Look to your left...

[ShinRa]

when gordons driving the buggy just before he reaches the house with the combine, look at the mountain side, an explosion goes off, and the rocks on the mountain actually crumble and fall. The terrain IS destructable!!

 

[Kazuki_Fuse]

It's most likely a scripted destructability. I know the bit you're talking about, you can make anything break off if you want it to when you want it to if it's scripted. I'm trying hard not to speculate about things like fully destructable terrain and buildings and wait to see when the game comes out. That bit looks awesome though. I gotta say.

 

[bliink]

its not completly impossible...
PvtRyan said:
With the tech in Source, you could easily mod it to make a hole in the ground when you shoot it, but this is based around displacement maps, while Geomod does it with Boolean operations which require vertex manipulation. So Source just moves the vertices up and down, Geomod creates new ones.

And this can only be done on terrain, not buildings.

And I think they'll be numerous examples of what these displacement maps can do, they didn't make the tech for nothing"

Plus, greg coomer(sp?) said you could apply textures to terrain as well (to make it like, say, wood)

 

[Dr. Freeman]

its not completly impossible...
PvtRyan said:
With the tech in Source, you could easily mod it to make a hole in the ground when you shoot it, but this is based around displacement maps, while Geomod does it with Boolean operations which require vertex manipulation. So Source just moves the vertices up and down, Geomod creates new ones.

And this can only be done on terrain, not buildings.

i don't follow the very techy stuff too much.. so forgive me for asking this, but wouldn't this kinda feature be a heavy load on the CPU? just wondering..

 

[OnboardError]

Scripts bro...

 

[bliink]

i don't follow the very techy stuff too much.. so forgive me for asking this, but wouldn't this kinda feature be a heavy load on the CPU? just wondering..

i think what it means is that you can set it to create craters when stuff hits terrain.
the point i was making is that terrain can be made destructable by 'building' it out of a material, such as wood. (if you have not already learnt.. a 'material' as valve calls it is a combo of a texture and a behaviour, if you apply a wood material to a geometrical shape, then it will make wood noise when you hit it, and it will shatter like wood when it sustains the right amount of damage... for terrain, you could create your own 'rock' material, for instance. i would be surprised if this was not the case for that movie)

 

[Dr. Freeman]

i think what it means is that you can set it to create craters when stuff hits terrain.
the point i was making is that terrain can be made destructable by 'building' it out of a material, such as wood. (if you have not already learnt.. a 'material' as valve calls it is a combo of a texture and a behaviour, if you apply a wood material to a geometrical shape, then it will make wood noise when you hit it, and it will shatter like wood when it sustains the right amount of damage... for terrain, you could create your own 'rock' material, for instance. i would be surprised if this was not the case for that movie)

so this feature would not affect the CPU at all?
i figured something like this would entail some extra computing.. for the CPU or the video card even.. i guess not..

 

[bliink]

well, any extra objects that are physically simulated are of course going to take more power to have there... especially since i have a feeling the material system is only designed for handling moderate sized objects

 

[ShinRa]

oh well...

 

[lans]

That could, in particular be a scripted sequence. But you never know, who knows you throw a frag grenade on a wall and it crumbles and you like "OMG!1!!!".

A game that does support "FULLY DESTRUCTIBLE ENVIRONMENTS" is Soldner: secret wars, which happens to suck (I have the demo).

 

[CrazyHarij]

Scripted stuff.

 

[Brian Damage]

Sounds like they just made some "Stone Fragment" models, stuck them to the cliff with "Source-Glue"* and then put an explosion object behind them, one that was strong enough to break the bonds and could be triggered by the proximity of something (Maybe the buggy?)...

*You know, however it is they make several objects into one, so that the one object can be exploded back into many later...

 

[CrazyHarij]

Sounds like they just made some "Stone Fragment" models, stuck them to the cliff with "Source-Glue"* and then put an explosion object behind them, one that was strong enough to break the bonds and could be triggered by the proximity of something (Maybe the buggy?)...

