Making Glass Break

Exploding Glass... What?

You can simulate real exploding glass in UnrealEd very easily. I will explain this step by step. It is a lot like exploding walls.

Note: The BreakingGlass actor used in this guide is only available in UT. In UT2003 Emitters can be used instead to create far better glass breaking effects. See the [Breaking Glass] section of  EmitterExamples for a tutorial about that.

Show Me!

1. Find a place you want your glass to go. (Hopefully a windowframe)
2. Create a mover that is 2 units thick and 2 units thinner than your area you wish to put it in. Set its key 1 to outside the level and key 0 in its normal position.
3. Texture the mover with something glassish. There is good textures in the Coret package. Make sure you set it to translucent in the Surface Flags (UT).
4. Add an actor of the class BreakingGlass in the middle of your glass mover.
5. Set the mover's event to match the BreakingGlass actor's tag, e.g. 'glass'.
6. Set the following properties of the mover:
   • bDamageTriggered = true
   • bTriggerOnlyOnce = true
   • DamageThreshold = 1
   • MoveTime = 0
   • InitialState = TriggerToggle

Alright so you're done now. When you shoot the glass mover with anything that does over 1 damage (basically everything) then it will instantly move out of the level and trigger the actor to display glass shattering and making noise. The minus 2 units of glass is used to avoid BSP holes when you can see through the edges of the glass. (A lot of mappers forget this and it shows up)

Dark Pulse: That's great if you want glass that only breaks once. But for those of you who want it to respawn, try this:

1. Set the following properties of the mover:
   • StayOpenTime = 30-60 (whatever, actually. This is the number of seconds, so 225 = 3m45s)
   • InitialState = TriggerOpenedTime

On the BreakingGlass Actor, set the following:

1. Inside the Effects menu of the BreakingGlass
   • bOnlyTriggerable = TRUE
   • bTranslucentGlass = TRUE

And there you have it. The Glass should respawn according to however long you set The StayOpenTime of the Mover.

Small Problem...

Flashpoint Black: In A map I've been working on, I have three windows right next to each other that I want to be independently breakable... and it works fine when shooting them with a weapon without splash damage, but when the weapon has splash damamge, take the Rocketlauncher (Eightball), the window that was shot breaks, but the one next to it doesn't, even when shot again.

Dark Pulse: I had a similar problem. However, upon examination, I noticed something funny: Both windows would explode WHEN I SHOT THEM FROM A CERTAIN SIDE. As silly as it sounds, Try Rotating that window 180 degrees on the X Axis. It solved my problem.

W0RF: Another solution is to set a Damage Threshhold for triggering the breaking glass. That is what I used to make breaking glass in UT; it should apply here as well. That way, all your triggers won't go off at the drop of a hat.

Category Mapping
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