tileing and breaking a small environment

hula

Hey there,
I am going to make a small new environment and have a couple of questions.
I am attaching an image that i am using as a base.
Well, First. i am curious about how much to tile.
For example, would you tile a stone texture for the walls and then put some broken stone decals on top?
And my second big question. In this photo, what parts would you suggest to make 'breakable'?

thanks very much!

Eric Chadwick

That would be a lot of decals. Yes, I would use a "thirded" tiling plaster base texture, and add decals. I think Ben Mathis' site has a thirding tut.

But you might want to focus the damage in specific areas, rather than buckshot all over the wall, would provide more focus and backstory for the battle. More damage near windows and doors, that kind of thing.

By breakable do you mean areas the player could shoot and bust apart? Or areas that have more dense mesh for a better silhouette?

hawken

the goat, definitely the goat

Eric Chadwick

The goat should be breakable.

Mark Dygert

On that building, there isn't much that hasn't been broken already. It's pretty much one solid object made out of a fairly sturdy material that looks like it would hold up to a lot of abuse, even in the game world.

If you wanted to break large chunks of plaster off and expose the bricks underneath I guess you could. But that could come off as a gimmick and people would wonder if it happens in one spot, why doesn't it happen in others...

If you make this building destructible, what would you use as a constant unbreakable that the players understand as unbreakable?

OR I guess you could ADD softer objects to this, like shutters, a door, a roof, a shelf, a table?

Eric Chadwick

like, a goat

There are more devs adding destructible tech to their engines these days, like LucasArts and Epic. If you want to emulate what Epic does in their latest video, you could have layers within the wall, plaster then brick then studs. Epic added indestructible rebar as the final innermost layer, at least it keeps the flow of a level intact.

Eric Chadwick

I remembered we talked about this not long ago.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=51127

hula

sorry guys i was traveling. thanks so much for the advice. Yes, it looks like i will do layers and have different materials revealved. thanks so much.