Destruction Answers

[Deverz]

So the promised Q&A is here

Up on the main site now http://esforces.com/news/destruction-answers

 

[IceX]

I enjoyed the whole interview, but dalte's video is way cooler.

 

[pumadace2000]

This is not important to your work in any way, but after testing is done, depending on the results, would you guys consider showcasing some of the destruction physics in video form for us to worship for a couple of weeks... and then claim it's footage from Black & White 2, or Red Faction, and send hateful mails to you. Well I'm sure there is only a slight chance of that last part happening.

 

[SkyLimits]

So the promised Q&A is here

Up on the main site now http://esforces.com/news/destruction-answers

You guys should do more stuff like this.

 

[Z Power]

This is not important to your work in any way, but after testing is done, depending on the results, would you guys consider showcasing some of the destruction physics in video form for us to worship for a couple of weeks... and then claim it's footage from Black & White 2, or Red Faction, and send hateful mails to you. Well I'm sure there is only a slight chance of that last part happening.

Also, lol at the Dalte video.

 

[Twigsnapper]

is it bad that when I went through the Thesis just looked for spelling mistakes along with information. Found only a few ^_^

 

[troutjerky101]

My dragon ball wish option was a cool suggestion!!! *Blushes*

 

[Plakman]

1 last question about this destruction.
Even with some settings turned off, how will a game handle ~10 players blowing things up and killing each other?

That totally depends on your computer. My computer handles it just fine and in time most computers will. However this is definitely a feature that requires some extra power. We will try to find a way to balance it.

My remaining question is... what computer does he have?
just to know a reference of just how powerfull hardware this technology needs

 

[Ramunas]

Nice, nice. I have some questions left which probably could be discussed on teamspeak more.

Binding physics engine on such old game engine is amazing, like I've said this to Raven.

With such strong physics engine implemented it should be considered for procedural character creation -- destruction of armor, cloth and etc. I know this would require a lot of hours of work, but would bring the unseen fruits (e.g. procedural character with armor, transformations can be handled via morph targets/vertex animations [but not sure if engine supports that], armor blow up via physics or pieces approach, heh I know it sounds suicidal, but it's possible and would mean a lot of assets remastering).

Sadly I couldn't finish reading all the thesis last night, but going to finish this evening. Thesis should be published on indie/mod dev. forums since it's informative about approaches and contains good samples with explanations of how the methods work. It's very simplified in terms of scientific papers (e.g. SIGGRAPH) which sometimes take much more time just to understand something.

Congrats on good progress.

 

[IFlip92]

Oh man that red font....is burning my eyes. Great FAQ though.

PS: Will you update this FAQ as you conclude the tests mentioned in there?

 

[FalconFury]

I wonder what our friend Raven would like to add flipping objects. - oh, he already planned that. I didn't know. I really thank Raven for his ideas. That shows the improvements of his work.

For everyone, if you guys have any great ideas to share with the team, that will be really great.

Question: Is there going to be any characters added on those map? its like the one from the Z_Sword map the supreme kai world when the guy walks around in a circle and when you're trying to interrogate with him he doesn't respond but keeps on moving.

 

[Grega]

With such strong physics engine implemented it should be considered for procedural character creation -- destruction of armor, cloth and etc. I know this would require a lot of hours of work, but would bring the unseen fruits (e.g. procedural character with armor, transformations can be handled via morph targets/vertex animations [but not sure if engine supports that], armor blow up via physics or pieces approach, heh I know it sounds suicidal, but it's possible and would mean a lot of assets remastering).

No. ESF is heavy on the CPU already, because its bound to 1 core. The thing is, that this destruction is based on Nvidia technology. Meaning only Nvidia cards can run it though the GPU, while other cards will have to run it off the CPU. If we can not get a guaranteed performance all round, we will not be including this feature. And adding extra stuff to that is a no no.

Besides while this works for our maps since we use our own model formats, for the player characters we still use .mdl files which are pretty much skeletal based and as all HL models have an animation separation at the waist.

 

[Tenzo]

Oh man.... Dalte's video at the end was the ultimate troll.
I was totally expecting to see a short in-game video.
Anyway.... nice Q&A session.

 

[macdaddymario]

1 last question about this destruction.
Even with some settings turned off, how will a game handle ~10 players blowing things up and killing each other?

That totally depends on your computer. My computer handles it just fine and in time most computers will. However this is definitely a feature that requires some extra power. We will try to find a way to balance it.

My remaining question is... what computer does he have?
just to know a reference of just how powerfull hardware this technology needs

""Mastasurf": I know he's running a i7. I think he has 32GB ram and a beefy video card." I asked, this was as close as we could guess without Raven actually being in the TS.

 

[RobiZ]

""Mastasurf": I know he's running a i7. I think he has 32GB ram and a beefy video card." I asked, this was as close as we could guess without Raven actually being in the TS.

That doesn't mean it's recommended for max quality though

 

[macdaddymario]

That doesn't mean it's recommended for max quality though

Reread that post please. He wanted a refrence, and asked what kind of PC Raven had. He was given an answer.

 

[RobiZ]

Reread that post please. He wanted a refrence, and asked what kind of PC Raven had. He was given an answer.

sure np

 

[macdaddymario]

After talking to Raven, the destruction scale isn't liner, so it's hard to have a proper answer for the original question as to what kind of system you would need. His specs are:

i7 @ 3.9GHz

GTX480

and 24GB of RAM.

This isn't what will be required to run the game, as I run it with:

Q8400 @ 2.6GHz

GTX 295

4GB DDR2 RAM.

I can tell you that, on my system.. I get on average 40-ish fps without destruction, with 5 or 6 bots or so flying around doing whatever. Maybe that'll better answer the original question about what kind of system one could expect to need.

 

[Raven]

Thing is I can't really tell you what system exactly will run it exactly in what FPS eventually. Check out the end of my thesis there are some rough statistics as on how many msecs it takes for how many actively calculated chunks. Eventually this has to be balanced and it is partially also up to the mapper.

 

[Z Power]

Thanks for all the answers Raven. That thesis is boss.