ARMA 2 - Building Destruction

[Maddmatt 1]

New article on the dev blog, you can see it here.

It explains why the detailed destruction from 'Game 2' shown in 2005 was scaled down.

[operation madman 0]

Dang! i was looking forward for that awsome destrucatable thing. At least we got it. And it might still be a realitly as the gaming specs of the avg people is increasing which DX10 cards will help. Then bis might deside to put it in agian.

[Colossus 2]

Shame it didn't work out, at least they tried. Perhaps in a future game the technology has come so far it's possible.

As long as no brick on the wall gets left behind, meaning something falls off where ever you shoot, I'd be quite happy with their system.

[Raptor 10]

yes shame,

but it would be intressted to know if they concentrate on other gameplay parts ( communication, AI-reaction, AI-inteaction, dynamic enviroment and so on...) instead on this detail. I also hope they will make the animation for the destruction more smooth.

But sofar I'm looking forward to this feature.

[TheJay 0]

Originally, it sounded like they were going for destruction much like Company of Heroes has. It's to bad they couldn't make it work in an ArmA type environment. The first victim of the tight release schedule. Hopefully it will be in there for ArmA 3.

[fasad 1]

Hmmm, this is a bit disappointing. I don't like the idea of a feature being omitted simply due to difficulty of modelling, which the article seems to imply. I would have thought AI and CPU resources would have been the limitation.

I reckon the new destruction model looks okay, and if it means the AI can make easier use of their environment it's a reasonable compromise. I wonder if the whole building can still be demolished, or just have holes punched in it?

[wolfbite 8]

Im pretty sure it did say AI and CPU resources were the main problem man. Its a shame but understandable. i wanna know what their doing with vehicles though.

[stakex 0]

Since DD was the one feature I was realllly looking forward to in Game2/ArmA2 this is terrible news... and while the reasons given are very reasonable, I feel BIS was very un-professional in their original presentation of Game2. You don't go showing off a major feature like this, when you have that many question marks and major issues with it. And if you do show that questionable feature... you let people know about thoes issues, and make sure its known the feature might not make it in the end. BIS did the compleat opposite and made DD sound like it was a done deal and ready to go.

Tho till the end of time, I will still believe that the 360 version of the game played at least a small part in the decision to scrap it. Nothing against the 360 (Im a 360 fan myself), but its just not as powerful and capable as a PC, and a large scale game with DD might be difficult to do on a PC, but it would be absolutly impossible on the 360.

But anyway, the dissapointment of the DD system being removed will be eased if..............

*All new building models are implimented for the new system that will be used in ArmA2. The original Game2 DD test buildings all looked very high quality compared to the current ArmA ones, which are mostly recycled from Ofp/VBS1. ArmA2 needs new, higher quality buildings and not buildings that we have seen before.

*The new system has a good variety in destruction. Buildings (especially ones that can be entered) should have alot of destruction points so that the desturction looks believable. Even with the fake destuction, it would be nice if buildings could end up looking like the DD test building does in the article if you hit it enough. And not just have perfect holes in the walls all the way around....

*The visual effects on the system are done well, and look natural... if its not going to be dynamic, it could still look it.

In my opinion thats what the system needs in order to substitue dynamic destruction. If its a half hearted system, with bad visuals, and re-used OFP buildings... that will be a major dissapointment.

[Shadow NX 1]

I think its more or less a question of MP compability cause if you make dynamic destruction with debris falling randomly then thats a huge lot of data that needs to be transfered to every player.

If it wouldnt be that way then everyone would see a different house destruction and you could hide behind some debris that the other players wont even see at that spot ( kinda like some cheated that way in ofp by editing maps ).

So i guess as they didnt want a feature that only works in mp ( plus it was maybe too resource demanding for a already too ressource hungry game.

[froggyluv 2136]

So i guess as they didnt want a feature that only works in mp ( plus it was maybe too  resource demanding for a already too ressource hungry game.

