Red Faction: Guerrilla

This was taken from an interview with James Hague (Design Director of Red Faction: Guerrilla, which was released Jun-Sep 09) by a CVG employee (full interview available at http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=198478)

"Surely you've had to send your environmental artists back to school to understand how to build structures that work? It sounds like a completely different school of training to what was previously asked of them...

Hague: They've been through the school of hard knocks. Early on, it was a regular occurrence for buildings to get put in the game and collapse on their own, because the load-bearing columns couldn't handle the stress placed on them. Eventually the artists became self-taught structural engineers, though we've had some catastrophic bridge collapses that should make everyone glad we're not a civil engineering firm."

Another interview tells us that the team used a physics engine known as GeoMod for this purpose, but used Havok for the collisions and particles (http://www.totalvideogames.com/Red-Faction-Guerrilla/feature-12500.html)

So is seems like early adjustments of this idea of structural engineering in physics engines is already causing havoc for design artists. Could the video game industry open up to structural engineers as the worlds they build further increase in complexity? It's interesting to hear this sort of statement as it indicates that level of realism we're now attaining.

On another note, Havok Destruction (released circa April 2009)  seems to be taking a similar approach. Although the game designers work on these sort of realistic physics of buildings just so that there destruction is more realistic, it will definitely help us as we consider buildings that we'd prefer to stay in tact. From the Destruction product guide (http://www.havok.com/uploads/Havok_Destruction_Brief_10Aug09.pdf):

"[Havok Destruction] Incorporates tools specifically targeting simple and multi-material props, destructible buildings, deformable objects and believable structures [resulting in an] unprecedented level of realism for structural mechanics, graphical effects and game-level design"