Hello All! I am a year 3 Computer Games Technology student and currently in the process of choosing my final year project. This, obviously, holds a significant amount of marks towards my degree grade and as such, would like to go into this with the best possible preparation. The idea that I am set on is based on destructible environments, namely a building. The following things I have rough plans for so far: *I want to create a basic G.U.I so that the user can see a building in front of them (a set distance away) whilst having some sort of firing device a-la FPS style. The user will be able to revolve around the building to choose the side and then aim with a cross hair at a specific area. *The building will have different material properties ie- Bricks, wood and glass. *The user will be able to choose different ammunition (cannon ball, 9mm bullet) to create different destructive effects on the building/material. What I want to show from all of this is how firing a certain type of projectile has different physical effects on an environment. If a cannonball hits the building I want a realistic (as possible!) portrayal of what would happen to the brick work, glass or wood that it hits. Basically I could do with some pointers for what areas of programming this sort of project would fall into and maybe some elaboration of the kind of code I’d be looking at. I'd also like to know what your thoughts are with Open GL or Direct X 9.0 to create the graphical side of this. I will be using Visual C++ and my programming skills are just out of beginner territory, I think :-p, but I am enthusiastic and willing to learn to get the best out of me and my project. Any help would be very, very much appreciated. Regards, Andy P.s. There are other things I have planned to add to the project if it lacks enough 'meat' but the above information is what I need to get started and onto bigger and better things :)

Hi,
you said you are just out of "bigginner" in c++ but how much is your physic and math skills??

Because what you involed looks very hard to me. It looks better than the half-life 2's physic engine (havok!)

Is that isnt a little bit overkill for a school project?

What I've done as last project in the game institute I went (in montreal), was a terrain with real-time level of detail, puting object on it that project shadows on a texture and fit on the ground. (Like World of Warcraft).
And a script engine to control the scene and camera path.

But nothing about that much physic! What school do you go?

If you have those physic's skills, go for it :). And do not forget to post the result !!!!

Have fun

Start small, very small. If you've never made a full game before then what you have so far seems like too big of a project, especially for one person. If you have a drive to create something you are better off taking on something you can handle and *finishing* it and polishing it until it is A+ work, rather than stretching yourself too thin and turning in an incomplete, unpolished game of B- work.

Remember that content will almost always be your bottle neck: not tech or programming features. If you decide to make all those materials and ammunition, that is just more content you will have to produce (models, textures, animations, sounds etc).

I hate to pimp myself but these are the project I did while in school:
http://www.ratfest.org/gamedev/

Start at the bottom and scroll up. I bit a little off each time and got better with each iteration. Finally by the end I was able to make the game I really wanted. Look at Heart Attack, Marble Bandits, and Space Pool for examples of making games that dont rely on lots of content. Be realistic in your limitations and work around them!

Yep your both probably right, after looking in more detail into what i would need to complete this idea thanks to your advice i have decided to look for other ideas!

I like the notion of looking more at the graphics and texturing side of programming with path finding which does interest me. I will look into this more and hopefully find something thats right for me.

Thanks for the help and Im sure you wont have heard the last of me on these forums!

Andy