Skip to content

Make a loot item breakable

A breakable item shatters into pieces when it is hit hard enough, and its value is lost for good. It takes one pre-fractured mesh and six fields on the item's DA_Loot_* Data Asset. No graph to open.

Three items ship breakable: the glass vase, the ceramic urn and the small statue. If you have not read How a run works, start there.

  • The loot Data Assets: Content/MPFriendslop/Blueprints/DataAssets/Loot/Childs/
  • The fractured meshes: Content/MPFriendslop/Meshes/Props/Loot/Debris/
  • The pieces actor: Content/MPFriendslop/Blueprints/Effects/BP_LootDebris

Before you start

You need a loot item that already works: a DA_Loot_* with a Fragility above 0, used by a loot actor. An item with Fragility at 0 never loses value, so it can never break. See Add a loot item.

Step 1, fracture the mesh

The pieces are a Chaos Geometry Collection, made once in the editor with Fracture Mode.

  1. Drag the item's SM_Loot_* mesh into any level.
  2. Select it, and switch the editor to Fracture mode.
  3. Click New. Save the Geometry Collection as GC_Loot_<Name> in Meshes/Props/Loot/Debris/.
  4. Pick Uniform. Set Min Voronoi Sites and Max Voronoi Sites to about 15 and 25.
  5. Click Fracture, then save.
  6. Delete the actor from the level. Only the asset is needed.

Step 2, fill the breaking fields

  1. Open the item's DA_Loot_*.
  2. In Settings|Breaking, tick Can Break.
  3. Set Debris Collection to your GC_Loot_<Name>.
  4. Set the two thresholds, the burst and the sound.
  5. Save.
Field What it does Shipped in DA_Loot_GlassVase
Can Break Allows the item to shatter ticked
Break Single Hit Damage The item breaks when one hit takes away this share of its condition, from 0 to 1 0.4
Break Total Damage The item breaks when its total lost condition reaches this share, from 0 to 1 0.75
Debris Burst Strength How hard the pieces are blown apart 6000
Break Sound Played where the item breaks CUE_Break_Glass
Debris Collection The fractured mesh from step 1. Leave it empty and the item simply disappears, with the sound but no pieces GC_Loot_GlassVase

The other two ship with 0.55 / 0.85 and a burst of 5000 on the urn, 0.18 / 0.6 and 3500 on the statue. Two sounds ship: CUE_Break_Glass and CUE_Break_Metal.

A hit only counts when it costs value, so the two thresholds work on top of the value fields you already set: Fragility, Impact Speed Threshold and Reference Impact Speed. A very fragile item with a low Break Single Hit Damage breaks on the first bad drop. A sturdy one with only Break Total Damage survives a few knocks and breaks on the last.

Warning

One hit can never take away more than Fragility, so a Break Single Hit Damage above Fragility never breaks the item in one hit. The total lost condition can never pass 1, so a Break Total Damage above 1 never breaks it at all. Nothing tells you: the item just takes damage and stays whole.

The pieces

When the item breaks, every player's game spawns a BP_LootDebris at its place, fills it with the Debris Collection, and blows it apart. You change these on BP_LootDebris itself, in Settings|Debris:

Field What it does Shipped
Debris Life Span Seconds before the pieces are removed 6
Burst Radius Radius of the push, in cm 150

The push moves every Chaos physics body inside Burst Radius, not only the pieces, so loot lying next to a breaking vase gets shoved. Lower Burst Radius if that bothers you.

The pieces use the LootDebris collision profile, in the Project Settings. They land on the floor and furniture, but they never push a player, never block the camera and never answer the interaction trace.

To give one item its own pieces actor, make a child of BP_LootDebris and set it as Debris Actor Class on that item's BP_LootValueComponent. The template calls Burst on it, so it must stay a child of BP_LootDebris.

Reacting to a break

Bind this on the item's BP_LootValueComponent to add your own effect, score or quest step:

Dispatcher When it fires Fires on
OnBroken The item breaks, just before it is destroyed every player

A player holding the item when it breaks simply lets go. Loot lying on the extraction trap cannot break: the trap makes it immune to damage, and a hit that costs nothing never breaks anything.

Next, put your item in the map: Place loot spawn points and loot tables.

Join the Discord