ARMA 2 - Building Destruction

[pathetic_berserker 4]

I just hope this dosn't mean they aren't going to give it thier best shot.

I'm not overly fond of the 'mouse holes' as someone called them earlier. And I understand that creating DD to the level most of us want is not practical.

I do think however that ArmA would benfit greatly if they spend the time to create more destruction anims for more of the structures,especialy good if they could add a 'level' or 2 of damage. And add some low fragment count DD to vehicles. Maybe adding some finer particles to be handled client side then deleted.

I know anims can get repetative but it's got to be a dam sight better than watching a clean unscared buiding turn into a piece of cheese then sink into the ground. Leaving behind the same silly little pile of rubble as the next building.

So what it comes down to i suppose. Is that i would like BIS to implement a range of methods for destruction. Maybe allowing a mix of random destruction anims and some low fragment count DD. If it is at least buit into the engine the community can then run with it. And implement it for its specific needs.

I understand that BIS want to make a great MP experience. And i love what they've done so far. But it also needs lots players to mix with for the ulimate experice. And that is something that ArmA kinda lacks. I believe that if they spent a LITTLE bit more time on the polish of the game (such as varying the rediculous tiled damage texture) and made that bit of extra content to cover the details. Instead of leaving it up to the ArmA community. There would be more players, an even better playing experience, and maybe even more rabid community members to create great addons and environs.

Oops started to rant in that last paragraph. But I'll stand by it.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

Hmm I'm not surprised they scrapped the dynamic destruction. I wonder how many other features they'll remove...

[mr.g-c 6]

Quote[/b] ]I understand that BIS want to make a great MP experience. And i love what they've done so far. But it also needs lots players to mix with for the ulimate experice. And that is something that ArmA kinda lacks. I believe that if they spent a LITTLE bit more time on the polish of the game (such as varying the rediculous tiled damage texture) and made that bit of extra content to cover the details. Instead of leaving it up to the ArmA community. There would be more players, an even better playing experience, and maybe even more rabid community members to create great addons and environs.

I have the absolute same oppinion about that.... a few days ago i was nearly writing a open Letter to Marek Spanel telling him not about another list of suggestions - no i want to the telling him what my brothers, cousins, and friends in neighbourhood told me (they are all ARMA and some are old OFP vetereans players! - its all about those little things, those little eyecandys - its simply all about "animations"... more random debris at destryoed objects (cars/tanks/planes), planes/choppers deploy flares when a rocket chasing them, empty bulletshells flying of from tanks with 20mm or 30mm cannons, and so on......

These "eyecandys"/"love for details" or "animations" - call them what you like - are not important for gameplay but somehow, and here we have all nearly the same oppinions, they really "reach" something in us what makes us say "Wow" in our heads while playing such a game...

This is then also something our subconsciousness reminds off, when it tells us slowly: "hey play another round of that great Game, you had good feelings when watching those "eyecandys"".

You know what i mean?

I say:

Please Marek/Ondrej and your Team, think about such eyecandys , think about a "love for detail". I know some of you modellers are on the right way when watching this nice ventilator in the Hind.

And please dont tell us thats not possible - the community can do it, so why cant you?

Regards, Christian

[NoRailgunner 0]

another question - can ai use those holes as positions & path?

@mr.g-c

eyecandy is nice but what about bugfixing ArmA first?! Maybe we won't see any in BTS mentioned bugs in ArmA2 again

[jono_retard 0]

mr.g-c i take my hat off to you sir, you couldnt have said it any better. These suttle details like seeing empty catrides fall on the ground from your weapon or seeing a plane deploy flares are crucial to the game ambiance. Without them the game seems lacking. I am all for gameplay but these finishing touches also play an important part and it saves mod teams time by already having them implemented.

[operation madman 0]

I agree that itis detail that is somthing we should be looking for but i also think bis should go ahead and make more eyecandy features as that will attract costemers. Remeber they need money.

[baddo 0]

Well of course it would be nice to have all this and even that too, right now right here.

But it is perfectly normal in development projects that plans get revised and scheduals get revised. Otherwise it wouldn't be development at all, as I see it. It's better to give up with non-practical solutions than to try to put them into the game no matter what it takes (multiplayer compatibility, arm, leg etc.)

Some ideas for dynamic destruction I came up just a moment ago (when I was downstairs drinking tea and eating sandwiches, with cheese, cucumber and tomatoes, oh boy it's good):

The number one problem in my eyes would have to be the creation of the 3D models and how to configure them. If I were a game developer, I would approach this problem so that I would try to minimize, or eliminate completely, the work I have to do to create a dynamically destructible 3D model. I mean, no one really wants to create a 3D model and configure it all year long, right?

A solution to this problem could be to really drop all attempts to do manual work to make the 3D models become dynamically destructible. Easy solution: don't even try to do it! Stop right there! Let the computer have a regular 3D model and rip it to pieces, and don't care if the end-result doesn't always look like how it should look like in this life some of us call "real".

