Chaos Control: Making Destructible Buildings

Chaos Control: Making Destructible Buildings

Author: Sean Jamelarin
Posted on 9/15/23

   The problem:

    One of the things I found lacking in the current iteration of our game is how players can interact with buildings - after placing a building, there's little more one can do with it. In order to create more ways to prove how a player can be better than another player, I wish to implement buildings that can be destroyed by other players.

    The Solution:

    I'm currently learning how to implement the Chaos system and our custom health component to buildings in order to attain both a way to destroy buildings and a visual cue to the players to the building's destruction, rather than simply popping it out of existence. I have a feeling I'll need to create some kind of fracturing static mesh in order to get this to work, and a way to get the static mesh to fracture on command at the time of the building's destruction. I also need a way to tie the PlayerBase and BaseBarracks classes together so the current AI can target both.

Here's a brief overview of foreseen workflow:

1.
    a. find a way to get the AI to recognize both barracks and base as entities that can be attacked.
    OR
    b. Make bases fall under the building superclass, so no AI refactoring is needed.
2. Add health component and healthbars to barrack buildings.
3. Create functionality that allows barracks to fracture on destruction.

TODO:
    I'm still piecing together how to tie-in what we need from the Chaos system to what we already have, and whether or not the Chaos system would get in the way of things like pathfinding.