Character Ragdoll and more

[sluggCDN 0]

Nowdays most of the advanced FPS games use ragdoll instead of death character animation: - America's Army, Battlefield 2, HL2. It looks great and on the development side reduces the pain of producing numerous death animation. OFP first ever realized the most stunning physics model for vehicle and ingame objects; but when it comes to character animation it seemed like the Armed Assault will inherit motion capture death animation; - or will the game finally have ragdoll implemented in it? or the OFP engine will require a major overhaul to accommodate the ragdoll? Would ragdoll have effect on the frame rate?

[Heatseeker 0]

Ragdoll sucks.

the loss of frame rate/CPU can be very high if alot of units are afected by ragdoll, i have experimented spawning 10 bots and using a comand to kill them and the frame rate drop was terrible for a moment, imagining ragdolls in a game has huge has flashpoint would be irresponsible and the result wouldnt be very good imo.

Lets say that if a infantry squad is next to a BMP, you shoot a law at it and the explosion kills the whole squad the performance impact would be very high.

Then there is the poor efect of ragdoll online has seen in Americas Army (a much smaller and static game) and it plain sucks, the model ragdoll "animation" feel weightless and "laggy" when you shoot other players online and visually it doesnt look has good has people praise all the time, it looks fake.

Good death animations are good enough if they are done properly and BIS gets rid of the flying corpses plus online it will look smoother.

So imho ragdolls would be a pure waste of developing time and prescious HW resources that could used in much more significant improvements to the game .

[kegetys 2]

I dont find a 'ragdoll' death to be realistic looking at all. Maybe if the character would get critically shot in the head it could be realistic, but for any 'normal' hit it just isn't realistic for the death to be that instant.

[robert(uk) 0]

Nowdays most of the advanced FPS games use ragdoll instead of death character animation: - America's Army, Battlefield 2, HL2.

BF2? Are you joking? That game has the worst ragdolls I think I've ever seen. A guy gets shot with a pistol, so he flies into the air? Laying inside a building, making sure your feet don't stick through the wall so that someone can knife you?

With regards to ArmA, I agree with the general sentiment that this game will be better without them, unless of course they are done properly, but I would rather the devs concentrate on other, more important things...

[grayace 2]

Ragdoll could be real nice but like the Heatseeker told if it is going to draw CPU power and bandwidth (probably it will) just forget about it.

And about "A LAW, a BMP and a bunch of Troops" combo well we need some GORE, those humanoids should be "blown" away into pieces and that would be the correct death animation for instance...

[codarl 1]

I think that when a soldier gets blown away (RPG), ragdoll should be used. Also I think that limbs could have ragdoll, if ArmA supports it, that is.

[sanctuary 19]

I think the actual death animation system used by BIS is already good enough and efficient in term of performance.

In my opinion, the ragdoll effect is a bit wasting system ressources that could be better used elsewhere.

[stakex 0]

When it comes to realism, ragdoll is horrible. In BF2 if you hit someone with a car they have a tendency to go skyward. Since OFP is suppose to be as realistic as possible, Im sure the devs will stay away from this path.

[Daniel 0]

I think the animations are good enough. All thats needed are a few more and detection for each, so that a sildier shot from the side falls accordingly, etc. Also as mentioned, (hilarious as they are   ) we need to replace the flying dead soldier with a lumpy red mess.

[simulacra 0]

The ragdollsystem isn't really needed, but other physics simulations are needed, everytime you shoot someone their gun falls halfway through the ground, and it looks terrible...

[IceDude 0]

ok kinda offtopic, but what exactly is Ragdoll

[hidden_spectre 2]

ok kinda offtopic, but what exactly is Ragdoll

well ragdoll is basically the physics of an impact usually human body

i mean.....the reaction of the body to different objects.

Example: u fire a bullet at a person's leg........the leg wud receive the maximum impact...not the whole body...which results in a realistic body movement

now back to the topic.........ragdolls do look somewat realistic but are power hungry....so my suggestion wud be to stick to the standard death animations but more detailed...like as said before....body chunks flying on explosions is a must

so BIS shud make the character models more dynamic...so that they could be broken...into......chunks

"HAVOC is the most popular ragdoll engine"

[Heatseeker 0]

Body "chunks" or dismemberment could decrease performance alot too, not only because the models would have to be "breakable" but it would generate more modeled and textured parts on the map (imagine large scale combat here), if a RPG hits a BMP the BMP should become disabled and i doubt it would blow up in flames and pieces, same for all armored vehicals, i doubt they explode so easily .

Has for death animations BIS could (should) create a way for the game to detect the type and area of damage a soldier takes and play the acording death animation.

Roll back some years to old DF2 game, handgrenades and explosives would make a jumpy death animation sequence and shot kills would depend on the body area being shot (head/torso) the game should detect frontal, back and headshots and play the acording animation.

At the distance OPF firefights happen i doubt we would apretiate ragdolls that much, the flying corpses should be removed, they were not i the game in the first place...

[grayace 2]

Quote[/b] ]Body "chunks" or dismemberment could decrease performance alot too, not only because the models would have to be "breakable" but it would generate more modeled and textured parts on the map (imagine large scale combat here),

I dont think so, because it isnt about "dismemberment" its about disappearing through vaporizing/dicing and due to consequences would be ineffective on gameplay (no intact corpse or weapon remains in the end) this kind of solution would be client-side only,

you can think it like chunks of metal is flying when a AT4 cliping a tank... even dozens of non-collision prop is nothing for performance issues...

