Character Ragdoll and more

[esti_the_big 0]

I'm still against disappearing bodies, best would be to just make custom explosion death-animations (when some guys stand near a tank thats blowing up, he gets thrown away a bit), you'll notice then that you hit someone and then simply let them lay there as it was in ofp in the beginningIt would break up immersion too much if they disappeared just like that. IF they'd disappear, then I'd even prefer disappearence in gibs, its more realistic than a body just disappearing into nowhere... gibs suck in a simulation, but its still better than just disappearing. So best would be enahanced death anims.

[IntruderDZ 1]

If you play America's Army you know how cool and realistic ragdoll is.

[Leopardi 0]

Yes I know, and I know how unrealistic it can be too. A good example of flying bodies is in Battlefield 1942. It's just great, hope they do same kind of animation in ArmA.

[Bouben 3]

I must agree with negative replies on ragdoll in Armed Assault...if ragdoll in ArmA it must be perfect like in Day Of Defeat: Source but how you can simulate that perfect ragdolls with so many objects (soldiers) in game like ArmA? i want death animations not ragdoll...

and yes...Americas Army have good ragdolls too but sometimes it suckz...especialy after machinegun hit in leg or arm...they fly like in BF2 (most horible ragdolls ever)

and sry for my bad english:)

[Pyronick 21]

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.

It's much better than to see another "Black Op" half-way embedded in to the soil...

There are realistic ragdolls, the OFP death in which the dead body runs even just after he died can be done much more realistic with ragdolls...

[grayace 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.

It's much better than to see another "Black Op" half-way embedded in to the soil...

There are realistic ragdolls, the OFP death in which the dead body runs even just after he died can be done much more realistic with ragdolls...

I agree with Kegetys, and here is some explanation for you,

Ragdoll is not about "realism" it is about creating dynamic animations by calculating momentum and by interacting surrounding environment

About running after death, this can be only done by static animation because "stepping" is a motor function which can be sustained for a little time after brain death occurs, which is something CAN NOT be simulated by ragdoll. (even after you enter momentum values to each limb because its NOT physics but biology)

And also, if a heavy torso damage was sustained while running then the body(person) which is still alive will try to step further to SLOW down its decent to ground and this is also something ragdoll CAN NOT simulate

Conclusion, RAGDOLL can not simulate realistic deaths and OFPs current death animations are THE BEST, but ragdoll "LIKE" Collision Detector is needed to prevent bodies getting/crossing surroundings for newer versions so this is something can be reffered as semi-static animation...

body(mesh) will try to animate as per pre-defined but crash itself incautiously to surrounding objects while keep running the animation which is short enough to prevent "odd" scenes

DO NOT GET CONFUSED ABOUT COLLISION DETECTION AND RAGDOLL EFFECT

[Pyronick 21]

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.

It's much better than to see another "Black Op" half-way embedded in to the soil...

There are realistic ragdolls, the OFP death in which the dead body runs even just after he died can be done much more realistic with ragdolls...

I agree with Kegetys, and here is some explanation for you,

Ragdoll is not about "realism" it is about creating dynamic animations by calculating momentum and by interacting surrounding environment

About running after death, this can be only done by static animation because "stepping" is a motor function which can be sustained for a little time after brain death occurs, which is something CAN NOT be simulated by ragdoll. (even after you enter momentum values to each limb because its NOT physics but biology)

And also, if a heavy torso damage was sustained while running then the body(person) which is still alive will try to step further to SLOW down its decent to ground and this is also something ragdoll CAN NOT simulate

Conclusion, RAGDOLL can not simulate realistic deaths and OFPs current death animations are THE BEST, but ragdoll "LIKE" Collision Detector is needed to prevent bodies getting/crossing surroundings for newer versions so this is something can be reffered as semi-static animation...

body(mesh) will try to animate as per pre-defined but crash itself incautiously to surrounding objects while keep running the animation which is short enough to prevent "odd" scenes

DO NOT GET CONFUSED ABOUT COLLISION DETECTION AND RAGDOLL EFFECT

This can all be done using parametic animations, it's having certain bones respond to an animation while others are affected by physics.

Or even have multiple animations running through eachother.

It's not hard to make, Red Orchestra: Ostfront will have this feature.

It could be very realistic.

Yes I know when the cerebral cortex can't control your muscles so your lower-spine will react as a memory to keep your feet running while your upper body doesn't tense anymore.

