Damage model

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The damage model is a model from the field of computer game development that describes the continuous damage to an object in a computer game .

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In computer games in which objects can be damaged or destroyed, the question arises of how this damage is visually represented and how this damage is stored internally in the computer's main memory .

The simplest solution to this problem is not to use a damage model, as was especially the case in early games. In this sense, there were no damaged objects and destroyed objects were simply removed from the display. In current games, this is sometimes the case in some car racing games such as B. Gran Turismo 4 the case in which the vehicles are not visibly damaged despite the collision detected by the game. This can have different causes:

  • The real automaker whose vehicle is used in the game didn't want their vehicles to be seen damaged in the game.
  • The level of difficulty of the game should not be increased.
  • The game developer found it too time-consuming to install a damage model.

Another simple variant is to record the degree of destruction with a numerical value, e.g. B. a percentage. Here, the damaged object is not visually changed, but somewhere in the representation is the reproduction of the numerical value, e.g. B. as a bar chart .

In earlier 2D games there was also the option of replacing the graphics of an object with one or more graphics in several stages in order to reflect the ongoing damage to the object.

In modern games, in which the entire environment and all moving objects are modeled in 3D , there are two solutions:

  • A physics engine calculates the effect of external influences on the object to be calculated and deforms its modeling accordingly. The use of a physics engine can therefore be recognized by the individual destruction caused by the damaged objects. This variant is usually computationally expensive, since the 3D model must be changed and the graphics engine must be able to reproduce every possible change in the 3D model.
  • An alternative is therefore to have precalculated 3D models ready for objects of the same type (e.g. vehicles). If damage occurs, the entire model or parts of the model will be replaced by the precalculated version. This type of damage model can therefore be recognized by the repetitive nature of the damage. Is z. If, for example, a car hit the side of the door in a racing game, the dent has the same shape every time.