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Toys Entertainment Games

Rag Doll Kung Fu Project Showcased 33

Posted by simoniker from the side-projects-a-go-go dept.
Thanks to VE3D for pointing to a Lionhead Times interview discussing the unique-looking PC tech demo/game called Rag Doll Kung Fu, a side-project of Lionhead graphic artist Mark Healey. He explains of the demo he's been working on in his spare time: "You control the characters on screen with the mouse - there are no pre-scripted animations in the game - it's all up to you... this means you get to create your own style, and can act out whatever you feel like, and of course, if you really feel like it, you can have a fight." The page also includes screenshots and several links to a video trailer of the demo/game, which should be finished (for free download?) "this summer", though Mark is currently helping complete Lionhead's long-awaited Xbox title Fable.
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Rag Doll Kung Fu Project Showcased More

Rag Doll Kung Fu Project Showcased

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  • I've seen some awfully impressive motion work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @07:12AM (#8654624) Journal
    I've seen some terribly impressive motion [gatech.edu] work from Jessica Hodgins' research.

    I also saw a student at CMU produce a swordfighting game as a class project using techniques based on this -- it was truly astounding to watch. It looked absolutely real, fluid, and had all the little nuances that make people move. Normally, you only see this with motion-captured pre-rendered sequences. The improvement here is that hours and hours of motion-captured data are captured, and then split up and combined to form a move that fits the designed constraints. For example, you capture someone doing a number of martial arts forms. You then place an arbitrary path on the ground that you want them to place, and they travel along the track using chunks of captured data from the motion capture that are automatically smoothly transitioned together. It looks really amazing, better than anything I've seen character-animation-wise in a video game yet.

  • Control (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @07:14AM (#8654643) Journal
    I've been a fan of rag doll physics since I first read about it, and I hope it continues to gather improvements, but when are we going to get controllers for games that are more intuative than a mouse, and less expensive? It's one thing to say you have control of your character's every move, but clearly another to realize such freedom; the controls of video games are what sets them back.
    • I agree. One person 'freedom of movement' is another person's "too difficult".
      • Along those lines, there was a boxing game in Ape Escape for the original playstation that used both of the dual shock sticks, one for each hand. There was also skiing with one stick for each foot. Many people considered this to be terribly difficult to manipulate. I can only hazard a guess as to how difficult it would be to control both hands and feet independently on a character with 4 joysticks, and that would only be in two dimensions.

    • more intuative than a mouse, and less expensive

      Never going to happen. You can have more intuitive controllers, but they'll have to be more complex hardware- and software-wise. A mouse will always be cheaper.

    • Define 'intuitive.' I've heard it said that the only intuitive interface is the nipple; I'll point out that some babies can't even figure that out, and need to be manually fed.

    • Re:Control (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I guess the people who decided a mouse is fine for this level of control have never played Tresspasser.

      "Ah, I'll grab that ammo real quick, oops I dropped my weapon. I'll just turn around and, shoot! I knocked over my cover. Ok, now to angle my wrist so as to pick up the weapon, yes! Now I'll turn around and. $#@$@!!! I dropped it again. Maybe I can Judo-chop the dinosaur into oblivion?..."
    • Well, there was this [gamerankings.com] in 1998 or so...

  • If nothing else, those cats are DAMN interesting.

    I don't know why, but I can't wait to give it a try.

    I just wanna know which weirdos of the Lionhead team we saw in the videos.

    Anyone know?

    • Re:And that's why I love Lionhead (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @11:08AM (#8656809)
      Here's the full cast!

      master tak fung...tak fung.
      haj ji mi...mark healey.
      fat bong...kareem's mate.
      ming mong...Abbey.
      puk buul kum...kareem ettouney.
      ninjas...tony dawson, martin johnson, nathan smethurst.
      bridge troll...tony ciniglio.
      mad gayorg...georg backer.

      P.s I,m sure people are going to find the control a lot easier than you might think, and the game has a slow motion mode which allows for some truly graceful moves.
      My main ambition was to create a game of pure skill - one that you really can get better at the more you practice - just like real Kung fu!
      Mark.
      • Thanks Mark! Wonderful to see you out and about with this. Can't want to play it, I've got nothing but faith in you folks.

