Quote: "Will characters go flying off in ragdoll fashion?"
One of those things I still have to look at, I have just started this stuff and there is still a lot of heavy testing to be done, but as with all things FPSC I reckon its entirely possible. The only real problem I can see straight off will be character collision with the dynamic entity's but I have a very simple idea to make even that work, will get back to you on this.
Quote: "Can the terrain be shot anywhere, like the middle of a building? Or is it only set areas?"
Since all physics are simulated and keyframed in Max, only the parts that are animated will explode, however I have tested this with all kind of triggers, including limb detection, and it all works. I intend to create partly destructible and fully destructible buildings which will use many trigger areas to activate the areas which are hit.
There are many uses for this, from random destruction to specific areas explosions,for example you could use a model of dynamite,c4,crate or whatever to snipe or use a trigger to blow the whole place up at once.
As for road areas it would simply be a case of placing a lot of exploding sections, I intend to create a few different animations with differing scales of damage for variety.
Quote: "Do ANY objects react like the car did or only specific objects that come in the pack?"
The car in the video was animated specifically for this, its another thing I will be looking at is testing the reaction of objects using physics in FPSC itself, it may be a simple case of scripting a force direction when explosion is triggered, or even making objects a character with an initial animation to throw it into the air and letting ragdoll take over at frame end, depends on the complexity of the object.
There are a LOT of things to look into and if this stuff takes off I may do a lot more of it and see exactly what can be done.