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Quick start

From an empty project to a wall that breaks, in about ten minutes. Each step says what you should see when it worked, because most failures in a destruction setup are silent and look like "nothing happened".

1. Install

From Fab. Get Grid Destruction on its Fab page. In the Epic Games Launcher, open Library → Fab Library, find Grid Destruction and click Install to Engine for your engine, 5.7 or 5.8. Then, in your project, open Edit → Plugins, search for Grid Destruction, tick it and restart the editor.

Into one project. Create a Plugins/ folder in the project root, and put the plugin at Plugins/GridDestruction/, so that this folder directly contains GridDestruction.uplugin. For a C++ project, right-click the .uproject → Generate Visual Studio project files, open the .sln, pick Development Editor and build.

Worked when

The editor opens and GridDestructibleWall appears in the Place Actors panel.

2. Play the showcase

The plugin ships a showcase level, so you can see every material break before you set anything up.

  1. In the Content Browser, open Settings → Show Plugin Content.
  2. Open Plugins → GridDestruction Content → Demo → L_GridDestruction_Showcase and press Play.

  3. You play a third-person UE Mannequin with four weapons:

    key action
    WASD move
    Space jump
    left mouse button fire; hold for the cutter; throw the grenade
    1 / 2 / 3 / 4 rifle / breaching charge / cutter / grenade
    mouse wheel cycle weapons
    R reset every wall
    H show or hide the network panel

The level has every shipped material, built-up walls, doors and windows with glass, piers carrying a beam, a room with a roof, a cantilever, stacked walls and a corner of two materials, each one labelled. Every wall in it is an ordinary GridDestructibleWall with a GP_* preset, so select one to see how it is set up.

3. Your first wall

  1. Drag GridDestructibleWall into your level.
  2. In its Details panel, set Preset to one of the shipped presets, for example GP_Brick (in /GridDestruction/Presets/).
  3. Click Apply Preset.

Worked when

The Output Log shows two lines like these, with your wall's own numbers:

ApplyPresetToGridData [GridDestructibleWall_0]: preset='GP_Brick' grid 16x12, cell 25.0cm, ...
Grid initialized: 16x12 cells, 25cm each. ... HasAuthority=1, cells=192

Apply Preset is not optional

A preset is stamped onto the wall. A value edited on the preset reaches a placed wall only when you press Apply Preset on that wall, and a value typed on the wall's own component is overwritten the next time you press it. This is the most common reason a setting "does nothing". GridDestruction.CheckPresets lists every wall that is out of date.

4. Break it without a weapon

Press Play, select the wall in the World Outliner, and use the buttons in its Details panel:

button what it is for
DealTestDamage(Location, PeakDepthCm, RadiusCm, Face) one hit, precisely placed
DealTestDamageRandom(PeakDepthCm) a hit somewhere, to prove the pipe works
DealTestBlast(Location, Depth, Radius, Lobes, Raggedness, Seed, Face) a ragged crater instead of a circle

RadiusCm = 0 is a bullet; above 0 is a blast. Pass a non-zero Seed to DealTestBlast and the same crater comes back every time.

Worked when

A dent appears, then a hole, and debris falls from it.

5. Check it in multiplayer

In the Play dropdown set Number of Players = 2 and Net Mode = Play As Listen Server. Damage the wall from the server window: the hole appears on the client too. Then type in either window's console:

GridDestruction.HashCells

GRIDHASH [Server/PIE] WORLD: hash=0x4B10D8F2 over 3 wall(s).
GRIDHASH [Client/PIE] WORLD: hash=0x4B10D8F2 over 3 wall(s).
GRIDHASH VERDICT: MATCH across 2 worlds.

MATCH means both machines hold the same cell data.

6. Connect your weapons

One call where your game already knows "this shot hit that surface": Apply Grid Damage on the wall's GridDataComponent. It works from Blueprint, needs no GameplayTags and no GAS, and must run on the server. The Blueprint API page has the details and the tag-table alternative; it also has step-by-step wiring for Lyra Starter Game.

Where next

  • Setup: openings, building tools, floors and ceilings, layered walls, saved damage.
  • Surface presets: every number per material, and the order to tune them in.
  • Damage material: make the shipped material use your textures.
  • Effects and sounds: what the wall fires and how to replace it.
  • Troubleshooting: console commands and the symptoms people actually run into.