Physics question

[Makou107 0]

I looked around but couldn't find the answer to my question. I hate to make a new post just for a simple question but I'm really curious.

When you kill an npc in the game does it die with animation or go into a ragdoll mode?

Is there any kind of physics in the game, like pushing objects over or driving through objects?

Thanks for any replies.

[no use for a name 0]

scripted animations...they're all the engine knows sadly. Although they're greatly improved over OFP and Arma1. A lot smoother and more fluent; but they still have their flaws i.e. if you reload you can't interup the animation and have to have it complete before you can switch weapons. But it's not too bad since the animations are faster, and you can now move while reloading

[=Spetsnaz= 0]

im afraid not so, there is physics in destructing buildings and such. I really myself would of liked some sort of ragdoll physics engine like one in crysis. But maybe or maybe not they could release a future patch to work on it??

[Litos 10]

I dont think theyll do anything about it.

Sadly, when games miss something major like that, they will never add it. Usually only minor things are added in patches. God I wish developers would consider continuing developing their games while their out, adding major features. I don't understand why it's such a bummer.

[Diosdemuerte 10]

There is only one problem with ragdolls. If you shoot someone in the real world they are going to linger or slouch depending on the location of the shot. The only real time you would use ragdolls would be for headshots and explosions.

[Maizel 10]

From the movies I;ve seen the animations are actually quite good.

If you don;t look for signs that tell it;s animated, youprobably won;t notice often.

[IronTrooper 0]

65-page OFP, Armed Assault and Arma2 physics thread:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=26335

about ragdolls, vehicle physics, building destruction...

[walker 0]

Hi all

You can not argue with physics or maths.

Ragdoll physics does not scale to the size of map and number of entities in an MP ArmA game. Maybe 20 years from now such an engine will exist, though I have my doubts.

You have only to look at how much Codemasters, with all their development cash, have had to pull from their promissed release of DR. Or the fact crysis has never been able to pull it off in MP. The fact that those massivley rich companies cannot achieve it, must tell even the most stupid people something.

Sit down and do the math on number of calcualtions and how many packets you will have to send to sychronise the data. It will not fit in to current bandwidth capabilities, it is orders of magnitude beyond current capacity.

Like I said you cannot argue with math; it tends to just ignore stupid people.

And then there is the physics, lightspeed seems to be one of the laws of physics that is particularly unbudged by your wanting ragdoll physics to work across the internet. I kinda says you cannot send the packets any faster than its limit. The more packets that need to be synched the more lightspeed gets in the way. Less packets is good more is bad.

Like I said you cannot argue with physics; it tends to just ignore stupid people.

Kind Regards walker

[Heatseeker 0]

Hi all

You can not argue with physics or maths.

Ragdoll physics does not scale to the size of map and number of entities in an MP ArmA game. Maybe 20 years from now such an engine will exist, though I have my doubts.

You have only to look at how much Codemasters, with all their development cash, have had to pull from their promissed release of DR. Or the fact crysis has never been able to pull it off in MP. The fact that those massivley rich companies cannot achieve it, must tell even the most stupid people something.

Sit down and do the math on number of calcualtions and how many packets you will have to send to sychronise the data. It will not fit in to current bandwidth capabilities, it is orders of magnitude beyond current capacity.

Like I said you cannot argue with math; it tends to just ignore stupid people.

And then there is the physics, lightspeed seems to be one of the laws of physics that is particularly unbudged by your wanting ragdoll physics to work across the internet. I kinda says you cannot send the packets any faster than its limit. The more packets that need to be synched the more lightspeed gets in the way. Less packets is good more is bad.

Like I said you cannot argue with physics; it tends to just ignore stupid people.

Kind Regards walker

I think impossible might be a slight exageration, the PC version/port of GTA IV holds up to 32 players and you dont even need a dedicated server, car physics, etc are pretty good too. People bitch and moan about it but i found GFWL light years ahead of the outdated, overpriced dedicated server tradition.

Performance (CPU) is imo a greater concern, the BIS game is just so open, im not saying its common for 100 a.i. units to be satchel charged but the possibility exists :eek: . Arma II already sounds very intensive from what i've gathered, perhaps more than it should be..

