Ragdoll in Forgelight?

headcrab13 · 2011-07-24, 07:12 AM

The advanced nature of the Forgelight engine seems to suggest that ragdoll animation will be featured in PS2, though I haven't seen it officially mentioned. I think this adds the potential for some incredibly cinematic moments.

I always felt the tower battles in PS1 could have benefited from ragdoll, when your faction is pushing to get up several levels of stairs. It would be amazing to see enemy bodies rolling down the steps toward you as you charged up at the opposition, firing wildly and throwing grenades, as the explosions tossed enemies against the ceiling and walls.

They could also use ragdoll in some other interesting ways, such as having a shotgun blast knock someone over the railing on the top deck of a tower, or having a Galaxy go down in a fiery blast that sent the passengers flying in different directions.

Do you guys expect to see ragdoll, and if so, how would this add to the feel of PS2?

-HC13

cashfoyogash · 2011-07-24, 07:26 AM

It would be awesome if that was how it is going to be... Id love to be stacked on a door and all of a sudden you see a dead body fly over the rail and it falls down to the ground as you and your team breach the door you head in only to see the number 1 man shot back up against the wall... That would be awesome just sounds like too much animation for massive battles.

FastAndFree · 2011-07-24, 07:30 AM

Do remember that all corpse locations must be synchronized across all players. And if they keep moving, rolling down stairs and stuff all the clients have to be constantly updated about them

Does not sound like a very performance-efficient idea to me

cashfoyogash · 2011-07-24, 07:32 AM

Originally Posted by RavenLord

Do remember that all corpse locations must be synchronized across all players...
Does not sound like a very performance-efficient idea to me

Exactly, i just dont want to run in the same problem with PS2 when its released as we had in PS1... Took a super computer to run everything that was going on and it would still be choppy.

Hamma · 2011-07-24, 07:46 AM

There are ragdoll physics in the game.

headcrab13 · 2011-07-24, 08:41 AM

Originally Posted by Hamma

There are ragdoll physics in the game.

Awesome, I hadn't seen any word on this yet but that's great news.

As you guys mentioned, if reviving will be done the same way, they'll need a system in place to synchronize bodies. If an explosion blows a body off the top of a tower on my client-side ragdoll calculation, and my dead squadmate's ragdoll calculation throws him into the railing, keeping him on the roof, then I might have to run down 4 flights of stairs and out into a firefight to revive him, whereas he sees himself on the roof the whole time.

If reviving was done in some other manner, however, they wouldn't need to sync up the ragdolls, and every player could be seeing a different simulation. Seems like this would be the most efficient solution.

-HC13

Senyu · 2011-07-24, 08:44 AM

They could add ragdolls but only on certain things. Like keep the effect of sliding down stairs but no knock back over rails. Sad but picking which ones will help performance

2coolforu · 2011-07-24, 08:48 AM

You can synch rag dolls across players, just use the Battlefield 2 method of making the chest a set object and ragdolling the arms and legs. This means that the chest part of the body is always in the same place on any computer allowing revives etc to be used.

Redshift · 2011-07-24, 08:49 AM

sometimes ragdoll just looks terrible though, i'm pretty sure when you stand on a grenade your body doesn't stand intact and bounce off the ceiling, but equally if they blow people to pieces then the rating goes up and players go down

headcrab13 · 2011-07-24, 08:51 AM

Originally Posted by Senyu

They could add ragdolls but only on certain things. Like keep the effect of sliding down stairs but no knock back over rails. Sad but picking which ones will help performance

Yeah, I assume you're talking about the ability to knock someone back without killing them. In my example I just meant a killing blow that threw a dead body over a railing.

I agree with you though, I would want to limit ragdoll to dead characters only, because if they were still alive and "ragdolling," we'd still have that sync problem.

-HC13

Coreldan · 2011-07-24, 08:55 AM

Originally Posted by RavenLord

Do remember that all corpse locations must be synchronized across all players. And if they keep moving, rolling down stairs and stuff all the clients have to be constantly updated about them

Does not sound like a very performance-efficient idea to me

APB had ragdolls, but after the point u died, the game just sent info that "player X died, go go ragdoll him", but the actual ragdoll part was done by each client seperately.

Worked well enough, given the scale of people wasnt as big.

I used to fraps a lot of gameplay and couple of times it was funny to watch when the angry enemy finally killed me and decided to want to T-bag me or empty his mag on my body, but on my screen it often looked like he was doing it to some random part on the ground, instead of on me, cos he saw my location differently.

So make ragdolls, they can be calculated client side instead of being synchronized.

EDIT: Now that I think, if rezzing is gonna be in, then the corpses really have to end up in the same place on everybodys screen :/

MgFalcon · 2011-07-24, 09:01 AM

I believe T-Ray put it very goodly that Forgelight can do crazy things, ragdoll shouldn't be a problem.

Rendering 1000 different pieces of armor? --->

Originally Posted by T-Ray

I introduce to you............FORGE LIGHT!!!!!!!

headcrab13 · 2011-07-24, 09:03 AM

Originally Posted by Redshift

sometimes ragdoll just looks terrible though, i'm pretty sure when you stand on a grenade your body doesn't stand intact and bounce off the ceiling, but equally if they blow people to pieces then the rating goes up and players go down

Yeah, as much as I'd like to see a Fallout 3-style grenade effect where your target is blown limb from limb, we both know why that doesn't fit PS2. So since bodies have to stay intact, I'd much rather see impulses like grenades, tank shells, and OS's affect bodies rather than having this massive blast and a bunch of bodies that sit there like they've frozen to the ground.

-HC13

WarChimp130 · 2011-07-24, 09:06 AM

I've never got the obsession with ragdolling. It's kind of cool at first I suppose but it gets kind of old eventually. I don't care if it's their or no really, as long as it doesn't hamper performance. I don't care what death looks like as long as it doesn't interfere with whats going on when I'm alive.

Death2All · 2011-07-24, 09:16 AM

Every game seems to incorporate that "Havok" engine or whatever it's called and it's kind of a staple in every game now.

However if you link in this screen shot by the TR on the right how is crouching you can see an NC behind him that's dead in what appears to be your standard death animation/position. Perhaps they haven't implemented the ragdoll physics yet or maybe it was positioned that way for show or maybe they didn't want to take a screencap of a NC flailing around because his arm is going through the floor and spazzing out.

I don't really care about ragdoll, I can take it or leave it. I think it will provide many laughs when I got shot directly in a face by a Vanguard and shoot across the entire continent however.