Destroy environment?

[Briche]

Ey! I was thinking that obiusly the most important thing in the game is the story, the characters, the lore, how works the mechanics in the combats... But what do u think about the "effects" to create a better atmosphere?

 

For example, with a Fireball that explotes in one room the normal thing is that the furniture is burning after the explosion. Or if u destroy one box (or a door) with the sword cause u cant unlock it the normal thing is see how the box is destroyed. Is true that is not the important thing but could be interesting. When i watched the Gameplays of Diablo 3 for example, or of Grim Dawn (another "kickstarter game") i was really impressed about it.

 

Could be also, for example, when u kill someone. Is not the same die with a sword breaking ur head that with an arrow, or an acid or frozen spell! I like also different movementes when u kill someone xD

 

In the last update the people of Obsidian wrote:

 

"Dynamic environment integration - Animated objects, interactive objects, ambient visual effects, water, dynamic lights and shadows -- all of these elements can be featured even within a "2D" world. Our goal is to strike a good balance between visual fidelity, performance (including memory on disk), and the amount of time environment artists have to spend setting up their areas. We prefer dynamic solutions that are relatively easy to author, as we want our environment artists to maximize their efficiency."

Edited October 28, 2012 by Briche

[Osvir]

If they can make every wooden structure the element of "Wood" (mechanically, in their creation tools) and that there's a "check/roll" if the wood start burning when you cast a fire spell, that'd be awesome. With massive consequences if you do it in a village (Getting yourself exiled, hunted, infamous etc. etc.)

[Frisk]

Not realistic for items that are parts of the (pre-rendered) background. Doable for items that might be implemented as "placeables" - such objects can be removed, or replaced with destroyed versions of themselves.

 

I don't imagine this will be done/doable except maybe in a few cases where this serves the plot.

[Aoyagi]

Considering the technical realization of how the world is rendered, I really doubt there will be any nonscripted environment destruction/interaction. I didn't miss it in any other game before, be it something newer (NWN2, AP, Two Worlds, DA:O, etc.) or older (Fallout, IWD, etc.), so I chose "I really don't care".

 

Diablo 3 (A.K.A. 'DiAuction 3') and Grim Dawn (which I can't wait for) are action RPGs based on combat, rewarding killing and the feeling of destruction. It's incomparable to PE.

 

And again, I say yes for violence, but no for long 'movie like' killing moves, combos or other modern action elements.

[OldRPG'sAreGood]

I'd prefer if the enviroment would be altered by quests or some such "solid" events. For example in Fallout 2 there was a quest where you blew an outhouse and after that was done, that portion of the town had **** all over it. So instead of slinging a fireball at some random wooden cabin and having it burn down, we'd have a quests which may or may not result into destroyed enviroments.

[Nerei]

While it is possible to mark areas on the map as and spawn flame effects there should it be hit by fire, it will still look rather silly when the fire goes out ( which would usually be by consuming all fuel) and there is no trace of the fire having raged here maybe 20 minutes ago. Being hunted for burning down a village when the village is still in pristine condition to me would just be silly.

 

One option is making all flammable items 3D models, that way it is fairly easy to "change" them, just replace the texture or the entire model. However the risk then is the 3D models standing out being quite low detail compared to the extremely detailed background (I would not be surprised if rendering them could take hours). If done right though it could work for a limited selection of flammable objects. It has to be done carefully as burning a chair next to pile of firewood that cannot "burn" would again just look silly.

 

If you take the promo picture posted during the Kickstarter there is just about no way to make a fire there look believable except through making multiple renderings and a lot of overlayers to apply to the map to simulate the fire raging or burnt patches. Having all the trees made as 3D models with the level of detail in those pictures would break the back of pretty much any computer.

 

If it could be done well, I would find it very interesting, but the resources required to do that would likely be way too much to be worth it. As a half complete solution I would just say skip it.

For games like these changes are probably best done more or less off stage (which would pretty much have to be quest/event triggered) and that part of the map supplied with an overlayer or just sticking to effect like torching the barrels in Icewind Dale 2 at the Shaengarne. Those could be done and should not be too demanding.

Edited October 28, 2012 by Nerei

[Angrenost]

I would really like to see destructable and otherwise more manipulatable environments in a fantasy RPG, if some have done it I haven't played it. Though I don't expect it to fit into the design or scope of this game it'd bring a lot of depth and variety into a game.

[teknoman2]

it would be fun but not applicable in this particular game. however i could see it happen in DA3 that uses the frostbite 2 engine.