*You know, however it is they make several objects into one, so that the one object can be exploded back into many later...

No shit, sherlock :O

 

[RoguePsi]

It's not that hard to make the cliff side crumble. It's not a case of scripting, just giving the cliff the properties to enable it to happen. If something triggers it, the rocks will crumble away but I'm sure that there will be a limit as to how much you can crumble off.

Post 400! :dork:

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Conspamulations!

 

[CrazyHarij]

Conspamulations!

Quoted for emphasis. :dork:

 

[Brian Damage]

No shit, sherlock :O

Well, you'd be surpised how many people I've met that don't understand it, or think that there's some kind of scripting language at work in Source...

 

[clarky003]

it most definately looks like a seperate model, not part of the terrain.

looks like the rocks have break models, and if the model reaches its set damage limitation.. Bang , the engine dips into the break model folder for that object and replaces the one piece model with preset positioned break pieces.. at that exact moment the physics are applied to the reaction of the explosion and the rubble sprites appear for the smaller bits..

.. so hey presto you have an exploding, crumbling rock.

and in this case.. for the record, objects with break models, arnt scripted :smoking:

especially when position of damage/ explosion and havoc physics are applied,. then it would most likely break differently all the time, even though ever model would have the same break pieces. , say half a dozen large fragments, and about another half dozen medium fragments, under the influence of the havoc engine ..

its the same with the wood .

Possible heirarchy for a large rock:

> one piece model

> stage one break models (medium and large chunks).

> small break models for the medium and larger broken chunks

> sprites/smaller models for the broken small chunks.

> smaller chunks and sprites dissapear .

 

[SubKamran]

Sounds like they just made some "Stone Fragment" models, stuck them to the cliff with "Source-Glue"* and then put an explosion object behind them, one that was strong enough to break the bonds and could be triggered by the proximity of something (Maybe the buggy?)...

*You know, however it is they make several objects into one, so that the one object can be exploded back into many later...

I hope unlike other games I CANNOT see the lines that seperate the "parts" so I don't know to shoot it. I hate that. Like in HL1, you could see the lines where stuff you knew would break off.

 

[clarky003]

I hope unlike other games I CANNOT see the lines that seperate the "parts" so I don't know to shoot it. I hate that. Like in HL1, you could see the lines where stuff you knew would break off.

its not like that Subkarman, the model gets replaced entirely in an instant, almost a flawless transition. the break models would of been made from the origional one piece model, as a template, so they just get *transported* if you will, directly into the place of the one piece model when it gets damaged to much.

so you wont see any cracks , till you blow something like that up. :smoking:

 

[SubKamran]

its not like that Subkarman, the model gets replaced entirely in an instant, almost a flawless transition. the break models would of been made from the origional one piece model, as a template, so they just get *transported* if you will, directly into the place of the one piece model when it gets damaged to much.

so you wont see any cracks , till you blow something like that up. :smoking:

Good. I'm happy now.

 

[Coolhead2100]

i don't follow the very techy stuff too much.. so forgive me for asking this, but wouldn't this kinda feature be a heavy load on the CPU? just wondering..

It would be less proccessor intensive then you would think. Basically a displacement map is a black and white (black being higher, white being lower?) texture used to tell the engine how to manipulate pre-existing objects. (In this case terrain) So all that would need to be done is to add a premade displacement map to a terrain map when the terrain registers a hit.

 

[Impulse147]

why did the stone wall crumble anyways?

 

[clarky003]

an explosion went off behind it, to block the road... (if you notice it falls on the road)

 

[CrazyHarij]

All hail clarky. For he is our, um.. secret-behind-game-thing-spotter.

 

[Maui]

It would be less proccessor intensive then you would think. Basically a displacement map is a black and white (black being higher, white being lower?) texture used to tell the engine how to manipulate pre-existing objects. (In this case terrain) So all that would need to be done is to add a premade displacement map to a terrain map when the terrain registers a hit.