When i think about physics i think more about vehicle physics than useless ragdolls, i mean ragdolls are trivial compared to vehicle physics or a.i. in other words, considering how much room there is for improvements, wasting cpu on ragdolls would be unreasonable.

[synch_c 10]

Performance (CPU) is imo a greater concern

Yep. I've never played a game where ragdoll physics were calculated server side. AFAIK, on games like BF2 and CS:S, it's always done client side.

[quicksand 0]

I agree with anyone that says that achieving ragdoll physics in multiplayer would be nothing short of impossible in a game on the scale of Arma 2,for now.

But what about single player?Here we are in 2009 with graphic cards that support dedicated physics chip,quad core CPUs;and 100+ games that have ragdoll physics since 2003 with more then a few that are of sandbox type( I think GTA 4 even has ragdoll in multiplayer)

Arma 2 is a game with dynamic AI and an endlessy entertaining editor.I've spent more then 50% of my entire gaming since Operation Flashpoint in single player and I'm not the only one in this situation.Better physics would add endless variation to the gameplay and could be the gateway for multiplayer implementation in the future.Better to start now and take care of the probably colossal job of reprograming Arma's AI to handle realtime physics,dynamic distruction etc.A physics slider like in Crysis would be the best possible feature with lowest in multiplayer and highest in SP based on what players have under their hood.

Edited June 18, 2009 by quicKsanD

[Balschoiw 0]

The main gripe for me about those death-animation-system is that it sometimes looks so surreal. There is a delay when you shoot someone and the death animation kicks in with a noticeable time-delay. This looks really odd sometimes. Another point is that there are no transitions for death animations. So you shoot someone who´s crouching and he goes up like a skyrocket just to tumble sideways and drop down.

I guess the system is really not up-to-date and the time-delay is something that really springs to your eyes after playing Arma 2 for a while.

[dunedain 48]

Hi all

"You can not argue with physics or maths.

Like I said you cannot argue with math; it tends to just ignore stupid people.

Like I said you cannot argue with physics; it tends to just ignore stupid people.

It must tell even the most stupid people something."

I apologize but your "argue" thing sounds both condescending and retarded. You are god or something ? :j:

Ragdoll physics does not scale to the size of map and number of entities in an MP ArmA game.

Ragdoll does not have to be necessarily fully server sided or even not at all.

"Does not scale to the size of map" :confused:

Are you scared your computer cannot take tens bodies blowing up your eyes ? This merely happens when you have fun with the editor, never in mp same goes for official sp missions ..

Maybe 20 years from now such an engine will exist, though I have my doubts.

At least i've laughed, you should consider looking at something else than BiS products.

You have only to look at how much Codemasters, with all their development cash, have had to pull from their promissed release of DR.

To me, there is no doubt Ofp2 will disappoint "if there is something to wait for", it's an AAA project develloped mostly for the consoles. But have you actually played the game, tried their current technology ? or is that just primitive fanboy talking ?

Or the fact crysis has never been able to pull it off in MP. The fact that those massivley rich companies cannot achieve it.

Why would they ?

Sit down and do the math on number of calcualtions and[blablabla]Less packets is good more is bad.

Generally ragdoll is a client sided feature and has to be for reasons you've mentioned, you only need fast cpu here.

Kind Regards walker

Definitely scornful, so full of oneself ..

I think that ragdoll has lot of advantages, i'm personnaly tired of seing same death animations whatever bullet is used, seing identical bodies everywhere ect.. and that since i've bought Ofp 8 years ago...

There is only two major issues with ragdoll,

-it uses much more cpu than animations but isn't Arma2 supposed to be multi threaded ?

-it can't be server sided so people who want to hide behind dead bodies can't, but client side ragdoll means too that you can disable it, so people scared of modern physics could just get back classic animations.

I'm agree with people saying that vehicle physics and a new animation system are top priority, but saying that ragdoll cannot fit to ArmA greatness, that's real bullshit ...

Whatever such discussion always been a no go in this forum.