[Osvir]

There should totally be a quest, though, wherein you can burn down a village or save it from burning down (Dragon and/or Bandits?)

[quechn1tlan]

Two words: Jagged Alliance 2. Well, three words, technically. A 2d isometric game where you could destroy fences, walls and so on. Really enjoyed the tactical opportunities it provided.

[Nerei]

6 words: Jagged alliance 2 uses tiled maps

Tiles allow each individual part to be replaced when a certain condition is met (like them burning or being blown up)

The preview shots we have from PE so far is not tiled and thus that is not possible.

[quechn1tlan]

6 words: Jagged alliance 2 uses tiled maps

Tiles allow each individual part to be replaced when a certain condition is met (like them burning or being blown up)

The preview shots we have from PE so far is not tiled and thus that is not possible.

 

AFAIK they are going for ToEE style where they place 3d objects on prerendered backgrounds. So, this is entirely possible.

[Nerei]

6 words: Jagged alliance 2 uses tiled maps

Tiles allow each individual part to be replaced when a certain condition is met (like them burning or being blown up)

The preview shots we have from PE so far is not tiled and thus that is not possible.

 

AFAIK they are going for ToEE style where they place 3d objects on prerendered backgrounds. So, this is entirely possible.

 

Actually with the 3D models it could very well be practically impossible, but I will get to that.

With 2D it is possible, just not very practical.

The nature of tilesets is their repeating nature. The nature of IE game maps as a whole is their non-repeating nature (at least for overland maps even if they reuse models for more than one map. They reuse building interior images quite a bit though so they are an exception)

 

In games like ToEE they prerender just about everything (walls, chairs, tables etc.) as one image (or potentially a few depending on design) with a few overlaying images/3D models.

A tiled system is (usually) a flat background (usually a mosaic of smaller images or potentially a plane with texture "painted" on) with a large collection of images on top assembled to look like something. This makes for a noticeable difference. This is a bit general but you get the idea.

 

The actual 2D/3D placeables on an IE/ToEE style map is just things like doors etc (parts that can move or disappear without affecting the rest of the landscape), the rest are part of one image.

You could make everything 2D placeables sure, but most would still need to be rendered individually due to lights/angles etc. Look at the overland maps from Icewind dale II, there is hardly any repeating areas (going by lights and angles, not reuse of models).

You also need more memory as we move from one big image to the same sized image with a ton of smaller images on top of it.

 

Take a look at the Kickstarter picture, pretty much everything there is unique and thus would have to be rendered as individual pieces, both in a whole and a burnt/broken state. If that picture is any reference to how the finished game will be that is a pretty substantial increase in workload.

 

 

Back to 3D models. The real problem with 3D meshes is the quality, higher quality means more polygons and the preview picture use very high quality meshes. It is the same story with textures.

Real time rendering in a game engine also means some tools are less usable. Many things in a pre-rendered scene can be made using scripts rather than actual meshes. Trees is a perfect example. For real time rendering you pretty much need to translate it to a mesh though.

The script handling a 2M polygon tree can go from a few kilobyte in size in script format to something like a 5Mb when translated to a mesh.

 

As mentioned the models they used in the kickstarter picture is very high in polygon count. Each tree mesh could easily have over 50K polygons each. Even a few of these trees in a scene with lights, shadows etc. being rendered realtime and your computer will start to have problems, add 40 more and it will die!

From what I know it takes hours to render each of the images for a project like this. They actually add details manually post-rendering to prevent it from being even longer, I think their words was "weeks".

Making the kickstarter picture as a realtime rendering with the methods they use is not really possible with the computers we have today.

 

edit: yes on a small scale you could break few things like 3D doors or barrels but as a whole making noticeable changes on the map is not possible with 3D

Edited October 28, 2012 by Nerei

[LadyCrimson]

I have no clue on the technical possibilities, but I do like being able to smash some objects in the name of hunting for treasure, or quest objectives. It's fun. But too much destruction or item manipulation in a game can just get in the way/be annoying.

 

Example: in the old top-down view game Nox, every freakin' chair, table, thing in a room could be moved by pushing on it with your character. In theory this was kinda cool, but in effect what often happened was your character would get stuck on constant moving objects as you tried to fight or make your way through narrow rooms/corridors/tunnels. I don't want to have to push past/destroy every meaningless object in a room just to get by.

 

But, of course, at least some crates must be smashable. It's just not a real game without some breakable crates.

