So... Anybody here know how to do a side scroller with destructible terrain? The idea of the game is that you have to get through each level using the level as a weapon to crush and burn enemies and such, but the problem is with how each atom of stuff interacts with each other. So take for example, I have an atom of water above an atom of stone, and I remove the atom of stone. What is the best way for the water to know it is meant to fall? Should I be doing grounded checks for EVERY SINGLE PIXEL ON SCREEN every frame? I can;t be sure, but if I had to guess I would say that would be fps killing. I could, of coarse, make my map out of a rectangle of nodes, similar to a 2d doubly linked list, and each atom class extends from this node, but without an array of atoms to check against while moving a larger object, such as our hero, things will get tricks. I could, of corse, have an array of nodes that not only link to each other, but fit into an array, so when they speak to each other and decide they have to move or change, they tell the class holding the array of nodes to update them, but something about this screams bad code.
I can think of several ways to do this, but none of them seem to be correct, and this is one of those things that unlike AI or difficulty curve, if I don't get this right the first time, it will be a mess of fixing things later. What is the 'right' way?