I think you meant 'only works in SP' but I really hope that wasn't the primary reason. I've had some fun MP moments but I think I speak for many who enjoy OFP/Arma for the SP aspects.

Isn't it possible to code one way for SP and scale it down for MP?

[funnyguy1 0]

I'm cool with it, it's still better than what we have now, and done realistically can at least look like it was dynamic (so what's the big deal?), I'm curious though, what with the destructable vehicles...

btw, thx matt for the info

[jtec 0]

Surely the desrtuction could be treated the same way as a tree ( i know a tree is not as many polys as a house but you still can mow several 1000s of trees down on multiplayer) Be nice to have the feature in still with maybe a mod team working with it to eventually bring the feature to life? Saying that i suppose its quite cpu intensive regarding things like what part of the building has been fired upon and how much damage the ammo which was fired at it has done and so on. I hope like you chaps have said that we get a slightly better vehicle damage system and also other things like walls being destructable (instead of the indestructable and fall down flat ones we currently have)

[DBO_ 0]

I am only dissapointed and admittedly selfishly because once again

its all about the multiplayer side of the game ,they seem to have simply forgot to think about the person who buys arma2 for the singleplayer dynamic campaign ( dont need to send packets for that or anything).

very dissapointed to be honest.

[shinRaiden 0]

There is an excellent guide from the Soldner development team regarding construction of panel-based destructible buildings. I honestly don't know if that model will be the method used in ArmA two, but I suppose that in theory the idea will be similar. Essentially, you create wall sections with multiple destroyed variants, then link them together to create your building.

There are several potential problems with different orders of severity. First, if the building is handled as a collection of proxies, that will require some substantial improvements to the proxy system handling graphically and in simulation. Not that that would be a bad thing, manipulation of proxy components of a main object would be 'nice to have', but also voids the whole reason for proxies in the first place, ie high-speed static optimizations.

Another method would be to do controlled deformation of selections. This too offers interesting capabilities, but at the cost of again independently modeling the objects.

In all cases, it is essential that changes be consistent across the network. Streaming data support adds an additional problem, in that indexes for damaged objects must be maintained, and can not be deleted in the session. These changes must also be queued and transmitted to JIP clients.

From an artwork standpoint, the Soldner content get's boring after the first firefight in the first village. You quickly notice that the mouseholes all look like an identical pattern, and they quickly loose their appeal. The resolution to that is in content, which requires that more complex (= costs of time and disk space) content is required to add more variety.

These limitations are hardly unique to ArmA. Much hype was made about the 'unlimited' interaction potential of the Havok component of the Source engine, and little mention was made that in order for that to work, the model component had to be unlocked and flagged as manipulable. As a result, HL2 for all it's gravity gun wonders is hardly an interactively destructible environment.

Lastly, back to the bricks. Count how many bricks, how much cubic volume of concrete, and how many linear board-feet of lumber is in your one RL residence. Divide that by how small you want the particles to be. Multiply that by the number of houses in your town. When you have an idea on how to manage and push those kind of indexes and numbers around asynchronously in parallel on a synchronously serial processing computer, let us know. Until then, it's nice of BIS to make a post explaining the real life situation with the eye-candy.

[stakex 0]

I am only dissapointed and admittedly selfishly because once again

its all about the multiplayer side of the game ,they seem to have simply forgot to think about the person who buys arma2 for the singleplayer dynamic campaign ( dont need to send packets for that or anything).

very dissapointed to be honest.

Well said... the MP aspect could have still been handled like it is now. I fail to believe it would be impossible to removed DD in MP, and have the buildings just collapse to nothing as they do now. Or no destruction at all in MP, just like Crysis... we delt with it in OFP, and MP destruction is kinda moot in ArmA. I also fail to see how the AI can't react to DD, but can react just fine to a non-DD system. Its still going to have the same underlying issues, with missing walls and buildings that the AI has to recognize...