[quechn1tlan]

@ Nerei

A long informative technical post that, however, doesen't disprove my point. By no means I imply that every object should be a different "object" and thus be calculated independently. But in some interview they stated that trees are likely to be that kind of separate objects. So i'm guessing it won't be too hard to dinamically change a tree into a stump after it is hit by an axe per se. Same goes with let's say a barn, where you can make a hole in the wall if you so desire.

 

Making whole environment responsive is indeed close to impossible. Like every chair or a rock. But in a few places that it matters in a tactical sense - I think it wouldn't be that hard. Well, I'm no engineer and maybe I'm wrong and even this would require processing capabilities beyond modern home technology, but I stroungly doubt it.

[Frisk]

Making whole environment responsive is indeed close to impossible. Like every chair or a rock. But in a few places that it matters in a tactical sense - I think it wouldn't be that hard. Well, I'm no engineer and maybe I'm wrong and even this would require processing capabilities beyond modern home technology, but I stroungly doubt it.

 

As I said earlier - if an "object" on the screen is a part of the pre-rendered background, this is just not going to happen. Of course, not all objects are going to be pre-rendered - some will be displayed dynamically, and can be destroyed or moved around at will. The most obvious examples are of course the characters and monsters. If you chop a monster to pieces, it will presumably disappear, probably leaving a corpse behind.

 

There is in principle no difference between that and chopping a tree to pieces to leave a stub behind. So, if it becomes necessary for plot reasons to allow the players to chop down a particular tree, that is easy enough to do.

 

This is not going to apply to every single "object" you see in the world - most of them will simply be a part of the pre-rendered background (or one of the pre-rendered layers - i suspect Obsidian might go for multi-layer pre-rendering to allow the characters to pass either in front of or behind "objects" on the screen)

 

So, in short. If destroying objects in the environment will serve some purpose, it will be possible....but I think there is virtually no chance it will be supported in general.

[Skapanza]

This seems like something that, while it would be interesting, would suck up hours of work that I would prefer to see dedicated to enhancing character interaction, developing story and dialogue, and creating interesting areas, weapons, armor, and monsters.

 

I'm not a big fan of shooting a fireball inside of a saw mill and not seeing everything burn to the ground, but I understand why it's typically left out of the game. Games that do make accommodations for this sort of thing (Diablo III is mentioned as an example) have glaring deficiencies in other areas.

[Nerei]

@ Nerei

A long informative technical post that, however, doesen't disprove my point. By no means I imply that every object should be a different "object" and thus be calculated independently. But in some interview they stated that trees are likely to be that kind of separate objects. So i'm guessing it won't be too hard to dinamically change a tree into a stump after it is hit by an axe per se. Same goes with let's say a barn, where you can make a hole in the wall if you so desire.

 

Making whole environment responsive is indeed close to impossible. Like every chair or a rock. But in a few places that it matters in a tactical sense - I think it wouldn't be that hard. Well, I'm no engineer and maybe I'm wrong and even this would require processing capabilities beyond modern home technology, but I stroungly doubt it.

 

 

I know they want to have trees animated (swaying in the wind) with birds etc. That alone could simply be done using an animated background or animated image placed on top of the background. They might just make them in the same style that games like skyrim does it, that would allow more interaction. However looking at the kickstarter picture it looks like they are made with fractal procedure scripts. That does not make it impossible, but quite resource intensive.

I might be wrong but that is what my experience with them and comparing them to the pictures of such trees in my textbooks tell me.

 

The high quality of the picture they have posted and the way things are made in ToEE also hints at by far the majority of items being static or at lest if you can interact with it, it will be in 2D which is somewhat limited.

Naturally that is not to say all have to be. Chests, crates, barrels and maybe other furniture could very well be made to be destructible but I would not expect to be able to casually blast holes in buildings or walls. The quality of the pictures they have posted pretty much means such objects would be 2D and images and thus any actions would have to be pre-planned. Their limited budget and time is a limitation to what they can do in that department.

 

Odds are that except for very simple things like chests, barrels and other stuff you might break for phat lewt you will only be able to break things when the plot calls for it. Pretty much like it was in the IE games.

[quechn1tlan]

@ Nerei

A long informative technical post that, however, doesen't disprove my point. By no means I imply that every object should be a different "object" and thus be calculated independently. But in some interview they stated that trees are likely to be that kind of separate objects. So i'm guessing it won't be too hard to dinamically change a tree into a stump after it is hit by an axe per se. Same goes with let's say a barn, where you can make a hole in the wall if you so desire.

 

Making whole environment responsive is indeed close to impossible. Like every chair or a rock. But in a few places that it matters in a tactical sense - I think it wouldn't be that hard. Well, I'm no engineer and maybe I'm wrong and even this would require processing capabilities beyond modern home technology, but I stroungly doubt it.