Alright, so now we would have an algorithm (written by some very clever programmer) which would take any arbitrarily-shaped 3D model and it would rip it into multiple pieces. So what? This doesn't solve anything yet. How to make it work in the game?

Well I was thinking that maybe, this "algorithm", would not be in the game at all! I mean, don't put it there! It belongs to the content creation "pipeline". Alright so now we have a development tool which takes a 3D model and rips it to pieces as the developer is drinking his tea and eating his sandwiches, with cheese, cucumber and tomatoes. The 3D model file format would have each piece separately written into it, in addition to the original model data. Alright so how would we use that model in the game?

Well as someone already said about "animations", yup that would be it! It's what we have now, I think. And why not extend that idea? Let an algorithm generate some ten or so different destruction animations. At this point don't care if the animations don't always look like how they should look like in this life some of us call "real".

In multiplayer it would then be up to the server to decide which building breaks down and in what way. An animation is selected from the set available, and a message to clients is sent. "Play this animation for that building."

Alright, animations are what can be done today, and has been done, but maybe the point I'm trying to make in this post is that don't even try to create the dynamic destruction feature into your 3D models manually. If you are going to keep yourself sane, you will have to have an algorithm to do that work. Otherwise the burden is just too big for the people who are responsible for creating the content. And (for now) don't even try to have a physics engine handle the destruction. Do it with animations but increase the detail of the animations by creating a program to do that and let it handle it. Let it generate an animation set per building to choose from during the game. Add debris having dynamic physics (kinetic actors in physics engine?) on top of that and wouldn't it be enough for now?

[mr.g-c 6]

Hey, that idea is very clear and very good i think....

Very good workaround for it.... i hope now that Marek, Ondrej or some of the animations-team read this....

Dynamic or not:

We need some debris-rich and/or parts-rich explosions/destructions or even better what you described @ Baddo, in Arma2. The current "holes" to put in buildiungs by tanks are very ugly IMHO and looks like from some Games 5 years ago.

If you keep it like this, then please make it realistic (from holes-size and penetration). You can not make such large holes like on the videos, when firing "just" a kynetic-energy projectile on it (also known as sabot). This projectile which is just some few mm in diameter just makes a small hole in real life it even would completely pass through a building!

If BIS comes with the same odd, ugly, unrealistic and lazy animations like in ARMA1 - i wont buy this game or any from BIS again.

Very sad, when watching the videos from the Gamesconvention 07, everything looks like in ARMA1, exept the nice details in Models like the Mi24Hind (ventilator, shader effects for glass).

Why BIS doesnt take a look what the addons/mods creators can do? Why dont they take some ideas from them?

Examples even from OFP-Times (FFUR-mod and WGL-mod) can do it better like currently.

In my oppinion its NOT always the point for the addon/mod makers to "complete" BIS' games, no this time its the point of BIS to bring all "old" and possible "new" customers a very COMPLETE game! A Game which makes brings my subconscious to remind me very often about playing a round of ARMA2.

PLEASE BIS, please Marek, Ondrej and all of you developers - I know, i belive you can create another "blockbuster" like OFP was years ago - do it!

Regards, Christian

[stakex 0]

Hey, that idea is very clear and very good i think....

Very good workaround for it.... i hope now that Marek, Ondrej or some of the animations-team read this....

Dynamic or not:

We need some debris-rich and/or parts-rich explosions/destructions or even better what you described @ Baddo, in Arma2. The current "holes" to put in buildiungs by tanks are very ugly IMHO and looks like from some Games 5 years ago.

If you keep it like this, then please make it realistic (from holes-size and penetration). You can not make such large holes like on the videos, when firing "just" a kynetic-energy projectile on it (also known as sabot). This projectile which is just some few mm in diameter just makes a small hole in real life it even would completely pass through a building!

What dosn't help... is again, that the building model they demoed their "new" system on was an OPF house. If it was done on a house with the quality of the Game2 DD demo house... it wouldn't look AS ugly. Ive said it before and I'll say it again, all new house models are needed, and not recycled OFP/VBS1 buildings.

The one thing that has always cought my attention, was in the VBS2 Real Time Editor demo video, where they show adding buildings... the buildings they are adding are from a folder called "OPF2 Buildings". And one of them, is the mosque that appeared as a DD building in early Game2 reports. So these were very likely buildings built either for Game2, or the DD system. Either way... if all of ArmA2's buildings are new and of much higher quality like thoes are, then this striped down destuction system won't be "terrible".

[TheJay 0]

It will probably end up a lot like the building destruction in Company of Heroes. Each building has zones with multiple damage states that get switched depending on where people hit it. It works really well and looks really good with the added particle effects that cover up the switching. I just hope they show a video eventually that show it in action with a final model for an ArmA 2 building.

