Integrating A Physics Engine Into Your Game

[Domarius]

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20020816/maclaurin_03.htm

Just thought I'd point out this quote;

As for the realism of the simplistic shape, it's instructive to note that a large percentage of a human's motor control goes into maintaining the illusion that we're not a bundle of flailing limbs all moving in different directions. A real human body does an extremely good job of moving our head along on a smooth path. As a result, a simplified physical body can actually lead to more realistic results than a multi-limbed physics body.

Yeah TDS!! Take that!! You and your stupid head-bobbing crap.

[Komag]

The link sends me to a page that says "for members only, login below" (or something).

 

Sounds interesting though.

[Domarius]

Ah yeah it's a Gamasutra article, so you just have to register for a free account if you haven't already. But if you haven't already got one, then you probably don't need one, lol - cause this is one site you should already be regesitered with if you're into game development.

 

Oh and I've only linked to page 3 for some reason. A lot of the interesting stuff happens there (but you should read from page 1 if you care) and the quote came from that page.

[Crispy]

The link sends me to a page that says "for members only, login below" (or something).

http://www.bugmenot.com

 

Interesting article, thanks for the link Dom.

[Nyarlathotep]

Yeah TDS!! Take that!! You and your stupid head-bobbing crap.

True, but I would still argue that subtle head motion can be far more effective than either no movement or exaggerated movement. It's hard to find a proper balance, but smoother motions look and feel better, in general.

[Domarius]

Yes - just like the gentle "sine wave" bobbing you already see in most FPS games.

 

The point is though, that they animated the guy in a cartoon-like way and then just attached the camera to that. What looked good as an animation in third person didn't nessecariliy work for first person. Even though they apparently toned it down a bit in first person, it still wasn't enough.

 

Well it never bothered me very much personally, but I hear a lot of general feedback that it was too excessive.

[Nyarlathotep]

It didn't bother me much either. I think what bothers most people though isn't so much the movement itself but the jerkiness of it. It felt chaotic, uncontrolled, like your character was at the edge of exhaustion.

[Gildoran]

I agree with Domarius. Actually, I'd like to see body-awareness. I think you can't correctly do reflections or player shadows without it. (expect to see glitchy reflections in TDM water and possibly problems with shadow clipping if player shadows are turned on) IMHO, the reason TDS felt so bad was because they prioritized 3rd-person appearances over first person feel, when designing the player's animations. I think body-awareness could feel perfectly natural if implemented correctly and without the need to "look cool" in third-person.

[Ishtvan]

Several other games have implemented body awareness with little negative consequence by just making it driven by the first person view, instead of actually making the player's feet lag behind due to a third person turning animation, and making the "press forward" direction go in the facing direction of the third person feet which were lagging behind the forward direction of the first person view. I think that's a large part of what killed it in TDS, and made it feel like piloting a mech warrior instead of a human walking.

[OrbWeaver]

There is also the piss-poor animation blending in TDS, which combined with the locking of camera motion to player animation, resulted in a much lower apparent framerate.

[Nyarlathotep]

Although it left much to be desired, I thought Dark Messiah did a much better job of full body awareness than TDS did. In fact, if it weren't for the limited time and resources we have available, I'd say that TDM ought to include FBA.