43 replies to this topic

[Bashfulsalamander]

Im not saying that Devs should make it so Building can be destroyed as well as bridges, or anything you could use as cover; even though that would be awesome. I just would like to see trees get toppled over and the small cars/ tankers blow up when I step on them. Also weapon scarring effects could look better on static meshes.

Edited by Bashfulsalamander, 08 May 2014 - 12:02 AM.

[CHH Badkarma]

Well there was this one tree in river city....
yeah, love those features that never happened. Not even "after beta" Shame really. Yet another example of this games potential being held back.

[FlipOver]

Or you could be able to kick a car/tanker and turn it into a projectile, exploding on impact.
Or make a hole with your ACs through a building and use it for shooting with a bit more cover.
Or pick up an arm ripped off from another 'mech and use it as a baseball bat.
[... could go on for a while ...]

Quoting a movie and giving it a little twist: "THIS IS ..... SPART.... (erm) PGIIIIIII"

[Impyrium]

I imagine it has something to do with network performance. They had to take out leg alignment on terrain because of that, imagine what destructible environments would cause.

[VXJaeger]

I want to see every single statue in River City's Citadel pulverized. And all other similar tiny objects too, who stop my Atlas like running it to solid wall.

[FlipOver]

AUSwarrior24, on 08 May 2014 - 04:03 AM, said:

I imagine it has something to do with network performance. They had to take out leg alignment on terrain because of that, imagine what destructible environments would cause.

A sense of WOAH followed by *.* and ?

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

This has been addressed before,

- enabling destructible objects within the environment requires creating new artwork and multiple states for each object,
- for anything that can be damaged, it needs to be constantly tracked and updated over everyone's system
- After an object is damaged or knocked down how long does it stay in the environment before being removed
- Are there consequences rendered on other objects if one element is destroyed, collateral damage
- Is physics enabled on an objects destruction, damage state or explosion
- will the destruction of an object effect movement, do knocked down buildings or trees block roads or routes
- can the destruction of an object cause damage to the element the Pilot is in
- where do you stop at items in the environment being destructible, just small terrain elements or is the entire world now rendered to that state. (we're going to need a bigger computer for that)

All these are nice eye candy, but this game is server authoritive, and not residing on your hard drive. The amount this would tax most systems, would eliminate anything below a great to very good gaming set up. And probably require the rendered game arena distance to be dropped to 100's of meters and not the 1km + we see now. The net traffic alone word probably push everyone beyond what a stable game could handle.

Now on the plus side, PGI is looking into some items or objects being able to exist in different states. The next game mode, Attack/Defend will have elements that may be destroyable, defensive structures and such. And there was discussion about the next map the 'Jungle' having items that can be destroyed or damaged, so some hope. But, it's all a matter of resource management and keeping a stable game environment. And one that doesn't cause players to run with pings well outside what's playable.

9erRed

[Stardancer01]

How about a basic physics engine that would blow cars out of the way of your jet wash while jump jetting (not is if you’d notice, but it would look good on a high detail model mini vid cut screen).

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

I don't actually think the vehicles are separate objects on the terrain. Since we can just walk through them now like trees. They would need to be changed to dynamic objects and given all the characteristics associated with that type of object.

9erRed

Edited by 9erRed, 09 May 2014 - 10:45 AM.

[Archon]

9erRed, on 09 May 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

Greetings all,

This has been addressed before,

- enabling destructible objects within the environment requires creating new artwork and multiple states for each object,
- for anything that can be damaged, it needs to be constantly tracked and updated over everyone's system
- After an object is damaged or knocked down how long does it stay in the environment before being removed
- Are there consequences rendered on other objects if one element is destroyed, collateral damage
- Is physics enabled on an objects destruction, damage state or explosion
- will the destruction of an object effect movement, do knocked down buildings or trees block roads or routes
- can the destruction of an object cause damage to the element the Pilot is in
- where do you stop at items in the environment being destructible, just small terrain elements or is the entire world now rendered to that state. (we're going to need a bigger computer for that)

All these are nice eye candy, but this game is server authoritive, and not residing on your hard drive. The amount this would tax most systems, would eliminate anything below a great to very good gaming set up. And probably require the rendered game arena distance to be dropped to 100's of meters and not the 1km + we see now. The net traffic alone word probably push everyone beyond what a stable game could handle.