[sluggCDN 0]

Ragdoll- is the effect when a character model literally starts behaving like a rag doll when the character gets killed. The model's body is divided into separate body parts connected by joints like forearms, shoulder, torso, head, ankle, thigh ets. each body part is assign a weight value. When the character gets killed in the game it's body starts collapsing, falling or flying depending on circumstance in a somewhat natural fashion. So there is really no death animation. the dead body movement is generated by models body parts weight and the force of the impact caused by other objects like bullets, expls. shock wave, vehicle etc. u can see the body flopping and falling to the ground like a rag doll, hence the naming.

actually, I absolutely loved death animations of the original OFP - in general they are still the best u can find out there. But the ragdoll would have to be implemented if they plan to have flying corpses. right now in OFP the corpses launched in the air by explosion fly like a piece of plywood and keep on bouncing the most rediculous way upon landing. plus now in OFP dead bodies usually kinda get uplifted by a grenade explosion next to them - it looks like the body just get instantly frozen and move as one piece. So overall the ragdol should be added if dead bodies will be airborne so that they actually flip in the air and land properly. They should either get rid of flying corpses or keep it and introduce ragdoll for airborne characters.

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

First of all, I have never seen the ragdoll effect being implemented nicely into a game. All the games that have ragdolls implemented, is just too unrealistic. If a guy gets hit in his stomach from the front, he doesnt fall backwards, he crumblrd together and tries to protect hid stomach. Ragdolls are just too - well, dolls like. Its like whenever a person gets shot, he/she doesnt make any movent, he/she is just dead. Very unrealistic imho, since very few shots will result in an instant death.

[grayace 2]

in Max Payne 2 (HAVOC) ragdoll system is nicely done and it provides very nice visuals, also its nice for UT2004 too..

anyways, OFP animations is REALLY nice and varied, only thing is like all said before, explosions... body should become a red smoke with clustures/chunks of small meat pieces flying out of it while bigger ones falling on ground...

remember the scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when German 20mm HE-T gun start to rip Allied soldiers on German tank... it was a real mess

[Espectro (DayZ) 0]

in Max Payne 2 (HAVOC) ragdoll system is nicely done and it provides very nice visuals, also its nice for UT2004 too..

anyways, OFP animations is REALLY nice and varied, only thing is like all said before, explosions... body should become a red smoke with clustures/chunks of small meat pieces flying out of it while bigger ones falling on ground...

remember the scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when German 20mm HE-T gun start to rip Allied soldiers on German tank... it was a real mess

true, its implemented nice in max-payne 2 and also in hitman 1 + 2...

As you, however, I really like the animations in ofp. I think they look really realistic. The bullets doesnt have the unrealistic impact such as what we see in americas army.

[simulacra 0]

there is a point where ragdoll ALWAYS beats animations, and that is when the bodies interact with the enviroment.

For instant if there's a wall behind them the body will fall backwards and remain in a sitting position, back in the days of animation bodies sometimes fell through the wall, or float in the air because there's a staircase underneath while one fott still remained on the top floor etc etc.

[Mr_Tea 0]

A little bit of ragdoll implimentation would be ok, but the gorelevel must stay low. If not, Armed Assault will not be sold in german stores. We can ad some gore later by modding Armed Assault.

The gorelevel has nothing to do with the ragdoll thing, don`t get me wrong on that.

[Madus_Maximus 0]

First of all, I have never seen the ragdoll effect being implemented nicely into a game. All the games that have ragdolls implemented, is just too unrealistic. If a guy gets hit in his stomach from the front, he doesnt fall backwards, he crumblrd together and tries to protect hid stomach. Ragdolls are just too - well, dolls like. Its like whenever a person gets shot, he/she doesnt make any movent, he/she is just dead. Very unrealistic imho, since very few shots will result in an instant death.

Hidden and Dangerous 2. That game is still the daddy for realistic balistics, well implemented rag-doll and combat. People actually have mass when they die unlike most games where it's turned into a null entitty (or whatever) and floats away or bounces around. If you hit someone in the chest in HD2, they drop like a sack of shizzle. Also it's satisfying firing at a tree someone is hiding behind with a rifle and seeing them slump to the ground because of the penetration, and see their mate behind them react as he takes the ricochet! It works fine in MP too, but then there isn't as much going on, but then the maps are still quite large with a lot of detailed models around. It's all down to the engine optimisation at the end of the day. Maybe they'll make it so it "drops down" and uses pre-set animations when so much is going on, depending what you set it to or what it detects your system can handle, much in the same way it lowers LOD's when your system is being pushed in OFP 1 now. Unless they still have a collision mesh when dead it's nothing more than eye candy anyway (although objects/vehicles should still have the collision mesh when "destroyed").

[Heatseeker 0]

Im positive the Max Payne 2 ragdolls wouldnt look so good in MP , H&D2 i dont even remember that it had ragdolls . I remember you could shoot the rifle out of someones hands but i never saw it.. i also remember that from far distance the animation lods were terrible amongst a big amount of bugs and issues .

But with all honesty i hope BIS uses good death anims, for the sake of gameplay.. im keeping in mind that Arma = improved Flashpoint .

[sniperandy 0]

for me it would be enough if a a wounded (crippled) soldier (player) would actually bleed to death if he doesn't get medical attention.

as for ragdoll... please not in ArmA. seen it in BF2 and in AA and some of the death anims just look shait. like this for example:

http://www.pafbase.de/images/screens/stuhlgang.gif

so,

this guys got killed by a nade and the guy in the front looks like he fell asleep... no ragdoll for me...

[GGX_Lennon 0]

The Death-Animations from old ofp r good enough.. It would be waisting time to make any big changes... Better use time to make it possible to swim under sea for example. Or nice snowy landscapes (i allways loved that athmosphere)

[GBee 0]

I think implementing some sort of ragdoll physics would be a very low priority for BIS. There are so many possible changes that would make a real improvement to gameplay or immersion.

I'm not sure I would even notice the difference between animation and ragdoll in OFP/Arma - most kills are made at a distance.