Physics Discussion

I'm new to Construct and I've been playing around with physics behaviors on different objects to see what kind of things can be done with it, but I've run into a lot of problems. I'm not really asking for anyone here to actually solve the problems for me but just tell me if it's possible or if I'm working in the completely wrong direction here.

The first thing I thought of when messing around with physics objects, is if larger objects could be broken down into smaller objects. For instance in a platformer game, The character runs around as normal, runs across a rickety wooden bridge etc, but if he falls too heavily on the wooden bridge, it breaks apart into smaller fragments of wood with phyiscs behavior.

The first thing I tried was simply having the bridge destroyed on collision if the player was falling and then spawning the other physics objects. The problem was, if the bridge was set to solid so the player could run over it, it wouldn't destroy on collision. If I removed the solid attribute it would break and spawn the other objects but the bridge was then pretty worthless because it couldn't be used as a bridge. I had other similar ideas that could be built from this ie pushing a heavy object off an edge and it breaking up into smaller objects.

The next thing I was wondering about is if objects could be connected together to create larger objects, that could then be broken apart again. For instance connecting four paddles together to create a windmill, but if one of the paddles was hit with a heavy object or something it would break apart, but leave the other three paddles intact rotating around a central point. This is completely beyond my comprehension and I wouldn't know where to even start doing something like this

Anyway, don't anybody waste your time trying to solve these problems for me because it's obviously beyond my understanding right now even if I did know how to do it, but is this stuff ultimately possible? What other ideas and systems have you tried to or successfully implemented with the built in physics behavior?

The thing with the breaking bridge is actually fairly easy to fix. You were on the right track with the bridge being solid, but if you're using the platform movement you need a detector object under the player that collides with the bridge and destroys it. Collisions between platform objects and other objects don't actually register, so you need a detector.

As for the windwill idea, it's probably possible, but it would really require breakable joints to make it easier. I think David said something about adding those at some point, but I don't know when they're coming.