Now on the plus side, PGI is looking into some items or objects being able to exist in different states. The next game mode, Attack/Defend will have elements that may be destroyable, defensive structures and such. And there was discussion about the next map the 'Jungle' having items that can be destroyed or damaged, so some hope. But, it's all a matter of resource management and keeping a stable game environment. And one that doesn't cause players to run with pings well outside what's playable.

9erRed

Thanks for the detailed information. Why is it though that games like the Battlefield franchise can handle destructive environments but MWO can't? Does Cryengine 3 have different limitations? Or is it just that PGI's servers aren't as up to the task as a game franchise as Battlefields' are?

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

The Battlefield games use the Frostbite engine and are also geared for consoles as well as Pc's. They are not server authoritive in there gameplay. And thus can be or are 'hacked' on a regular basis. (but they are getting better)

- MWO requires everything to be checked through the server and compared to the client's current actions.
- This works out to two actual games being played and mirrored, server as authority.

As stated, the more objects that need to be 'state checked' to indicate if they have changed, the number of player controlled elements moving around the environment, every weapon fired and what it encountered to it's max range. And the list just grows for each item that can be changed or has multiple states it can be in.
MWO doesn't have this process defined to the state that we can operate in a stable game, yet. Karl gave a much better definition about the issues they are currently running into and what they are doing to improve where they want to go.

9erRed

[Bashfulsalamander]

As I said at the start of this post I do not expect any thing like turning river city into a parking lot, but small things like trees, cars to be destroyed or toppled, as well as better weapon scarring effects on static meshes such as buildings, which do not even have to be permanent.

[Stardancer01]

Trees and cars could be kept player/client side because they have no real effect on tactical gameplay. Each player would have the same opportunity to destroy the same tree, or kick the same car.

Buildings could be destroyed by level, the server keeping track what level each building is collapsed to and how much damage is required to reduce it by the next level increment.

Edited by Stardancer01, 11 May 2014 - 07:33 AM.

[IGuardianI]

Honestly I think this would be a good thing to be put in place but is not a priority right now. Community Warfare PLOX!

[9erRed]

Greetings all,

Update from Karl about destructibility in the game environment:

Destructible environment;
A: There are several complications here. From the engineering side, it depends heavily on the amount of interactivity that dynamic terrain is expected to bring to the game. If you could shoot out bridges that other players were standing on for instance, that results in very difficult to resolve latency issues with the game simulation. It also results in very high rewind costs, as the set of rewindable entities has now grown to include these destructible objects. If the destruction is purely visual, then the engineering concerns are much smaller.

On the level design side, interactive destructible environments mean that sight lines and movement paths can change. The map designers would have to be very conscious of those dynamic differences, and ensure that no combination of destroyed assets results in negative gameplay mechanics. Purely visual destruction also mitigates these risks.

For the artists, they would need to build all of the destructible assets to be put in-game. I've been told that this is a monumental amount of work.
... end info update.

Additional on this update to Destructible elements;
A: Ahh, I thought you were talking about crumbling buildings and such. For visual collision work, such as trees and other small rigid bodies; there is a bunch of work I need to do first before the artists can add these sorts of assets to the maps.

It's not as simple as the artists simply dropping rigid body assets into the map, due to all the networking changes we've had to make to the engine. I've been proceeding with this work on the side, as time permits, but it's not at the point where I can hand this off to the artists quite yet.

9erRed

Edited by 9erRed, 25 May 2014 - 03:33 PM.

[lashropa]

Oh my god yes.

[Redshift2k5]

I extremely doubt the network code could handle it.

[Galil Nain]

Whilst I have voted "No", it is not because it is something that I would not want to see in-game.

I (like many of you, it would seem) would like to see destructible environmental assets. The change to the dynamic of the game would be interesting and exciting. But (and this is a biggie) with a server-authoritative game, this would push up the bandwidth requirements and server overheads immensely. Sure, it's something I would like the devs to do, but there is a heck of a lot that needs to be done first. Also, something like this should not, in my opinion, be considered until regional servers are in place (if they ever arrive... ).

[Steel Talon]

MWLL prooven that Engine can handle destructibility, although the didn't went fuether than mowing down a forests.
Destructible terrain is not possible in CE2, dubt it is in CE3.

[Bobzilla]

AUSwarrior24, on 08 May 2014 - 04:03 AM, said:

I imagine it has something to do with network PGI's performance. They had to take out leg alignment on terrain because of that, imagine what destructible environments would cause.

Fixed that for ya.