How would one design & test this?
How would one sanely design alien or futurstic looking vehicles?
It's very cool, nonetheless, but imagine if there had to be 2 people riding this thing, part of the gameplay, and now the truck looks so damaged, that placing these two characters inside would produce even bigger mess.
So what you do - you disable the truck collision for this case? You place the characters anyways?
Or just deal with a progression break, in now what would be much difficult ways...
Simple. Make two game modes: Indestructible Cabin mode and Hardcore mode. In hardcore mode, if you get into an accident and the cab happens to crush your legs, you have to finish the rest of the game in a wheelchair.
I don't see how this is any different from the thousand other ways that players can fail a game challenge. OK, you broke your car. Either go on without it or load a previous saved game.
Of course, if you're talking about hand-holding, heavily scripted games (like CoD), then you'd only apply these physics in scripted sequences anyway.
It's very cool, nonetheless, but imagine if there had to be 2 people riding this thing, part of the gameplay, and now the truck looks so damaged, that placing these two characters inside would produce even bigger mess.
So what you do - you disable the truck collision for this case? You place the characters anyways?
Or just deal with a progression break, in now what would be much difficult ways...