I finally got around to implementing all the streetside/city props into the game. I decided to take my time and write a generic object system.

There are 5 types of "objects" as far as the game is concerned...all of which are handled by this new system, so I can get rid of the old ones. It's also quite generalized so I can re-use it for my next X games.

- Items which can be picked up and used by the player (guns, drugs, etc.).
- Dynamic debris...which is newspapers, bags, paper, cups, small debris that is spawned around the player and has a wind impulse applied to it to simulate a dirty city. These are not synced in multiplayer, and are just a visual thing and don't effect vehicles, characters or other objects.
- Streetside objects...things like fire hydrants, newspaper dispensers, trashcans...
- Plastic cones ( yes they are their own type of object )
- Alley props...things like cartons, crates, dumpsters, garbage bags, etc.

Each type of object has it's own logic associated with it, but all objects (can) have physics associated with them....which brings me to the point of this post...creating random piles of 1000s of objects!

Yea...this is the 3rd time I've been around this stuff with the same game, and I'm much happier with the results for the 3rd and final pass.

Here is a little 3MB .wmv video showing how it looks in action...


Click here to download PropPhysics2.wmv (3MB)

[Edit: Ok now that I look at the video again, it's way too short...I'll have a longer one soon, I gotta focus back on the AI for now so it might be a few days.]

I unfortunately had to delete all my old videos showing the prop stress testing...so I figured I'd put a new one up :-D

There are only about 3,000 objects in these screens/videos, I've tested the limit up to about 10,000, but 3k should be enough for any environment, assuming 500 of them will be dynamic, I don't think there will be more than 2k streetside objects in a single city.

Also, all this stuff works over multiplayer, the objects are synchronized over the network between clients.

Weeee!


Dropping boxes on cars ;-)


Yes, It's a lot of fun XD


Random screenshot of a the speedster...


Plain white texture on the objects, showing the HDR lighting/bloom.


I added a way to visually debug the PhysX scene...


Also I've got a new female civilian character model in...


I'll have more updates soon...next update will probably focus on the AI work I've been doing.

- Danny