Ragdoll Schmagdoll...Can we have this? - Page 2

PsychoXR-20 · 2011-07-29, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by DeeTwoEh

I really don't care about this or any ragdoll physics at all. I'm perfectly fine with a pre-animated death animation when I kill someone. I could care less.

Most of the time it makes serious games end up looking silly when you shoot someone in the head and they do a complete backflip and then flop around on the floor for awhile because the character is colliding with some object it's not supposed to.

Totally agree, I hate ragdoll physics, they look terrible and there are more problems with them than they solve.

Every time a character dies with ragdoll physics it looks as if they suddenly weigh nothing, and that all their tendons and ligaments just disappeared. Characters roll around in really odd ways, and if they get stuck on even the slightest bit of uneven grounding they start having a seizure, and/or never stop moving.

Kechiro · 2011-07-29, 06:55 PM

Very interesting concept for NPC at least. I dunno if PC's would give it a home or not though. If it didn't affect first person view, it would look odd seeing someone shooting directly at you but still flailing around while being shot; especially obvious since PlanetSide wasn't a one shot one kill game, even with the Bolt Diver if the target was wearing heavy armor (which most sniper targets were).

On the contrary, if it DID affect first person view, I would assume that being shot would have horrible affects on aiming. Pretty much the first person to land a bullet would be the winner in that case. But it may be over exaggerated in my head.

Still, they could just leave the animations like that to the death animations. After all, getting blasted with a tank cannon and just fainting was kinda cheesy even if it was tolerable and mostly overlooked.

It also seems as if it would be very CPU intensive. I don't know anything about it other than what it does though, so I can't speculate. But if it uses the CPU to determine reactions and such, it seems like the CPU would be doing a lot of work in telling the character how to act/react as well as doing other tasks for the game. Just my thoughts.

Aractain · 2011-07-29, 07:43 PM

Originally Posted by PsychoXR-20

Totally agree, I hate ragdoll physics, they look terrible and there are more problems with them than they solve.

Every time a character dies with ragdoll physics it looks as if they suddenly weigh nothing, and that all their tendons and ligaments just disappeared. Characters roll around in really odd ways, and if they get stuck on even the slightest bit of uneven grounding they start having a seizure, and/or never stop moving.

They look like they have no weight because the developers of those games didn't add the correct settings (or using crap physics).

Physx is enterily capeable of having 'realistic' ragdoll.

**T-Ray** · 2011-07-30, 02:27 AM

It's not that simple.

cashfoyogash · 2011-07-30, 02:37 AM

Originally Posted by T-Ray

It's not that simple.

Neither was landing a man on the moon but we still got there. Come on T-raw get on your grind.

Vancha · 2011-07-30, 08:54 AM

Originally Posted by T-Ray

It's not that simple.

I can't tell what you're referring to. Realistic ragdoll settings or using euphoria.

Originally Posted by PsychoXR-20

Totally agree, I hate ragdoll physics, they look terrible and there are more problems with them than they solve.

Every time a character dies with ragdoll physics it looks as if they suddenly weigh nothing, and that all their tendons and ligaments just disappeared. Characters roll around in really odd ways, and if they get stuck on even the slightest bit of uneven grounding they start having a seizure, and/or never stop moving.

Good thing this thread is about an alternative to ragdolls then eh?

CutterJohn · 2011-07-30, 09:19 AM

Originally Posted by Vancha

Good thing this thread is about an alternative to ragdolls then eh?

That is undoubtedly very expensive to license and would most certainly have a performance hit.

Crator · 2011-07-30, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by T-Ray

It's not that simple.

I'm guessing he was referring to the scale, amount of players allowed in same area, that would make this difficult to implement. Frams-per-Second matter in this type of game. Just a guess thought.

NewSith · 2011-07-30, 09:56 AM

Does it mean that if soemthing big explodes near me, it'll throw me away to the ground while keeping me conscious? I very much liked that part in SW:TFU

Vancha · 2011-07-30, 10:12 AM

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

That is undoubtedly very expensive to license

I'd also assume this is the "It's not that simple"

Originally Posted by CutterJohn

and would most certainly have a performance hit.

Someone said the same about ragdolls.

Valdae · 2011-07-30, 10:13 AM

I also think ragdoll physics looks lame. It looked so ridiculous in Gears of War 2 that they've basically taken it out for the upcoming sequel. Euphoria looks ace tho, cant say I've encountered it before but I already cant wait!

Straws · 2011-07-30, 01:03 PM

In order for something like this to work in a competative environment, where player skill is important, the randomness of this technique would have to be toned down/removed.

In order to Euphoria to function to it's design potential, the randomness needs to be there.

It would be a waste of money and time to apply this to a game like Planetside. Time will prove me wrong eventually, but I'm not a fan of games being delayed to wait for a gimicky animation program to be tuned to function appropriately.

Vancha · 2011-07-30, 02:04 PM

I should probably mention that the creation of this thread came out of a discussion in IRC discussing how ragdoll deaths weren't conducive to immersion (certainly comedic though), and that's when this got linked. This'd be for deaths/animation rather than when you were in control.

Robert089 · 2011-07-30, 02:15 PM

Yeah I doubt you can really use that in a first person shooter. It's what rockstar use in nearly all of their games now I'm pretty sure. GTA and Red Dead for example, remember getting nudged slightly by a car (or horse) and your guy would stumble around for ages trying to keep his balance? It was the most annoying part of those games. Also it's impossible to do it for player characters getting shot because as others have already mentioned it would be impossible for anyone to aim if the avatar starts grabbing at his bullet wounds or getting pushed about by explosions.

It is only a technology to use for NPCs really, not that I'm a game developer or anything so I could be talking complete nonsense.

Edit:

Originally Posted by Vancha

I should probably mention that the creation of this thread came out of a discussion in IRC discussing how ragdoll deaths weren't conducive to immersion (certainly comedic though), and that's when this got linked. This'd be for deaths/animation rather than when you were in control.

But eurphoria gives the models a sort of sense of self preservation while they are alive, allowing them to move realistically, it can't really be applied to things that are dead, it would just be a ragdoll. Like in the video you showed, when the dude gets shot twice at 1:03 it simply drops dead.