This one looks so good it barely needs a plot, the physics alone are already very satisfying. We've previously featured Luke Mitchell, also known as hoahluke, for his Christmas tree and planetary-scale terrain projects, and now the developer has shared a WIP of a game where you "renovate" houses in ridiculously destructive ways.
According to the developer, nothing here is pre-fractured: every break is computed dynamically at runtime. Each mesh is assigned a "destruction material" that defines shattering patterns, audio effects, mass, and other properties. PhysX physics engine handles most of the heavy lifting, but the system relies on several optimizations, including careful memory allocation, Unity's Advanced Mesh APIs, minimizing the use of physics joints, and spreading expensive calculations across multiple frames when the scene gets busy.
Luke's latest additions are a laser that can cut through almost anything and a black hole grenade that pulls debris into a swirling vortex. This game is called Open Plan. If you're interested, head over to the official website for more details and more videos.
Earlier this year, Rune Skovbo Johansen published an amazing video and blog post on an erosion technique for terrain. Luke later ported it to Unity and released the code:
