We were unable to create a suitable combination of hit-detectors/buildings to make the project not only work, but for the AI to work with it aswell.

Ofcourse, you can blame the large scale of the project (creating entire towns) for the failure. But if half the buildings are destroyable, and the other half not, where are the players going to take shelter and where are they going to avoid like the plage?

So that about sums up the "failures" of the two destroyable building projects I was involved with.

They were tested on machines ranging from a 1GHz P4 with 256Mb RAM and a Geforce FX5600, to a 3.2 GHz P4 with 2 GB RAM and a 9800 Pro (which 2 years ago was pretty top of the range) as well as various AMD machines (not sure of their specs tho) Needless to say it didnt even load on my ainchent AMD 500MHz 128Mb RAM TNT2 32MB Gfx box

And even from limited testing of just a few buildings, we found that it was not feasable for such a system to work across a broad range of hardware (because only 5-10% of the "community" are graced with the fortune to be running high-spec PC's) So came to the conclusion (maybe incorrectly, maybe not) that such a project simply wasnt feasable at all.

[Edit1] And in all fairness, even your "low spec" machine is still a monster compared to what a large portion of the "community" has[/Edit1]

[Edit2]NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!!!!! Sorry, just had to[/Edit2]

[Messiah 2]

ignoring what DM's just said (love you really), the video's and the system is very impressive, especially the amount of damage that shilka does to the buildings... love it...

[dm 9]

ignoring what DM's just said (love you really), the video's and the system is very impressive, especially the amount of damage that shilka does to the buildings... love it...

I'll get you later

I don't disagree, what deanosbeano has here is VERY impressive, I just can't see it being overly "useful" other than for scripted set-pieces.

I think he mentioned somewhere that it was for SP only (limiting it a fair bit) but if it did work in MP, human nature is going to make it very limited too. Since if you had the option to hide in an indestructable BIS building, or one of these placed next to it... I know where I'd go.

Also, for the work going into it, it seems a shame that its basically only going to get whored in the "combat photography" thread...

[deanosbeano 0]

A very nice and detailed reply ,ty very much. such a shame back then i was only just gettin into realism of "Ambience",my greatest love on any game,I fear that we cannot have everything. women shopping, cars and buses, err young people playing etc and also have the war,such a shame.but alas the truth,soo after 4 years of trying that i became to try addons ( 3 weeks ago).i added my self taught(in ofp terms ,of course we are all taught by ofpec and bisforums mostly incl .depbo)skills to this new ambient style.you see maybe where i have done different is in 2 ways.

1. i am creating it for a CQB small style map.

2. where you had effects that changed by bullet,i have the same but , i have created a system where ,if wall A is being blown up and wall B is also the attention of a tank shell and therefor must also be blown,it will create smoke until wall A has finished and then it will blow, it wont need the sound because wall A , if it is close by will have created it. also .there are lots more calculations like this happening. having said that,it would be silly to go further ,than whats in the video for multiplayer, except add the windows.

i already have created the destruct model for the holes in the wall. i will post the vid shortly.

its a pitty you had all that research and it was lost, you really should have thought small and efficient, people today would have been playing that and would have brought it on along way.anyway. ty for the reply.

edit. sheeit almost forgot, you see i mention cqb. my object of desire is not that big explosion ,no way, that as you say is for the vido group. my ideal scenario is this, two of those buildings righ besides,= 1 building. shoot the wall or make the armous so it will take one satchel. boom wall blows. and hole appears. walk thru said wall ,rescue prisoner , kill the kidnappers. its all madness ,but i will post what i mean soon in vid form lol.

[Messiah 2]

and the video combat thread...

ok, so perhaps its not 100% perfect, but like most scripted work arounds trying to break the OFP engine, its going to have limitations...

Imagine, if you will, an assault on enemy stronghold/held town - You call in CAS to drop and JDam onto one of the buildings they're holed up in... the bomb drops, the house shatters with the explosion, as you're sending in machine gun fire...

hell, where as in MP people will avoid buildings that fall apart like the plague (except me, given i once hid from a T80 in a fuel station), in SP the mission maker can use this system to enhance the feel of the mission in selected buildings...

fun fun fun

[dm 9]

I cant say much for how the systems I was involved in were scripted (I script like a monkey, so I was incharge of the models/configs) but I THINK we tried an "all-in-one covered by smoke" method. Not sure tho.

Yeah, its a damn shame the info was lost, the joys of storing things on the interweb

I'm not exactly sure why we went for such a large scale in the OFP version (probably because of the "abuse" we thought would happen - people not using them at all, hiding in the BIS buildings instead)

Messy, while thats awesome and all (we had a similar thing in the Tonal campaign, only it was an indestructable ruin that got LGB'd ) it is essentially a scripted set piece. The reason we were developing the system for OFP was to allow for some more dynamics in the fighting. Got some enemies hiding in a building, then you can call the heavy support to blow it up (basically what you described) but having the ability to do that to every building meant that if you were hiding in a building you had to think just as carefully about exposing your position as if you were in bushes etc.

I can see how it would be awesome tho, I just like my OFP to be as non linear-scripted as possible

[deanosbeano 0]

well i like ofp too, anyway just for fun heres a blooper from initial tests, i got bored with destroying a brick so i tried a mans head lol.

just for fun.

once again ty for all comments etc.

[Messiah 2]

oh yes, i understand that, but given the limitations of not being able to have everything destructable in the face of a decent frame rate etc, having scripted storylines use it would be somewhat of a trade of... shame to put anything to waste

[dm 9]

I fear that we cannot have everything. women shopping, cars and buses, err young people playing etc and also have the war,such a shame.

Funny you mention that. We [bAS] tried that (having random traffic etc) for Tonal. Needless to say, the AI pathing routines are RIDICULOUSLY heavy on CPU load. We experienced similar stuttering when we had 30 or so AI cars additional to the mission content driving around the map (basically an extension to the random waypoints used in the main OFP screen map "animations") )

It was a pretty cool development by Rom and Fer actually, you'd set up some objects; say a market stall, some barrels and a few other objects you'd expect to find in a city. Put a bunch of AI onto the map and a script would cycle the units randomly between the points. You could have unlimited points and a lot of AI, and it would look like a populated city. Soon as you put vehicles in tho it was a laaaaaaaaag fest.

Lets hope that the pathing (for vehicles especially) is siginificantly streamlined for ArmA

[Edit] Deano - you've got issues man, thats just grim

Messy - very true, very true. Like they say you cant have your cake AND eat it.

[deanosbeano 0]

lol the editor makes me grim , its like a missionmaker never wants to see the damn thing again lol,

anyway talking of lag, this was my max test .80 + buildings. about this time i thought hmm CQB anyone ? .

if only real planes where this accurate. mandos airstrikescript used btw, top bloke..

oh and dont even mention markets lol,i had some fun in them.

the random number was for weather you could by apples pears or a nice m16 with a side order of nades in the back house.( ala game 2 i supose).

market