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Deaths And Ragdolls


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I can't help but note the ragdolls in Doom 3 (or any other game to date for that matter) would seem to render themselves quite poor for Thief. Unlike Doom 3, where the player craves to see bodies comically flying through the air, being quite disregardful of how "realistic" they appear, a Thief reproduction demands more believability with ragdolls. I can only imagine how awkward AI blackjack or death incidents would appear with Doom 3's current physics system. I forsee something similar to Thief: Deadly Shadows, where the AI would immediately go unrealistically limp, and then tumble to floor into some repulsive, unrealistic demeanor (often with their backs curled over backwards, all the while with "blank" expressions on their faces). In addition, I recall many moments in Doom 3 where dead, static ragdolls would seem to spontaneously and unreasonably go soaring through the air with applications of even the slightest bit of force (say a punch, or flashlight melee).

 

Has the Dark Mod plans to bypass ragdolls altogether, and simply use animations? Or perhaps you plan on tweaking Doom 3's physics (though, with all of the specialized work in physics these days, I don't think this would be reasonable given the Dark Mod's size)? In all honesty, with the state of ragdoll physics these days, I often still prefer death animations in many instances.

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I can't help but note the ragdolls in Doom 3 (or any other game to date for that matter) would seem to render themselves quite poor for Thief. Unlike Doom 3, where the player craves to see bodies comically flying through the air, being quite disregardful of how "realistic" they appear, a Thief reproduction demands more believability with ragdolls. I can only imagine how awkward AI blackjack or death incidents would appear with Doom 3's current physics system. I forsee something similar to Thief: Deadly Shadows, where the AI would immediately go unrealistically limp, and then tumble to floor into some repulsive, unrealistic demeanor (often with their backs curled over backwards, all the while with "blank" expressions on their faces). In addition, I recall many moments in Doom 3 where dead, static ragdolls would seem to spontaneously and unreasonably go soaring through the air with applications of even the slightest bit of force (say a punch, or flashlight melee).

 

Has the Dark Mod plans to bypass ragdolls altogether, and simply use animations? Or perhaps you plan on tweaking Doom 3's physics (though, with all of the specialized work in physics these days, I don't think this would be reasonable given the Dark Mod's size)? In all honesty, with the state of ragdoll physics these days, I often still prefer death animations in many instances.

 

Hmmm, I don't find the doom 3 physics to be anywhere near as bad as the physics in T3, much more reserved...although, there are always little glitches here and there. We aim to have our death animations transition the AI into rag doll...but even without death animations, the AI react quite nicely and don't turn into the spineless jellyfish that the AI in T3 did.

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Yeah, it already looks fairly realistic right now. The Doom3 ragdoll system is very flexible. The incidents you saw were probably set up to have an impulse applied to the ragdoll on death for the "theatrical" effect. That impulse applied on death is just a setting that you can turn off, and your AI will simply go limp and crumple to the ground in a pretty believable manner.

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I can only imagine how awkward AI blackjack or death incidents would appear with Doom 3's current physics system.

That's right. You can only imagine.

 

But I've actually seen the D3 ones crumple to the ground upon death, and they have very realistic limitations set. There is no way in hell they will end up in those weird positions as seen in TDS.

 

In fact I haven't seen any ragdoll in any other game behave as wierdly as TDS's. It was just a bad job. You should see some other games do ragdoll. Every single one I've seen is much better.

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We aim to have our death animations transition the AI into rag doll

 

I like this idea. I wasn't really sure if such a feature was even attainable, so I didn't bring it up. It would definitely be a treat to see some black-jacked AI stumble and then go limp, instead of immediately going limp (as if all of the being's muscles and such lost any bit of tenacity on impact).

 

 

I suppose I did appear to compare Doom 3's and Theif: Deadly Shadow's physics systems as too similar. Doom 3's is much better than Thief: Deadly Shadow's, and if the team finds Doom 3's adequate without any modifactions, I'm sure when all is tweaked the end product will be fine.

 

Perhaps my fears deceived me :blink:

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Is it possible in the Doom 3 engine for part of a model to be ragdolled, while the rest animated? I know there is at least one game engine out there (can't for the life of me think of which one it is right now, I think it is the one used by Painkiller) that allows animation and physics to be blended quite seamlessly, and handles ragdol transitions quite well. Just curious.