The only issue that makes any real sense now that I think about it more... is perhaps the optimize issue. Not even the fact that DD buildings are time consuming to make seems like a good reason to scrap it. BIS delayed ArmA almost a full year and the final game was simply OFP reborn. Id gladly wait a year more if it ment having DD in the game.

[DBO_ 0]

Quote[/b] ]Lastly, back to the bricks. Count how many bricks, how much cubic volume of concrete, and how many linear board-feet of lumber is in your one RL residence. Divide that by how small you want the particles to be. Multiply that by the number of houses in your town. When you have an idea on how to manage and push those kind of indexes and numbers around asynchronously in parallel on a synchronously serial processing computer, let us know. Until then, it's nice of BIS to make a post explaining the real life situation with the eye-candy.

you tell me how big your town is and i will tell you ,no problem.

is your town in here

does it have trees ?

maybe an airport ?

[simba 0]

^ what's the point ofp2 ?

that some people can simulate destruction with features implemented by BIS... ?

[DBO_ 0]

No the point and it was mistaken point ,i though the referal was to my post.

That without pipelines and massive backups/money the common man can enhance singleplayer destruction and i was dissapointed that Bis could not.

If you consider what is possible with rtms,particles,setobjecttexture,delete-replace. it simply beggars belief that all we can expect is "insta hole" technology.

as for pathing and ai usage i really cannot see the big issue if bis can place a ruin after death in Mp right now they cannot place a path lod .

[simba 0]

Quote[/b] ] That without pipelines and massive backups/money the common man can enhance singleplayer destruction and i was dissapointed that Bis could not.

I personnaly never tried the dbo stuff but I hardly see how

this is going to work in mp, how does it handle geo lods,

and amongst many others I think the brick destruction is way

too cpu intensive.

playing with .rtm and drops won't lead very far, since this is a pure nightmare to mod and will be very repetitive.

Quote[/b] ] as for pathing and ai usage i really cannot see the big issue if bis can place a ruin after death in Mp right now they cannot place a path lod .

are you going to place a new path lod each time the building is severly dammaged ?

I hope that in BIS current plans, destruction spots is

predifined but where the wall is gonna break isn't.

In clear modders will only have to draw a rectangle on the

model where the destruction is supposed to happen,

but where in this rectangle the wall is gonna break is randomly chosen by the engine.

[DBO_ 0]

ok , let me be clear. i am disapointed and all my posts here so far have tried to convey my feelings about singleplayer

I am well documented as saying that dynamic destruction in mp will not happen for maybe another 5- 10 years.

so with that stated ,let my try to answer your questions.

Quote[/b] ]are you going to place a new path lod each time the building is severly dammaged ?

your question has no relevance to my statement, i asked what is the big issue with placing a new lod (like the one already on the ruins/rocks and waste piles) this appears to be what bis are doing at the ground level.

Lets look at the vid and what we see is maybe 4 holes. what we dont see is if you place a couple of satchels ,will 4 holes appeard, just like when you shoot 4 wheels on a hmmv the whole thing blows up, are they using selections when hit = dammage

if thats the case then you can bet that holes will appear in buildings for fun ,just like current vehicles die from an m16.

but i gonna stop now ,cause i am speculating too much.

[shinRaiden 0]

Let's look at the technologies you reference.

* RTM's

These only animate objects modeled elsewhere. Of primary concern, RTM's only allow for explicit object rotations, without a large amount of variant RTM's the rotations will become annoyingly repetitive. See the ArmA bridges, and also search the forums for threads asking why the bridges collapse the exact same way even if you hit them differently.

* Particles

Particles are good for making smoke to obscure your behind the scenes magic. Particles are not good for trying to link together. Additionally, you want to get rid of particles as soon as practical because they are typically very high engine load.

* SetObjectTexture

This is useful for existing model components, but breaking up a model into a sufficient number of parts to avoid variation annoyances results in an engine unfriendly high section count. You could try animating out fire geometry components, and having a wider variation of textures, but then the textures would not reflect the protection.