 

 

I know they want to have trees animated (swaying in the wind) with birds etc. That alone could simply be done using an animated background or animated image placed on top of the background. They might just make them in the same style that games like skyrim does it, that would allow more interaction. However looking at the kickstarter picture it looks like they are made with fractal procedure scripts. That does not make it impossible, but quite resource intensive.

I might be wrong but that is what my experience with them and comparing them to the pictures of such trees in my textbooks tell me.

 

The high quality of the picture they have posted and the way things are made in ToEE also hints at by far the majority of items being static or at lest if you can interact with it, it will be in 2D which is somewhat limited.

Naturally that is not to say all have to be. Chests, crates, barrels and maybe other furniture could very well be made to be destructible but I would not expect to be able to casually blast holes in buildings or walls. The quality of the pictures they have posted pretty much means such objects would be 2D and images and thus any actions would have to be pre-planned. Their limited budget and time is a limitation to what they can do in that department.

 

Odds are that except for very simple things like chests, barrels and other stuff you might break for phat lewt you will only be able to break things when the plot calls for it. Pretty much like it was in the IE games.

 

Having thought about it a bit more I'm inclined to agree, since it kinda slipped my mind that here, buildings will probably be separate areas and not a "box" on top of the ground where you could casually enter.

[Shadenuat]

Barrels and even some stuff like wardrums and towers in IWD2 probably were handled like monsters (they even had circles around them) and two sprite sets - "alive" and "destructed". As they are making characters in 3D in PE (?), I'm sure it's possible to create some sort of destructable objects, like containers, doors and maybe even parts of walls which are not pre-rendered?

[AGX-17]

Why would it be funny? I have never heard of sociopaths who derive their pleasure from destroying plant life (pyromaniacs are in it for the fire, not some psychosexual obsession with plant torture.) This warrants further psychological and sociological investigation. I DO remember reports out of 4chan of a Brazilian with a sexual attraction to houses, but that's neither here nor there.

 

And I thought it was already crystal clear that Obsidian and its people are renowned for their writing and game design, not for copying the Red Faction FPS games. What good are these two giant huge cities if the player can just "lol i bloed up teh citiez"? This all sounds very... Call of Duty.

Edited October 28, 2012 by AGX-17

[Elerond]

Barrels and even some stuff like wardrums and towers in IWD2 probably were handled like monsters (they even had circles around them) and two sprite sets - "alive" and "destructed". As they are making characters in 3D in PE (?), I'm sure it's possible to create some sort of destructable objects, like containers, doors and maybe even parts of walls which are not pre-rendered?

 

Yes it is possible to create destructable objects that are not pre-rendered, but it is also possible to create destructable objects that are pre-rendered, as you only need make destructable object different image from baground (a sprite). When you have destructable object as different image you can do another version of that image where object is destroyed and swap destroyed version of object to be shown when object's statuts is destroyed or you can do even destory animation where you have multiple images that illustrate destruction of the object and in game you show them as series of images in short period of time and it looks like object explodes or something like that (this way you quite easilly do trees that look that wind moves them or water which looks that it flows). But artists workload is added by every object which you want be destroyable, moveable and etc. able, which is reson why I think that such objects should be quite rare unless artist have too much freetime .

[Tychoxi]

yeah, I know we won't get destructible terrain, or something major, but furniture and stuff like that could be done rather easily if they were so inclined. If they manage to make it look good, I think it would be rather cool (I don't mean you going around bashing everything with your sword, just with fireballs and other explosions like OP says!)

 

In any case I DO hope we get destroyable doors, I want to kick people's doors down.

[Joukehainen]

To be honest, PE doesn't look like the kind of game that would have destructible environments. It just doesn't mesh well - it's not a lego-type world (referring to the design engine) or an fps/action game, it's an isometric RPG with beautifully hand-crafted background environments. Don't see how destructible environments would be terribly conducive to this style of design or gameplay - outside of barrels, chests, doors, etc, that is. Those kinds of "small" objects that are destructible in almost every game.

 

Outside of that I could see the kind of environment destruction we saw in BG/IWD, that is, an occasional cave-in or home/hut being burned down.

 

But in the sense of "destructible environment" like, say, Minecraft or Lego Star Wars or Worms, I don't see it happening (or necessary).

[rjshae]

But in the sense of "destructible environment" like, say, Minecraft or Lego Star Wars or Worms, I don't see it happening (or necessary).

Yep. Too much effort required for not enough payoff, even though it's still fun to think about the possibilities.