Edited June 18, 2009 by dunedain

[S!fkaIaC 10]

We can merge it with this:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=26335

and in the overall forum we are a 1000 times through the same thing.

[walker 0]

Hi dunedain

You could perhaps improve your argument by separating your quotes of me from your comments on them.

I would love to have ragdoll physics in ArmA II MP.

I would also love to be able to fly like superman, have enough money to feed the world, have world peace and everybody living on beautiful beach without a care in the world, I would also like to be able climb E9 7c (9a french).

But the world, math and physics and gravity ignores me :( The E9 bit also has THE FEAR! so even if Gravity would give its OK that has the veto on E9 or indeed anything above E2.

Wishes do not make the world Maths and Physics and Evolution do.

It is not me that is ignoring you dunedain it is Maths and Physics.

Can you explain in simple terms because I only have a BSc. Combined Honours Degree in Business Information Technology and 30 or so years of computer programing, systems analysis, software engineering and project management experience, how it is possible to:

Run an MP game with thousands of entities, a world full of clutter, 100 or so MP players, 1000s of particles used in smoke and ballistics and then chuck in more than 10 times that amount of processes for ragdoll physics for each entity without the body that is preventing me from being seen or hit from not even being dead in some one else on the 100 other players game?

I am guessing if you are a programmer you are going to say what Codemasters in DR said when they included a ragdoll type physics for their vehicles:

We don't need More than 32 MP players less if we can get away with it

No more than about 200 AI

No civilians

No animals

No playable Jets

Smaller maps

Reduce the graphic quality

etc.

There is a cost to ragdoll. Perhaps you can say what you will remove to achieve it?

Kind Regards walker

Edited June 18, 2009 by walker
missing participle and question mark, added remark about "THE FEAR!"

[Ekre 10]

Walker, just FYI.

fallen earth is a mmorpg (currently in closed beta status), it has ragdoll in it. its an mmorpg with thousands of ppl and npc's in game. (btw currently its far away from perfect, it has some bugs (the ragdoll))

[maddogx 13]

Walker, just FYI.

fallen earth is a mmorpg (currently in closed beta status), it has ragdoll in it. its an mmorpg with thousands of ppl and npc's in game. (btw currently its far away from perfect, it has some bugs (the ragdoll))

You're comparing apples with oranges. An MMO is not a simulation. Unlike in other games, ragdoll in Arma2 would need to be synched over the network, because bodies are still important as cover/concealment. Games like your aforementioned MMORPG or for example the Battlefield series do not need to synch the ragdolls - and they don't.

There's a big difference between a simulator like Arma2 and your average shooters or MMOs. You can't just say "look, here's a game with feature X, therefore feature X must also work in Arma2".

[S!fkaIaC 10]

The main problem IS the sync of all sections of the body/object to be sure that it is for all clients at the same time at the same position.

Since the development of HW and SW continues and problems we see today are obsolete tomorrow for this issue, bandwidth and proper handling of packets (QoS) is IMHO the biggest issue in the future.

But hey, this should not hinder BIS from implementing it NOW, but limiting the actual body model to a few segments (no fingers, no toes, 17-20 sections are sufficient for a ragdoll-body.) If it is still to heavy, take away hands and feets and you have only 13-16.

Edited June 18, 2009 by S!fkaIaC

[Makou107 0]

I think the big thing in the future (maybe of course) will be a physics engine that can represent everything in the game depending on developer settings.

Like an engine that would control vehicles and objects depending on weight and type. Applied to everything in the game from the NPC's to trees to the wind.

But most important of all, at least for my opinion, will be hit reaction. Example being you shot an NPC in the arm and he reacts to it. Maybe he grabs it and drops his gun, or falls back from the force, it could be random everytime.

Are we there yet? I'm not sure. But I do know that some are getting close to that. Like the GTA 4 engine was pretty impressive in that aspect.

I think in terms of hardware we are pretty much there. The power from cpu's and gpu's are crazy and just keep getting better. Now it takes some smart software to put it all to good use.

Sorry I know it's not on topic with ArmA but I would LOVE to see something like this in the series in the future.