The giant that gets picked up in the E3 video

[Mansh00ter]

Or, not flag the NPC dead as soon as it gets dropped/picked up, but rather have a flailing animation for falling, then kill them via normal impact scenario (fall damage). Which would be nice to have anyway, considering the amount of cliffs and high places the player can fall or knock NPC's off from.

[Nysba]

Or, not flag the NPC dead as soon as it gets dropped/picked up, but rather have a flailing animation for falling, then kill them via normal impact scenario (fall damage). Which would be nice to have anyway, considering the amount of cliffs and high places the player can fall or knock NPC's off from.

That means they would either A. Have to nail the animations, and make it always look the same, maybe a little different with different animations or B. Deal with it and move on.

I'd rather have C. Ragdolls.

[Vagrant0]

Maybe we should go back to Morrowind technology where things would just move immediately to the ground when killed and be static afterwards. Or I know... just have things disappear in a poof of smoke and leave a shiny bag of some sort behind when they're killed and drop anything.

[Mansh00ter]

Or, not flag the NPC dead as soon as it gets dropped/picked up, but rather have a flailing animation for falling, then kill them via normal impact scenario (fall damage). Which would be nice to have anyway, considering the amount of cliffs and high places the player can fall or knock NPC's off from.

That means they would either A. Have to nail the animations, and make it always look the same, maybe a little different with different animations or B. Deal with it and move on.

I'd rather have C. Ragdolls.

 

Well the problem with Havok ragdolls is that, as others have pointed, if you drop them from a static position, they just don't move that much. So you can get flailing in only two ways:

 

1. animate it - which means you can use that animation for flailing when the player falls off a cliff in 3rd person view, as well as any falling situation involving humanoid NPC's

2. give a little scripted spin to the ragdoll when dropped. Which may or may not look real funny. And it won't work if you push someone off a cliff, NPC falls off a high spot or you jump yourself - you and they will just stand there while falling like in Oblivion.

 

Also to be fair, IF the engine actually can detect a falling state, you could force a temporary ragdoll on everything, including the player. But without that initial spin, the ragdoll won't do much until it hits something. Plus there's the danger of a player just rolling down the hill for a good long while. Which may be funny to watch, but may also annoy some. :) You would also need to set a minimum falling distance for the effect to kick in, otherwise players would ragdoll every time they jump off a chair.

 

So that's why I think having an actual falling animation would be the best overall solution. In Oblivion and Fallout falling felt incredibly wooden due to the lack of any animation.

[WolfySnackrib]

Or, not flag the NPC dead as soon as it gets dropped/picked up, but rather have a flailing animation for falling, then kill them via normal impact scenario (fall damage). Which would be nice to have anyway, considering the amount of cliffs and high places the player can fall or knock NPC's off from.

That means they would either A. Have to nail the animations, and make it always look the same, maybe a little different with different animations or B. Deal with it and move on.

I'd rather have C. Ragdolls.

 

Seriously? Is that all you can come up with? "Either a static animated system or dead ragdoll"? Ever heard of living ragdolls? Like the ones used in GTA 4? Wouldn't that be awesome, to have living ragdolls that die upon heavy impact against the ground, so that the giant could flail his limbs but still be a ragdoll and then die when he hits the ground.

[Iv000]

GTA 4 uses the Euphoria engine, which seriously drains your CPU because it has to calculate every NPC on screen.

Since the AI is already heavily relying on the CPU, heaving Euphoria physics would make the game run on 15 fps maximum, on an average PC.

 

I'm fine with the method they are using now, and they surely fixed the bugs you saw in the demo.

[Mansh00ter]

Seriously? Is that all you can come up with? "Either a static animated system or dead ragdoll"? Ever heard of living ragdolls? Like the ones used in GTA 4? Wouldn't that be awesome, to have living ragdolls that die upon heavy impact against the ground, so that the giant could flail his limbs but still be a ragdoll and then die when he hits the ground.

 

Actually, aren't they using Havok Behavior for something like that? Though I am not sure if it's on the level of Euphoria, which was used in GTA IV.

[Mansh00ter]

GTA 4 uses the Euphoria engine, which seriously drains your CPU because it has to calculate every NPC on screen.

Since the AI is already heavily relying on the CPU, heaving Euphoria physics would make the game run on 15 fps maximum, on an average PC.

 

I'm fine with the method they are using now, and they surely fixed the bugs you saw in the demo.

 

Why do you think Euphoria strains the CPU that much? The reason GTA IV ran poorly on PC is because it was a poorly optimized port, not because of Euphoria. Besides, afaik, the engine just blends animation sets with ragdoll physics, which is not so difficult that average PC's couldn't handle it. Also, from what I've read about Havok Behaviour, it does pretty much the same thing, blending animation sets, ragdoll physics and having all that driven by dynamic events (in other words, unscripted) - which is how they made the dragons.

 

But anyway, I am sure that with all the high places stuff can fall from in Skyrim, Bethesda will make sure to polish the plummet-to-your-doooom minigame. :P

[Vagrant0]

Also, from what I've read about Havok Behaviour, it does pretty much the same thing, blending animation sets, ragdoll physics and having all that driven by dynamic events (in other words, unscripted) - which is how they made the dragons.

Unfortunately, no. Unless they've made rather huge upgrades since FO3, the havok system used requires a non-animated form in order for it to apply physics. This means limp. Animations are also on a similar system where bone positions are always relative to the base node of the object rather than being relative to an individual limb... So animations in a ragdoll state would be indistinguishable from a normal animated state since the positions for all components would play out exactly the same. It's just how this engine works, and most others work similarly. Actually, don't recall any game engines which had reactive animations for anything other than leg height (bending the leg at the knee so you wouldn't have your foot through the hillside when standing on it), and even that usually only occurs during an idle state rather than an animated one.

[Mansh00ter]

Also, from what I've read about Havok Behaviour, it does pretty much the same thing, blending animation sets, ragdoll physics and having all that driven by dynamic events (in other words, unscripted) - which is how they made the dragons.

Unfortunately, no. Unless they've made rather huge upgrades since FO3, the havok system used requires a non-animated form in order for it to apply physics. This means limp. Animations are also on a similar system where bone positions are always relative to the base node of the object rather than being relative to an individual limb... So animations in a ragdoll state would be indistinguishable from a normal animated state since the positions for all components would play out exactly the same. It's just how this engine works, and most others work similarly. Actually, don't recall any game engines which had reactive animations for anything other than leg height (bending the leg at the knee so you wouldn't have your foot through the hillside when standing on it), and even that usually only occurs during an idle state rather than an animated one.

 

That's too bad. although as far as I know, Euphoria does use reactive animations - at least the official sources state that it uses simulation at least to a degree to procedurally generate character motion (I always assumed with the help of pre-made animations). I do know that character motion and reactions in GTA IV were superb. Now I don't expect the same from Havok Behavior, but given that its supposed to be able to blend animations and even procedurally control character behavior using those sets+modifiers, I think they actually DID make a rather huge upgrade since FO3 when it comes to animation so I don't see why not have some in-flight flailing, even if it is canned animation. Anything beats just-standing-there-while-falling we had in Oblivion and FO3.