Blowi'n Holes In Buildings ;D

[Negator_UK]

If the Quake2 engine was good for destructable terrain then the master himself, John Carmack, would surely have put it into his game. He didn't because technology wasn't that well developed back then and we are using that technology now. JC did put breakable windows into his game because he put that feature into his engine.

If building a whole building out of "breakable windows" (which I suspect is effectively what BTAxis is describing above), was a good idea, again the id guys would have done that.

But it didn't happen then and it ain't happening now - by all means dream ( I do    ), but be advised that dreaming about destructable terrain is all we can do.

UFOAI is made with the Q2 engine, which means it's all set in adamantium-ville with the odd breakable window (which frankly don't excite me like old-fashioned  Xcom destructable terrain, and I suspect won't blow your skirt up either).

Oh BTW, there ain't no Santa Claus .....

[Destructavator]

I've been in this forum on and off long enough to have seen this topic come up a zillion times in various threads - I'll just say as a (hopefully) final statement that if there was a simple, easy solution not involving a major overhaul of coding, re-writing the whole friggin' project to a different engine/language, or anything else that would require a substantial amount of work, it would have already been thought of and implemented by now - If there was an answer that was relatively easy, it already would have been done.

Having said that, shall we put this topic to rest, unless of course someone with coding experience has waaaaaay too much time on their hands and is willing to do a mountain of programming and re-writing work?

I'll also say this:  This game has developed rather far and I think it has a lot of potential to be finished all the way through the plot at some point, I recall downloading the old X-mas release from sourceforge a long time ago and seeing how little of the game was done then by comparison - perhaps this feature should be saved for a potential sequel (*gasp!*) done with a different, more modern engine one day.  I've seen this project go very far, and wouldn't be surprised if in a couple of years the whole plot was done, and then efforts were put more into refining, bugfixing, etc.  By then I'm sure some of the more modern and powerful engines out there will have even more to offer, and I've seen many open-source engines continue to be developed - by comparison I haven't seen any news about the Q2 engine being improved much, although I admit I don't read a lot of programming news headlines, and don't follow it as much as others do, so I could be wrong there.

Still, I think this project really can get there to the finish line, although part of it depends on how much effort is put into refining vs. how much is put into going further through the game plot.

[Negator_UK]

Agreed.

If you change the engine, you'll never finish the game.

I've signed onto the coding team, although I've yet to code a single line of C as there are so many hoops to jump through (sourceforge, IRC, etc) to get into the group comms proper.

However my initial look through the code suggests to me it is in a "mature" state - ie already being bugfixed and not suitable for an engine switch even if someone did have the time.

Are you really looking to spend another 2 years on this game ??.

By then the Q2 engine will be so out of date..., well at least computers will be real fast by then 

If the game takes so long to produce you may have trouble keeping people on the project -> then when personnel changes the new guy recodes some stuff and you tend towards an infinite loop.

I'll be going back to work in the Autumn so you'll get, at most, 6 months out of me, assuming I can get going in the first place.

Basic project engineering theory states that there is a specific phase of any successful project called "finishing" - you may want figure out when you want to start that as I would figure you'll be finishing this project for at least 6-12 months (if it takes longer see the infinite loop above).

Fun Fun Fun....

[BTAxis]

Oh, the game's final incarnation as we've imagined is is still years away. That's not a problem, as we don't particularly want the game to be done before a specific time. The thing about the infinite loop stands, though. It's more productive to work towards a finished game which is limited in certain ways (no destructible terrain, folks) than try to rework what we've already got just to allow for some feature, and in the end getting nowhere.