VoodooLabs

Sometimes a worthy thread comes to surface in gamedev and I feel compelled to post. This is a continuation of my control ideas for environment interaction.

I’m quite busy at the moment with work which might not stop any time soon. I do plan to create a ’stickman’ ragdoll and start animating that to play with some ideas. The problem is that I want to create a scripting language first. I believe that the algorithms that control balance, walking, and all other algorithms that interact with a ragdoll model need to be tweaked on the fly to get to a stable and nice game feel. For this I want to use a special purpose scripting language that I’m building. The design is complete I just need to code it

The problems I see for this style of animation is that you can’t just use canned animation from a 3D program. Even if you managed to blend walking around corners with the animation - I’m sure you would still get legs passing through each other and terrible things like that.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research into physics systems. I plan to have a way to animate a ragdoll using impulses. The animation can decide how much emphasis to put on each action and how much to leave to the ragdoll. A lot of it will be target based - such as an edge of a building or a rung of a ladder. The animation will create a temporary bond from the hand to the rung, tense the biceps and thigh muscles but leave the rest to the ragdoll. This means that if a wind blows the character then will sway. If the force is too much the bond between the hands and the rungs will snap and the character will fall.

All this needs to work closely to an events system to trigger these interactions. Once the character starts to fall forces need to be put in place to: make sure the character stays upright (cheating but this is important) and position the character in a believable fall stance. If a ledge or ladder rung is close (certain area) and the ‘grab’ key is held a new trigger should fire…

I probably have a lot of work to do but it’s exciting. Too bad I have a job. If only I could convince them that making computer games is the way to go.

Looks like I’m looking forward to at least two games: Assassins Creed and Stranglehold.

I do understand why the first person perspective is used. In these type of games you are the character or you are playing the character. Max Payne has quite a distinct personality while Gordon Freeman and Master Chief have little personality. That’s a lot of the difference between 1st and 3rd person perspectives.

When talking about the scaryness factor of 3rd person games it’s more in line with movies - scariness by proxy. The player is scared for the character. This isn’t bad, but should be noted that it’s a different feeling.

To feel interaction with the world:

See your character interact with the world.

• 3rd person - see the character jump, run, bump into, pull etc. Quite a bit of freedom.
• 1st person - gun firing, hands interacting, sword / saber attacking - mostly limited to hands.

Have the world respond to your interaction.

• 1st & 3rd person, push, smash, break.

‘Feel’ the world interacting back at you.

• 3rd person - minimal - force feedback. Camera movement doesn’t really make sense.
• 1st person - camera movement (earthquake / shake), run bob, smashed ’screen’, red pulse (hurt).

Sound is important in all these situations as well.

I quite liked goldeneye’s death sequence… the wobble, fall down and fade to red.