I have had biology for a very long time.

Neurobiology, very hard but it's nice to know.

And I know the difference between collision detection and ragdoll physics and that ragdolls are built with rigid-bodies which are built out of constraints which are linked bones, blah blah blah.

And that collision detection is to simulate two or more objects colliding with eachother which could result in absorption, elastic collision, rigid-body motion, plastic collision... blah blah blah

lol I could almost write my own physics engine if I could do C++ good enough...

Maybe I could write one in Python?

Though OFP's animation aren't bad, they couldn't be any better...

[grayace 2]

well I just told these for -just in case-

anyways, yeah it seems we share same thoughs, all needed is better environment interaction... (one point, when you say physics its about calculation of weight, gravity center, and of course momentum and bounce effect which kills CPU power, collision is quite different, it just prevents walk/cross through stuff)

[Jinef 2]

What I don't seem to get is why people really want to see dismemberment, blood and guts and people being chucked around like 'ragdolls'.

Just seeing them fall over is enough for me. I know they are dead.

However if you want to model human factors in conflicts it is useful to illustrate to the player the gruesome carnage of warfare. If the horrors of the battlefield have an effect on the fighting value of combatants it creates very intricate, interesting and I think un-precedented under-tones to a game.

What I don't like to see is 'games' which just model violence to cater to some perverted fascination in death. It is one of the afflictions of modern society in my opinion.

1000 years ago families lived in one room, under one roof, sex was done in front of other family members and killing was part of daily life (Killing for Food). The clever old Victorians then decided to make sex taboo, it was done behind closed doors. Child abuse became a problem, pornography became wide-spread and society became fascinated with sex. Killing also became something for slaughter houses to do and was isolated from mainstream society, people then found death to be something quite fascinating also. Horror movies, Snuff Videos, Media Footage of Warfare, Decapitations and Games like Soldier of Fortune arise to satisfy a perverse interest in death, which simply would not arise if we had to take life daily.

The actual human being has a very strong resistance to killing fellow human beings, it is not human nature to kill. The many many wars in our history are caused by concious greed and envy, never subconcious agression or hate. War is done for profit only; nuclear weapons eliminated any chance of profit from war so little countries like Iraq are the only profitable options left.

So my overall point is:

If you want to see blood and guts just for kicks I think you are slightly fucked up in the head.

If you want to see blood and guts because that's what happens in war and you just want realism for the sake of realism, think about the time BIS could spend on other things.

If you want to see blood and guts because that's what happens in war and you want realistic horrors in order to create a 'psychological force inbalance' which affects the combat power of both sides, join my club.

[Spoock 3]

Very interesting topic, but Arma will not have ragdoll

[esti_the_big 0]

Very interesting topic, but Arma will not have ragdoll

Prolly true... but we still don't know how the animations will be reworked

I just hope they'll put in some more diversity of premade animations. I think we all agree that the old premade ofp deathanimations were very good, but that theres still room for improvement, even without using ragdoll. More custom animations for certain "death types" (headshots, explosions etc), and maybe some more detailed reactions to hits (Ai still keeps running on as if nothing were even after you shoot them in the leg or in the torso). A small recoil animation and the enemy slowing dow a bit is realistic and makeable as well.

Collision detection of any sort is a bit more complex I guess. Probably makeable even without ragdoll (see SoF2, but it has its glitches there), but as long as combat doesnt mainly take place inside narrow buildings I don't think we'll need it. For now, clean programming of the animations (engine automatically moves corpses a bit away from walls to avoid clipping which was what was done in other games before ragdoll) would do the trick.

[Pyronick 21]

well I just told these for -just in case-

anyways, yeah it seems we share same thoughs, all needed is better environment interaction... (one point, when you say physics its about calculation of weight, gravity center, and of course momentum and bounce effect which kills CPU power, collision is quite different, it just prevents walk/cross through stuff)

W00t, at least somebody on this forum who understands me and has the same opinion...

lol I know ragdolls physics and collision detection aren't options anymore, but will at least Game 2 feature this?

I don't wanna see that Black Op embedded in the soil again lol.

Parametic animations could still be done, and doppler effect's too (doppler-effect engines are quite simple to code)...

I'd be cool to see soldiers reloading while running, or doing sometime else while running like waving or hand-signaling...

Ok, these features might not be in the game itself...

But it will make modding much better and the engine even more versatile...

