The Details of Dead Bodies in Gaming 195
Via Stephen Totilo's Second Player blog, his most recent post at MTV concerns dead bodies in videogames. This rather morbid topic may seem like a small concern, but it's a big deal for the people making the games. From the article: "Dead bodies have been vanishing in games for decades because of technical difficulties. Old 2-D games -- like just about anything on the original Atari, Sega and Nintendo systems -- could only display a limited number of character graphics, or sprites, on a TV screen at one time. Letting a zapped enemy lie prone on the playing field caused problems, limiting the amount of new things, like new on-rushing enemies, that could be drawn onto the screen. 'You would end up sacrificing one of your precious moving objects to display an essentially useless dead body,' [game designer Ralph] Barbagallo said." With the advent of the newest generation of consoles, Totilo explains, we now have the luxury of corpses as far as the eye can see.
The luxury of corpses as far as the eye can see... (Score:5, Funny)
Realism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Realism (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, in team play. Want to block off a path? Litter it with your opponents' corpses.
Re:Realism (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick of bushes that either don't exist as immaterial, or are like a spike of some mithril adamantium substance that causes a truck to flip over.
Re:Realism (Score:5, Interesting)
If corpses are going to block projectiles, they need to be destructable. I could see this adding quite a bit of strategic element to even an FPS. I really wish that in battlefield 2 the tanks wouldn't immediately explode, because they made great infantry shields right up until they went boom, and presented a nice little mobile fortification.
If corpses don't somehow hold an interaction with the game, I see little point in their long lifespan. If I can't pile them high as a makeshift sand wall, or eat them to regen some health, sweep them along to digital heaven already.
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Uh oh, a wooden police barricades. No way I can get past that. I guess my character isn't flexible enough to crawl under it, or strong enough to just push it over. Nevermind the rocket launcher that I'm carrying.
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Some of the Ranger quest levels are a fine example of what you are describing. They are a spiral maze made of trees. You can spend your time fighting along the maze or you can take a big axe and chop your way through. Or zap a wand of fire or throw a few fireballs. Voila - trees begone.
Similarly in nethack you can permanently freeze water into ice and make it walkable on top, destroy walls, obstructions, etc and dead corpses stay for a considerable amount of time. Unfortunately the big beast co
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Re:Realism (Score:5, Informative)
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Think what this could have done for Doom. Demons with variable mass! A demon in the hall that is too large to push past at 20% health, but you can at 60% (or if you have a Bezerker Pack). Demon corpses blocking the path of new demons. How about being able to pick up demon corpses and throw them at oncoming attackers?
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And the demons climbing over them, pushing their way through your makeshift barricades.
In fact, that could've been damn fine with tables, chairs, etc, let alone corpses.
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There was a serious discussion by Red Orchestra [redorchestragame.com] game devs at one time (or least they said) about the use of keeping corpes in the game because they are aiming for the most "realitic" game ever. And RO is brutally realistic if you have never played it. (no crosshairs, realistic weapon trajectories, and realistic human attributes)
Given the fact that Stalingrad was literally covered with dead bodies that couldn't be buried
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*thinks* i'm going to attempt to implement that "turning Karma off" after the bodies come to rest, maybe that'll do something useful. Still
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I stopped reading at this point.
Why must ALL games be realistic as possible? Does it really enhance Mario for a Goomba to stay squished on the floor?
Realism ! = Games
Games are about having fun and some times this means gore fest super realistic and other times it means a fat jolly man bouncing on Mushrooms. Realism has a time and a place, not always is it in games.
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If you have enough ammo you can kill every last person in that level, none of them respawn and their bodies lie on the ground until you exit the level. You can even pick them up and move them ar
Thief (Score:4, Interesting)
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Notice I said "typically" and "you" as in the average player. Sure, some people never played it at the hardest setting, so what? They're games, they're supposed to be fun. Sometimes I played it on expert and occasionally I just wanted to be a bastard and kill every single enemy. You know, play the game, not just move through it at the hardest setting checking off levels like it's some kind of task to be completed.
Even if you played to kill it was never going to be Quake-like sinc
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Except I was usually throwing the bodies at the guards.
One step further (Score:3, Insightful)
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You had to clean them using water arrows.
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Perhaps this only added for Thief 3, however... can't remember.
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In action games the bodies did have to be quickly removed so that you could make room for the new baddies. recently we have started to see bodies being left about, however I have yet to see MUCH of a point to it. Yah, it is a nice idea for realizim, however in most casses it does not add much realisim (rarely to the b
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If a knockout went bad and the guard managed to yell for help before you took him down you were in a tough spot. You moved slow with the body and you neede
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Re:Thief (Score:5, Informative)
Die by the sword had persistent corpses, along with dismemberment. So you could cut off a kobold's head, throw it at it's partner, then hack off the kobold's limb to beat the partner to death with it. Fun.
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Dude. I hope you got a new roommate...
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This will surely improve DOOM (Score:4, Interesting)
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Personally, I found the meaty piles of flesh and giblet production more entertaining.
Of course, I think the game was made to play with IDKFA, IDDQD, and BFG or stimpack the entire time.
Although the chainsaw did have its moments.
