Blowi'n Holes In Buildings ;D

[Panthera Leo]

Shevegen, i like your style!

I'll second that! Let's see, to I walk into a ambush with aliens on all sides, or use a blaster bomb the top of the UFO. Then proceed to use that hole to guide more blaster bombs though that hole, and do nasty things to the inside of the UFO...

Hmm...let me see now.

I know, we can't even remove unmolested objects with damaged ones, and the game works fine as is...

...I just miss the over kill of blowing the inside of the UFO into smoking ruins, and asking if the aliens want to come out and play now.

[Captain Bipto]

Losing the ability to cause massive collateral damage should just inspire you to take it out on the alien scum.

[Panthera Leo]

Nope, it inspire me to keep my distance. They bite, and bite hard! I can't blow away their cover any more

Besides the secondary explosions from the Drives, Entertainment, drop grenades and such was fun to watch!

Speaking of? Can you blow up dropped grenades?

[Nevasith]

especially when there is a bunch of green angry guys with plasma cutters. One hit, and your soldier dies. Grenades are useless, the aliens are seldom killed with the one thrown into the door...

[Destructavator]

I liked nuking barns with fusion disks ;P

Join the club, You weren't alone with that concept.

Regarding blowing everything up as an easy way to quickly take out aliens, that brings up a point - If destructible terrain is even partially ever implemented, there could be two main consequences of such tactics:

1) The risk of what could happen to civilians, and,

2) Excessive property damage could have a negative effect on how pleased a nation is with the mission, and how much funding they will give the player.


EDIT: Just got an idea:

What if every map had two versions, one that was normal, the other that was blasted to bits and all torn up, and explosives in the game slowly replaced parts of the normal map with the torn up one?  I don't know exactly how the coding works, but is such a thing or something close to that even remotely possible with the game engine?

[BTAxis]

Even if it was, who's going to make all the extra maps? Do you even realize how much work that is? Not to mention all sorts of problems with level flags and stuff. Bottom line, forget it.

[Nevasith]

Im not sure how the game engine interprets walls- if they are collision objects than perhaps it would by possible to make rockets remove the collision flag from the piece of wall/table/whatever and create a permanent cloud of smoke and fire to hide the wall? It would also make sense if passing through such a debris dealt some damage (not much if a soldier wears at least a basic armour)?

[Captain Bipto]

Join the club, You weren't alone with that concept.

Regarding blowing everything up as an easy way to quickly take out aliens, that brings up a point - If destructible terrain is even partially ever implemented, there could be two main consequences of such tactics:

1) The risk of what could happen to civilians, and,

2) Excessive property damage could have a negative effect on how pleased a nation is with the mission, and how much funding they will give the player.


EDIT: Just got an idea:

What if every map had two versions, one that was normal, the other that was blasted to bits and all torn up, and explosives in the game slowly replaced parts of the normal map with the torn up one?  I don't know exactly how the coding works, but is such a thing or something close to that even remotely possible with the game engine?

What the hell? You an insurance adjuster or something?!? Civilians are expendable in the latest version so who cares! 
Do walls of buildings etc block weapon effects? So far I have only naded a few aliens by hitting the roof/walls around them...there was a window present so I have no clue.

[Doctor J]

EVERY map object, even the back of a chair, is capable of absorbing limitless damage while remaining sparkling clean and freshly lemon scented.   

[BTAxis]

Not actually true, there is a limited amount of objects that will actually break if you shoot them. Only if the mapper explicitly marked them as such, though.

[Captain Bipto]

Not actually true, there is a limited amount of objects that will actually break if you shoot them. Only if the mapper explicitly marked them as such, though.

So can Area of Effect explosions go through some of the terrain like walls? (Not destroy the walls but hit the dude on the other side)

[BTAxis]

I'm not sure. There *is* a flag for shooting through walls, I believe, but I'm not sure if it applies to explosions.

[Panthera Leo]

Not actually true, there is a limited amount of objects that will actually break if you shoot them. Only if the mapper explicitly marked them as such, though.

Then I take it the problem is that either walls, cars, and such either can't dynamically be removed and/or replaced? Or is it that they're not modular, and destroying a wall would take out the entire building instead of just that section?

As for converting the maps to or from one standard to another, that's a job for a script if I ever saw one. The only human involvement would be the scripts development or touching up a map after.

[BTAxis]

Then I take it the problem is that either walls, cars, and such either can't dynamically be removed and/or replaced? Or is it that they're not modular, and destroying a wall would take out the entire building instead of just that section?

When you mark a brush as breakable, it will disappear when shot. It's technically possible to build up a building out of little sections and mark them all as brekable, but there are several problems with that. First off, there's your shadows. Shadows are calculated when the map is compiled (and this is what makes map compilation take so long), so they are hard-baked into the map. When you destroy the piece of wall, you don't destroy the shadow it casts. Secondly, a wall you would nomally make out of one, maybe two brushes now needs to be made up out of many more smaller ones. This increases the brush count of the map and makes it load and render slower. Map optimization is a big part of making a map, so this is not trivial. Finally, making a map like that is a buttload of work, and nobody really wants to do it.

These are the principal reasons why we don't have destructible terrain, pretty much.

As for converting the maps to or from one standard to another, that's a job for a script if I ever saw one. The only human involvement would be the scripts development or touching up a map after.

What? Who's talking about moving the maps to another standard?

[Panthera Leo]

Who iss talking about different standard, just me I guess. I guess I was implying that the maps where to be made destructible, or move to another engine it would be a different 'standard'.

Shows what I know, I hadn't considered shadows all that complicated. I guess it would take a great deal of work to make the engine go from storing pre-renderer things, to having options to update for 'random' events (The top of the roof being blow off, or a entire building collapsing.)

In one hand I know it's harder then I think it is, and on the other I have this nagging idea that "No, that's what objects, pointers, and binary tree's are for..."

(Edit: having finished by CCNA&CCNP classes playing and organizing with variable information by tweaking bits inside a variable(IPs), and nesting classes is second nature to me. Though they teach neither in the class I recognized and picked up on what the routers are really doing.)