* Delete-Replace

Does not work with terrain streaming.

Here's a sample house model for reference for brick count :

brick house

Now multiply that as far as the eye can see.

lots of houses

To add further fun, the model must not be made of brick-level components, and must have DD from flat quadratic walls exported from external data sources to support automated content development processes.

When BIS says that brick-level work is impractical, and nobody else does it (careful study of the crysis trailers from a long time ago shows clearly that they only use pre-cracked sectional models, and there was no 'scamming' of 'true' DD involved), then that should more than adequately state that an alternative is required.

[DBO_ 0]

Quote[/b] ]hese only animate objects modeled elsewhere. Of primary concern, RTM's only allow for explicit object rotations, without a large amount of variant RTM's the rotations will become annoyingly repetitive. See the ArmA bridges, and also search the forums for threads asking why the bridges collapse the exact same way even if you hit them differently.

Kinda see your point but in single player i think it would be easy to create in o2pe new sectional pieces that have different rtms in enough variants to give a nice effect.

Quote[/b] ]* Particles

Particles are good for making smoke to obscure your behind the scenes magic. Particles are not good for trying to link together. Additionally, you want to get rid of particles as soon as practical because they are typically very high engine load.

you can drop a shape of a brick at no cost at all and works very well in mp . proven beyond any doubt. that was my point behind mentioning particles.(yes i know diff between drop and particles)

Quote[/b] ]* SetObjectTexture

This is useful for existing model components, but breaking up a model into a sufficient number of parts to avoid variation annoyances results in an engine unfriendly high section count. You could try animating out fire geometry components, and having a wider variation of textures, but then the textures would not reflect the protection.

a mixture of this and rtm + particles would give a nice effect and radomise ,cheaply in my opinion

Quote[/b] ]* Delete-Replace

Does not work with terrain streaming.

does in arma once again proven beyond doubt.

finally about brick level. Dbo_brick is good proof that its silly, but of often does a single brick get blown and its far more sensible to make a house of 16 sections that 200. which again in singleplayer , i think personally is doable.

edit would like to add to my previous post

I believe the cfg define i am thinking of is passthough. when damage to selection passes to the object as a whole.i am not expert on this , but i would be dissapointed is all

On reading again the blog i stand corrected on insta hole , it seems there will be dropped/simulated physics of rubble , however it will not be peranent lasting.

again i think its ok for mp and reasonable but not good enough for single player immersion.

[simba 0]

to get back to your first statement ofp2 :

Quote[/b] ] That without pipelines and massive backups/money the common man can enhance singleplayer destruction and i was dissapointed that Bis could not.

That's why BIS is improving physic engine.

If you look at Arma files, units nearly don't use scripts

like addonmakers do for the simple reason that

when they want something they implement it direcly

into the engine wish is much easier to handle.

Making the destructions like described in your post requires a lot of scripting and little shitty

things to debug during days that's why they didn't do it.

[DBO_ 0]

Simba please do not insult my or your inteligence , FSM is a script and because it is not a thing we can overwrite simply, because of auto behaviuor , it maybe simple for bis and us if they get it right, the problem is if they do not ,then thee work needed to be done is simply too much to justify the end. this you will find is why arma is not such a heavy modded game .

anyway i will end now i have spent my last days here ,arma 2 news is my final disssapointment , only because single player will not have enhanced destruvtion

i bear no ill will just simply place my opinions.

bye ,see you in some other game maybe.

[mr.g-c 6]

I always questioned myself why the community can do such things while the BIS developers give-up everytime....

The List issued by Ondrej seems not really convincing to me....

I dont get feeling away that they have some time-pressure again in theier necks. Hope they will take their time and delivers us this time something really impressing like OFP1 was back some years ago...

I press my thumbs for Maruk/Ondrej and their team, maybe through a coincident, they would find a solution to bring in some dynamic destroyable objekts like Buildings - never say never!

Regards, Christian