I'm wondering if this is the smartest way
by Glenn Thomas · in Torque X 2D · 09/24/2007 (3:52 am) · 2 replies
I'm wondering if I'm working harder than I should be or going in the wrong direction. So here's the deal...
I'm making a destructible city that can be completely leveled throughout gameplay but when the scene objects (buildings) are in their non destroyed states they are platforms the player can jump on. I'm using blank scene objects to create the platform collision and various properties. My idea was to bring the destructible buildings in as actors like the drill in the platformer demo but take away their movement and ability to deal damage. I was going to give them a set amount of hit points so to speak and allow them to receive damage from both the player and enemies. They would then play a death animation and be replaced by a static scene object that reflects the destroyed building.
Here's my noob questions:
1. Is that smart?
2. Would I be hurting gameplay if I made an small to medium size city that has about 25 to 50 buildings in it?
3. Should I also make my blank scene objects have actor properties so that I can kill them when the building is destroyed or is there a simpler way?
I understand that somethings can only be answered with testing and I'm willing to dig through code till I figure it out. I was just looking for advice from people who have had experience doing such things or are interested in doing such things. The ultimate goal is to create a destructible building component that can be used by the community.
Thanks for any help or advice in advance. I hope to have some concept and in game art up in a .plan real soon!
I'm making a destructible city that can be completely leveled throughout gameplay but when the scene objects (buildings) are in their non destroyed states they are platforms the player can jump on. I'm using blank scene objects to create the platform collision and various properties. My idea was to bring the destructible buildings in as actors like the drill in the platformer demo but take away their movement and ability to deal damage. I was going to give them a set amount of hit points so to speak and allow them to receive damage from both the player and enemies. They would then play a death animation and be replaced by a static scene object that reflects the destroyed building.
Here's my noob questions:
1. Is that smart?
2. Would I be hurting gameplay if I made an small to medium size city that has about 25 to 50 buildings in it?
3. Should I also make my blank scene objects have actor properties so that I can kill them when the building is destroyed or is there a simpler way?
I understand that somethings can only be answered with testing and I'm willing to dig through code till I figure it out. I was just looking for advice from people who have had experience doing such things or are interested in doing such things. The ultimate goal is to create a destructible building component that can be used by the community.
Thanks for any help or advice in advance. I hope to have some concept and in game art up in a .plan real soon!
#2
09/26/2007 (7:20 am)
Thanks alot I appreciate the advice. I'll test that out instead. I had a feeking that I was being over complicated. 
Torque Owner Thomas Buscaglia
The issue with using actors is that actors receive ticks and have some fairly complex logic (to do things like determine whether or not they're on the ground) which is unnecessary for buildings and could potentially cause slowdowns on machines with weaker CPU's (*cough* XBox 360 *cough*) if you have a ton of them in the scene.