[Lester 0]

Imo its the right way to build the houses more modular and enhance the 'Destruction-Model-Replace-Effect' into a

cascadeable 'Destruction-Object-Replace-Effect'.

So a destructed part of a house (a module) can changed to another object, which (if destructed) changed to another ...

This more modular system should also be useful for areas of a specific house design too

[leehy 0]

Building Destruction is not all of building. there is few speical building will Destruction. only few some building are Destruction system. and its not speical. it just remve polygon.

its will not stragic tactics postion.

[xnodunitx 0]

This topic really didn't need to be bumped...

On the concept of dynamic destruction it can be done but alot of physics are involved, you need breakable wood with weight properties, you need moveable rubble pieces and so on, it IS possible but would take some time to get it all set up correctly, and with that you'd have to make them mostly all seperate objects to perform correctly.

Unfortunately right now BIS doesn't exactly have the time to explore this avenue so their going with the next best thing.

[dentist guba 0]

hopefully the destruction will still have some randomness to it, even BF:BC style would be something.

[Commando84 0]

Mm you guys don't know how much work it is to implement dynamic destruction... i talked to a guy who worked at making models for BF:BC where they had destruction and its lots of work to model all parts seperate and stuff. Especially if you gonna have a large game world as Arma 2 will have for an example..  

Im sure destruction will add a couple of strategic moments where you can take cover from enemies in the ruins of houses or in holes in walls.

[Pinocul75 0]

VBS1 Destruction buildong

Maybe in arma 3

[mr reality 0]

To the best of my knowledge, that level of building destruction was never implemented into VBS1. I'm not even sure if VBS2 has that yet.

I think it's more for VBS3 than ArmA3 (if there even will be an ArmA3).

[Heatseeker 0]

VBS1 Destruction buildong

Maybe in arma 3

That wasnt dynamic or even animated, a part of the building is deleted and this was covered up by a large smoke cloud, not good enough.

In Arma the destruction is animated as you can see when the bridges colapse .

[stakex 0]

VBS1 Destruction buildong

Maybe in arma 3

Thats just pre-staged destruction which is very similar, if not exactly, what the dev blog essentialy says they are going to do for ArmA2, and I believe the VBS2 VTK now has similar destruction possible.

Its not really anything special, as it has already been done in games before... Battlefield: Bad Company for example. And going even furthur back, Soldner had a similar, tho not as good, system and that was several years ago.

Commando84, BF:BC does not have anything close to dynamic destruction. It has pre-staged destruction that has absolutly no dynamic value to it at all. I agree it likely was a real pain in the ass for the DC team to model every destroyed part of every building... but a true DD system would perhaps be easier to do (tech limitations aside) as you would not have to model the destruction, only make it possible for it to happen.

[sparks50 0]

I would be happy with a simple damage by zone= delete that section. Could be 2-5 sections depending on the size of the house.

As long as its covered in smoke, nobody would notice anyway.

[Boborish 1]

First of all we would need some enterable buildings tho. I heard there wont be many in Arma2.

[Comrade12 0]

Yeah I read that to. It suxs because there isnt much indoor action in arma. I think they should fix the unit animatons to make them smoother and easier to use, before they have alot of house to house fighting.

House to house fighting that would be sweet.

[forum troll 4162 18]

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 realise Red Faction 3, an large open-world non-linear game has already achieved this? it's not some fantasy, it's perfectly possible with today's tech.

[Maddmatt 1]

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 realise Red Faction 3, an large open-world non-linear game has already achieved this? it's not some fantasy, it's perfectly possible with today's tech.

I've seen some videos of it. Not bad. But consider that the building density is nowhere near that in ArmA cities. Model a village or town like that and lets see how your PC handles it

And it isn't to the level of detail as described in that quote, so what you quoted hasn't been achieved.

But yes decent destruction is possible with today's tech. The VBS1 destruction video on the previous page looks similar to what the BIS blog describes for ArmA 2.

It's better than what Codemasters has mentioned for OFP 2. All they have is 1 destroyed model to switch to after the building is destroyed (essentially what ArmA 1 does, but a different style of destroyed models where some parts are still standing). Maybe they'll end up doing the same as ArmA 2 though.

[Heatseeker 0]

You guys just have unreal expectations that are hard to take seriously, this game doesnt have an up-to-date physics engine yet and even if it did the environment is actually big? Now physics was basically the whole Crysis dynamic destruction system, a bunch of light weight metal plates, boards and junk pasted together in the level editor, the hangars and the big stuff werent destructible and you didnt have any towns or hundreds of thousands of objects either, i wont even mention MP for that one..

I'd rather focus on what is possible and go from there, more interiors to take advantage of the improved a.i. pathfinding and perhaps destructible doors and windows, that would be a great start and a significant improvement.

If you push the pedal on the think tank too hard you are likely to break a tread .