        And with the sucking up out of the way, (as honest as it was) I'm doing a little thing on ragdoll physics myself for class, and was curious if I could bug you about your little experiment here.

        If I can do this here, or should bring this to the Lionhead Programming forums, that's all cool. Otherwise, if you find time to hit me up at any of my contact info in my profile, I'd appreciat

        • Re:And that's why I love Lionhead (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Well, I'm no expert at physics really. Rag doll Kung fu uses "verlet integration", and I'm sure you'll find a much easier to understand explanation somehwere on the net than I could ever describe! A guy at work (Alex Evans) gave me a peice of code that he wrote in 7 minutes(!), which was basically a rope simulation. I messed around with it, and thought" I can make characters out of this!", hey presto, rag doll kung fu!
          Hope that's some help!
          Mark
          P.s I'm not a coward, I just can't be arsed to register, and I'
          • Well, I was thinking that if a guy from the art department could understand it, then I could get it easily! (Man, I haven't even gotten my degree or a job yet and I'm joking on the art department. I'm a shoe-in at any interview I go to, I tell ya!) But, thanks anyway, and like everyone else, can't wait to play it.

            We're all glad you had the idea. And that you have no shame when it sharing your love of (or perversion for) kung-fu flicks.

            And we never thought you were a coward. Don't register. You come
      • Mark, I absolutely loved the video, and the idea of the game. Stick a fork in it and ship it! Want to play!

  • Well that's unfortunate (Score:5, Funny)

    by Phil the Canuck ( 208725 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @07:47AM (#8654762)
    It started two summers ago, me and some friends decided to make a short kung fu film, just for some laughs. We had a budget of 50 pounds. We had some really bad fake bald heads, and the stunt man was a floppy blow up doll. It seemed natural to make a game to go with it.
    It's a movie license, so it's obviously going to be a disappointment.

  • Interesting idea (Score:3, Interesting)

    by turkmenistani ( 638203 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @09:45AM (#8655811)
    I think it's an interesting idea; but like many of the other posters it seems like a complicated technique to execute mid-game. What would be interesting to see: if a developer built this into their game so you could "practice" techniques by using the ragdoll physics, but capture it and bind it to key/mouse commands. That way, it would be a matter of pressing keys to execute fight sequences. But who knows, maybe his system will be more intuitive than we think.

  • Die By The Sword & VSIM (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wikthemighty ( 524325 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @11:49AM (#8657328)
    Anybody else remember Die By The Sword with it's Virtual SIMulation (VSIM) engine which let you execute pretty much any sword swipe you wanted?

    You could even record a few moves and execute them with a single key press I think.

    While this was a decent system of play (fairly traditional controls with VSIM mapped on top) I don't remember spending a while lot of time using anything but the basic attacks...
    • Yes I played that game and the attack controls were actually pretty good. They released another game with the same engine (no reference sorry).
      I thought it was revolutionary at the time, hard to get used to since you'd have to hit multiple buttons and click and drag the mouse to do an attack, but if you got good at it, the game was very fun.
      Always love chopping goblins to bits. Was funny too in that you could cut off an Orc's leg and then pick it and beat him with it, great stuff.
      • Draconus?

        And I agree with you on those games.

        Speaking of innovative control, I hope that Black & White 2 continues to use mouse-gestures. Not Earth-shattering innovative, but darn nifty, I thought.
    • I totally remember that game! It was a lot of fun. I think it was one of the few games that made me break down and buy a decent joystick (Motoracer and Interstate '76 being some of the others).

      The best part was chopping off a kobolds arm with your sword, picking up the arm, and clubbing him over the head with it.

      Good times.
    • I still have Die By the Sword in an old cd-rom drive that I occasionally use, that game took a good many hours of my time but it was well worth it. :)

  • Replay function? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jermyjerm ( 705338 ) on Wednesday March 24, 2004 @12:31PM (#8657919) Homepage
    I didn't see this mentioned, but it would be quite fun if they included the ability to record and play back motions. Coupled with multiplayer functions, that could be great for creating little kung fu movies.

    Considering the amount of time I spent fooling with truck and stair dismount [slashdot.org], I'm sure I'll be giving this a whirl.
  • Does any know who what the music track in the trailer is?

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