Actually, it's typically white is high and black is low (because black has lower intensity values, and it's a natural correllation to height). That's a pretty good explanation though. Of course, if the engine is going to relight the terrain so that it looks correct, that would take a little bit of CPU power, but otherwise it's just updating the section in your video card's memory that holds the heightmap, which would cause it to render just as quickly as before (assuming the same number of polygons visible, etc.)

...the model gets replaced entirely in an instant, almost a flawless transition. the break models would of been made from the origional one piece model, as a template, so they just get *transported* if you will, directly into the place of the one piece model when it gets damaged to much.

It's pretty cool that they're doing it that way...I always hated seeing those seems too. It totally destroyed any immersion you may be getting when you thought of the ground under you as paper mache an inch thick :/ I am concerned about what this means for memory requirements on graphics cards though, since it would have to store the complete model and then all the fragments as well. Or maybe it dynamically loads it from system memory, which would require less card memory but be slower overall. Or maybe it decides based on your card's memory. Or maybe it even changes dynamically during gameplay :hmph: I wish I could just talk to Gabe, Doug, and Wedge for a few hours on how Source works and all the neat tricks it employs.

 

[ShinRa]

I beg of a few of you to please email valve about the seams/lines in breakpoints. It really does take away from the game when u see the lines of where shit can break, and i hope hl2 doesnt have that problem.

 

[Murray_H]

I beg of a few of you to please email valve about the seams/lines in breakpoints. It really does take away from the game when u see the lines of where shit can break, and i hope hl2 doesnt have that problem.

It's like in cartoons where you can tell about 5 seconds early which thing is due to move because of it's different shade of colour

 

[DrJones]

I would think that fully destructible environments wouldn't be that cpu intensive since Red Faction used "Geomod" and that games a few years old. We've come a long way since then too hardware wise.

 

[Crusader]

Things being different shades is not any kind of bug, it's there on purpose to draw the player's attention to the fact there is some kind of seam or something different about that particular piece of rock, enticing you to shoot at it and see what happens.

Perhaps if there are LOTS of destructable things in HL2, it will be safe to assume that pretty much anything that looks breakable is, and they won't need to use this technique. But if there is just the odd thing per level that can break, than they would use the same technique of differently shaded materials.

 

[sHm0zY]

i cant find the video can someone give me a link http://www.gametrailers.com/ im looking there right now..

 

[clarky003]

It's pretty cool that they're doing it that way...I always hated seeing those seems too. It totally destroyed any immersion you may be getting when you thought of the ground under you as paper mache an inch thick :/ I am concerned about what this means for memory requirements on graphics cards though, since it would have to store the complete model and then all the fragments as well. Or maybe it dynamically loads it from system memory, which would require less card memory but be slower overall. Or maybe it decides based on your card's memory. Or maybe it even changes dynamically during gameplay I wish I could just talk to Gabe, Doug, and Wedge for a few hours on how Source works and all the neat tricks it employs.

yeh its actually really simple, Its easy to figure out how it works when you see the break model transitions ,, say for those box's that you break just after battling the Antlions on the sea floor,.. which also have stuff inside .

so for the box a simple program Heirarchy would probably work like this:

> one piece box model

damage set > 10 hits

> hit 10 = open box break model pack 1

break model pack 1 includes broken chunks of the box, positioned on different faces of the existing one piece model.

force and direction + mass and gravity, create realistic breaking, when the break models are called into place they drop, tumble and hit the floor, with a set friction and bounce characteristic.

> smaller break models (break pack for the larger broken chunks) / sprites > splintered wood pieces

doing it like this is great. because you only ever have one set of models that are present. rather than having the whole collection in one object. So more complex breaking is possible, and every piece can be manipulated and have a dynamic presents in the world.

its fun stuff

each with

 

[RogueShadow]

Possibly they put some rock objects all along the cliff? Or just added some entities to drop some rock bits when exploded

 

[Maui]

Nice system, I'm excited. The hype choo-choo is pulling into the station