[sluggCDN 0]

I still can't invision/imagine how they are gonna make realistic animation of character death in a narrow stairwell/staircase of an apt. building without ragdoll or similar effect - bodies will be lying then like rigids planks on top of stairs regardless whether the engine moves the body away from the wall; it will still be "gong show". And the game is promised to feature large urban environment. Also will AI be entering buildings and fight inside of them? There must be a way around animated behaviour. ragdoll ads so much variety into the gaming experience. It's just that by the end of the 3rd hour of playing ArmA a person will already know every single death animation there is. Trying to expend animation library and predict all possible positions and moves can be as laborious as making a ragdoll-like engine be CPU-friendly.

Another thing I wish ArmA had besides good ragdoll is good sound/voice overdub of character interaction as for example it was done in Ghost Recon - nothing makes it more realistic than voice recordings of real people shouting commands, screaming in fear or pain, or cursing at enemy or simply crackign a joke after a bulls-eye shot, or simply sneezing, farting, yawning, coughing, etc   You get the idea- whatever makes AI more human.  Right now OFP bots look and act like bots. And there also is that bot-like voice engine... cool thing about ragdoll it does all animation for developers. BIS is full of very stubborn rigid ppl - they've done so many great things and introduced so many innovations unseen before or unrealized by others but then at the same time refuse to do some very simple things which will give their product that extra luster/polish. Don't tell me that with the the talents they have there they can't make ragdoll as good as DoD:Source and force it work for ArmA with little toll on CPU!!!

[Metal Heart 0]

Quote[/b] ]do some very simple things

It's very simple to come up with the ideas of "things", I'm sure BIS have considered about ragdolls, every graphics effect in the book and whatnot. It's making them happen what's hard, and takes lots of time and resources. And contrary to what many seem to believe, not everything is possible with current home computers, like some of the stuff you'd except from a standard corridor shooter, is simply not possible in a larger scale sim like ofp unless you accept one digit frame rates or smaller battles.

I'd much rather have the processing power used for things like better AI, more units in missions and drawing the terrain at realistic distances than ragdolls or some other quite useless features (useless as in not really affecting gameplay).

[Journeyman 0]

IAnother thing I wish ArmA had besides good ragdoll is good sound/voice overdub of character interaction as for example it was done in Ghost Recon - nothing makes it more realistic than voice recordings of real people shouting commands, screaming in fear or pain, or cursing at enemy or simply crackign a joke after a bulls-eye shot, or simply sneezing, farting, yawning, coughing, etc   You get the idea- whatever makes AI more human.  

I've played Ghost Recon a lot and yea ...lots of cool human sounds there that adds lots of imersion. Coughing, groaning and lots of body animations -always moving (not rigid like in OFP!  But hey ..farting! Not heard that one!    

[GBee 0]

I'd much rather have the processing power used for things like better AI, more units in missions and drawing the terrain at realistic distances than ragdolls or some other quite useless features (useless as in not really affecting gameplay).

Me too.

[DEAD_RABBIT 0]

I personally would like to see some physics in ArmA of animated objects, not like in BF2 though. The rag-doll effects in BF2 are so unrealistic, because in BF2, if you 1) inflict force on the arms/legs/head, it does not result in a momentum on the torso itself (the result is that you see the arms and legs acting like puppet legs/arms, with the torso being the only body that really moves around, while the limbs simply follow) and if you fire/use any kind of weapon 2) the transfer of the impulse of the fired/used object that passes the target object is unrealistic (e.g. firing with a handgun and seeing your target being thrown away, while it actually should have dropped dead).

What I think is the best solution (I think it has been said before in this thread), is to use standard death animations with well scripted events and then apply collision physics. In the sense, if you kill someone who is standing on a roof, you first see him drop dead and then fall of the roof due to the physics. But all depends on if the computer can handle the CPU/RAM menace.

[max power 21]

New breakthroughs in AI happen all the time.. things like AI LOD the same as geometry LOD. Direct X 9 engines are more capable of handling large numbers of poligons more effectively than dx 8 engines. If the view distance is already 2 kilometers, the game has normal maps and other things, you can probably bet that they have some wicked LOD things going on. I'd imagine that you could also ragdoll LOD the physics, so that you only take a large number of calculations if you can see what's going on.

