Destructible environments

RU1NOUS

Hi Guys,
I am after some information please, currently I am conducting research for my dissertation at university regarding destructible technology in games. Im hoping that any level designers out there might be able to give me an insight into what considerations would arise as a result of including a destructible environment. Im interested in knowing what approach you might take if the environment was fully destructible (as far as it can be) or if the amount of destruction was to be limited (for example indoors where layers of plaster/bricks could be destroyed).
Also I am after the opinions of environment artists regarding the considerations when creating assets for a destructible environment and what approach you as an artist would take regarding workflows, potential problems etc.
Thanks in advance

r_fletch_r

You might want to see if you can find any information on Red Faction Guerilla. The buildings in that game were 100% destructible and had to be modelled to strict rules to ensure they were structurally sound.

SnowInChina

also :
you might not want to use black text on a rather dark background

RU1NOUS

sorry about the text colour dont know what happened there! Ive already looked into red faction in my research. Thanks though.

Justin Meisse

Here's a tutorial about fracturable meshes in UDK, I didn't watch the whole thing but I believe he has links in the description that go into more details.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEZsgTxfWv4&feature=fvw[/ame]

You can get UDK for free Here

RU1NOUS

Ah thanks for the link. And thanks for the replies guys

haiddasalami

I have an article on how Red Faction's destruction was done. Will try and scan it tommorow. I remember it being based off voronoi diagrams.

Mark Dygert

I don't have much to add that hasn't already been posted, but if you edit your post, highlight the text and in the upper left corner click the little crossed out AA it will remove the formatting from your text and it will go back to normal. Sometimes you have to click Go Advanced then do it again, then click preview post for it to finally take effect, but thats kind of rare.