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Is it possible in the Doom 3 engine for part of a model to be ragdolled, while the rest animated? I know there is at least one game engine out there (can't for the life of me think of which one it is right now, I think it is the one used by Painkiller) that allows animation and physics to be blended quite seamlessly, and handles ragdol transitions quite well. Just curious.

 

I think it could be done with AF attachments. You can attach something to some spot on an animated entity, and the thing you attach could be an articulated figure / ragdoll. You might even be able to get the thing you attached to initially be animated, and then go into ragdoll mode. You would have to make sure the two animations were in sync though. So while it's not possible to make parts of the same ragdoll be animated and parts not*, it is possible to glue a ragdoll on to an animated body.

 

What application would that have for bodies? I'm not sure it would be that much more believable if say someone's legs were going thru a death animation but their arms were already flopping around at their sides.

 

*: Coincidentally, I've actually seen a ragdoll that was partially animated due to a bug yesterday, but I have no idea how reliable it would be. Only the farthest out extremities were animating, perhaps because they were only constrained on one end by the ragdoll bodies. I have no idea how reliably this can happen though.

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I think it could be usefull where you are playing an animation, but still want to have control of certain features. For example. The character talks to the player and does movement accopmaning the speech. But when the player moves around the character should turn around and follow him with his face.

Gerhard

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If the AI has breasts, some sort of loose clothing (of the likes of the various plastic and cloth drapes in Splinter Cell, except on an actual model), and long hair it could be useful. Or, perhaps, if the AI has some sort of physically-applicable weapon (a mace or even the tentacle of commando zombies in Doom 3) partially ragdoll models could also be useful.

 

Whether or not it is reasonable to pursue partially ragdoll AI in order to to attain one of these features is beyond me. Applying ragdoll to a cloak or something could save some animation work, but I think I was already lectured at one time or another on how such a feature wouldn't be reasonable.

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@Sparhawk: I think what you're suggesting can already be done with separate animation channels for the legs, plus "look joints" at the waist and head.

 

@Woah:

I'm pretty sure we could attach an AF pony tail or flail weapon or something as an AF attachment without any need to modify the code.

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I know that my example was not the most appropriate one, but I think it COULD be usefull. Still, I don't think it is so urgent that we should consider it, and if somebody does this after we released it, it would also be fine to me. :)

Gerhard

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Flails and morning stars would be awesome to see. And concerning the pushing thread is it possible to dynamically alter the properties of a ragdoll's joints? ie can you stiffen them to simulate someone trying to resist the movement?

 

If the player does get hit by something heavy (that doesn't kill) it would be cool if you could ragdoll them but stiffen the joints to simulate them trying to stablise themselves (infact if anything gets hit but is still alive...)

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@DopeFishhh:

It might be possible to alter the ragdoll joint stiffness dynamically, but wouldn't the things you mentioned be accomplished easier with camera animations for the player getting hit and pain animations for the AI? In that case the animator could make it look much more natural than anything you could do with a ragdoll. Also with a ragdoll, you would have to simulate forces from all those stabilizing muscles humans have to keep them standing. If you just stiffened the legs and let the simulation go, they'd probably pitch over like a board.

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Well what ever looks best, I just don't like how for the longest time in fps games the player was always perfectly upright up until their death or they pull some special move. In gothic 2 you could do a jump roll but the camera would always point forwards like as though you could see through your skull...

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  • 3 weeks later...

You could do Gothic 2 in first person (can't remember about Gothic 1), but it was crap. The game only works well in 3rd.

 

So he's saying that in first person, you do the forward roll, but the view just keeps looking forward the whole time throughout the roll instead of how it would really look through your eyes, seeing the ground, then the upside down sky, then the sky, then forward again.

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I think if they would do the roll realistically it would be very confusing to the player, and also it wouldn't really add much. In RL you would of course see the horizont go around, but it is never so noticable as if you would see this effect on a computer screen. Just consider when you tilt your head or even standing upside down. You can see and interpret everything just like normal, because your brain easily adjust to it. Now consider a gamecharacter that stands on his head, and the screen goes upside down to make it look realistic.

Gerhard

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Depends on how immersed you are in the game. If you play any flying games (flight simulators, or more "arcady" stuff like Crimson Skies) there is a lot of upside-down or sideways situations. It works fine to me. I don't know how I would like it with an fps game, but it might work.

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So I just got done playing through the Prey demo on my home PC (runs very smooth - I couldn't play it smooth on my wimpy laptop at work). Talk about messing with your head on the whole upsidedown/sideways/which-way-is-up thing!!!

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