You can also blend animations with a ragdoll engine. SWAT 4 kind of did this badly to have the wounded/unconscious flop around. You could have the wounded soldier get shot in the chest take a step, then blend it with some physics calculations until he hits the ground, so that he interacts with the terrain in a convincing way. There's all kinds of cheap tricks they can do to reduce the impact on the game performance and the look of the thing. It all boils down on how much work the devs want to put into it (game 2), not so much the limitations of the computers of the future.

[brataccas 0]

Ive just been playing goldeneye: rogue agent on the gamecube (bear with me) and I notice when I kill the enemies some enemies die with ragdoll, and some others die with a preset animation, this happans randomly, and it didnt look out of place either, so im thinkin that it would be good for arma but perhaps only certain parts? eg ragdoll on for multiplayer ctfs dms etc, and it off for campaign and big misssons or have it random turned off and on probably too late a suggestion as arma has no ragdoll by the look of it

[Randy 0]

Character ragdolling should be included I think, it can be implemented to look realistic, games such as Half Life 2 and Tribes Vengeance of course had ragdolling, just to name a tiny few. Both were subjected to some criticism at some point of 'unrealistic ragdolling'. Any such case of unconvincing ragdolling is due not to the concept itself, but flawed execution. The weight and drag values for example, assigned to objects such as ragdolls or furniture, by the developers could be the cause of these complaints. A physically simulated body of a character either before or after death (this would most likely be ragdolling) is a sound idea and a step in the right direction.

The flaw and immersion breaker lies in the fact that when a character is killed, all lifelike animation ceases. Only the most unnatural of twitches is seen in ragdolls at this point, the line between vigorous life and stone cold death is a very ambiguous one at that in reality. This is not reflected by ragdolling in games.

There are current solutions to this of course, solutions to the problem a character being full of convincing life and animation, then unnatural, sudden ragdoll properties in death. The simulated character with rudimentary physics engine properties while alive, switches to a physically simulated object in death, in all games so far to date. So, if you shoot a combine solder in the toe enough times, he will suddenly inexplicable slump like a doll in death, disregarding the high possiblity of spasms and painfull attempts to remain upright. One solution to this is a processor greedy one and obviously not viable in a game like Armed Assault, but interesting all the same and perhaps possible in 'Game 2'.

Endorphin, is a physics 'plugin', I believe would be the description, that ties in characters to the physics engine, at all times. So that through artificial intelligence a soldier will mantain balance and negotiate terrain, dynamically. Hit him in the leg hard enough and he will stumble and maybe tumble to the ground, all while trying to gain foothold, fighting against simulated gravity, in real-time. This is evidently next gen stuff, but possible on massive scale with physics LOD (level of detail) scaling.

Another solution to 'cheap' and convincing ragdolling is blending random limb animations with ragdolling, to simulated death throes and spasms. A headshot will produce the most minor of spasms will a gut shot may see the legs convulse in death. Meqon physics is one middleware engine that comes to mind, able to simulate large scale physics operations cheaply, such as ragdolling with blended animations, on the scale of 20+ ragdolls all in tumbeling interaction, a rare stress in any gameplay situation.

To put it simply, convincing realistic ragdolling does exist, it is just up to the developers discretion as to whether they will pursue it and invest resources. I see it as vital to any, even the most arcade of combat simulations, as I said, the solutions are many.

[metallicAL 0]

i think i'd want ragdoll in the game because when you have say 10 dead bodies in close proximity you can easily see that there is only a couple of death poses. Ragdoll would eliminate that.

The 2nd reason is that hitting people in your car would make them bounce off the hood

atm the mo, if you blow someone up, they take a static pose in teh air, it would be alot better if their limbs did move around and bounce when they hit the floor.

I think in the end, Ragdoll is pretty much expected in any current FPS and allmost neccessary in next gen games.

BTW isnt this a suggestion thread? :S lol post now before it gets locked (Which it probably should )

[Mahatma 0]

I liked the death-animations in rogue spear.Agree,they were alittle theatrical,but oh! what fun

[Mahatma 0]

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.

How long it is since I saw the guru critical error message!Does take you back doesn't it

[Big Dawg KS 6]

Raven Shield's ragdoll seemed realistic in my opinion, nothing too over-dramatic, just falling down and interacting with the environment.

[Lord Archer 0]

I personally liked the death animations in Medal of Honor Pacific Assault. When an enemy was killed, a death animation played, and halfway through the animation they would switch to ragdoll and collapse. Really well done, too bad the rest of the game wasn't.