Hey there,

I'm currently playing some Half Life 2 and I realized that boxes do not just spawn some random pieces of wood when destroyed, as in most other games, but break very realistically. It's the same with windows, when I hit them, they break exactly at the point where I hit them and pieces of glass fall out of it at that point. Or cardboard boxes kinda fold when they are hit with a crowbar.

How does this work technically? Is this scripted or is this some very special physics technique, where some information about the object is stored in a separate file?

I am perfectly aware of the fact that the Source engine is not Open Source and nobody except its developers (and those guys who stole the code once ) probably knows how this works in detail, but I don't need details, I just want to have a rough idea how it works, as I (and my colleague) would love to have something like that in a game of ours.