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After iD released the source code to Doom, the engine got some rewrites. IIRC, Doom Legacy [newdoom.com] supports solid corpses. Enjoy.
UOZaphod (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:UOZaphod (Score:5, Funny)
"I pick up the dead kobold and hit the lich with it."
"Eww"
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I think soon he would get the message.
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Re:UOZaphod (Score:5, Funny)
Re:UOZaphod (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, he was a real winner.
So, anyways, bullets don't work, rocks don't work, apparently the structure of the chopper is magic-resistant so melting it or turning it into a giant donut isn't an option. So, with half the party shredded, up comes my turn. Me, the mental/hand-to-hand guy.
Me: Can I see the pilot?
DM: Yeah, I suppose, through the bullet-proof canopy.
Me: I plant a suggestion in his head.
DM: Hah! He's a trained soldier, getting him to go back to base or crash into the ground is gonna take a natural 10! Pfft, go ahead, what's your suggestion?
Me: You know his control panel?
DM: Hah! He's a trained soldier, you'd need a 9 to get him to think snakes are coming out of it! Give it up!
Me: The "engine fire" light is on.
DM:
DM:
DM:
DM:
We broke up that gaming group shortly after, but I'll always remember with great relish and glee, the moment that he had to grudgingly admit that getting someone to believe some simple tiny light bulbs was on wasn't really that hard, and that the absolute, unavoidable consequence of a pilot seeing all his Engine Fire lights on would be to stop fighting and immediately land somewhere close and safe to inspect the aircraft.
I'm sure this is completely unrelated to the article, but your story just reminded me of that, and how much I enjoy finding novel solutions to problems.
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Of course, now I can't remember the name of the damn system at all... it was one of the fun ones though.
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Nice game, I liked the open system... it wasn't "learn this spell to do this many points of this damage to that opponent"... it actually gave a chance to use some creativity in the game.
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A good friend of mine used the point system to build twins who shared a soul... completely out of the book, completely by points so not even a chance of faked rolls, 100% legit. We got to play it for all of one session before he decided we were "Too powerful", mostly because we played very well as a tea
Unexpected surprise rolls (Score:2)
We had a running gag in one campaign where the standard attempt to initiate a surprise check we to point and say "Look it's the Good Year Blimp", generally this only occured if we were already engaged with th epotential combative opponents. The DM would roll a d100 check to see if they looked for the Blimp (it being an anachronism and all). The one time it actually worked, I think the DM was more surprised than the mobs.
Same campaign we used to roll; 'check for traps', 'check for secret doors/hidden', 'che
Luxury of corpses as far as the eye can see? (Score:2)
Total War. (Score:4, Informative)
Certainly Rome:Total War leaves the dead on the battlefield, even if they are simplified. Even missiles, such as arrows are tracked into the ground and only disappear after a while.
I fail to see the problem with letting the dead pile up, they're just objects like everything else.....
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Total War doesn't let you build any units during combat, so it always knows that if it can draw the start of the batt
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> War. It's actually an important strategic resource for the Necrons now.
Persistent corpses are an important strategic resource for the Neocons now, too.
Hah! Beat you to it!
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Protection (Score:2, Interesting)
Too bad we don't have smell-a-vision, the smell of burnt and decaying human flesh would lend that extra realism to the game.
Though if that's what you want, you could just volunteer for Iraq or Afghanistan.
All-in-all I find the topic rather morbid.
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Puff of Smoke (Score:2)
Doom II (Score:2)
Or am I misremembering?
Kerrect! (Score:3, Funny)
In doom 2, the bodies MOVED! (Score:2)
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Not a problem anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's play Doom again. (Score:3, Interesting)
Any one remember playing the original doom and getting to that one map where it was you and a massive room full of demons? I cheated to get through it. Now we can have hills of demon corpses. O.K. They most likely mean human corpses, but that's the least interesting to me. Unless they are thinking about decomposing corpses and how long it takes which could be very interesting game play in where a massive battle field that isn't cleaned up spreads disease and what ever troops are around that battle field end up dead.
Another thought would be revisiting the same areas/maps where previous battles were fought and the dead piling up over the generations the map has been used. Think of the dead becoming just part of the background or that they you have to bury them or burn them to prevent disease and end up making a new map if played several times.
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realism (Score:2)
Commander Keen.. (Score:2)
...corpses as far as the eye can see... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict [wikipedia.org]
Estimated number of deaths in the conflict have ranged from 50,000 (World Health Organization, September 2004) to 450,000 (Dr. Eric Reeves, 28 April 2006). Most NGOs use 400,000, a figure from the Coalition for International Justice that has since been cited by the United Nations.
i'd rather they didn't lay around. it's nice to see the payoff for good play but this is supposed to be a game not an experiment in psychology (i'
Not really a recent thing (Score:3)
The problem is that even as consoles improve by a factor of 10, game designers/programmers/whoever decides the features try to improve the graphics by a factor of 11. Witness the PS3 games that have framerate troubles... forget console fanboyism, forget everything like that, that is nothing more and nothing less than bad judgment by the game developer and biting off more than they could chew.
Forget about the extra power to display corpses... despite our gaming rigs having more power than I would ever have dreamed of in my childhood, we still have games that can't keep up 30fps. I'd rather see more attention payed to that than corpse retention.
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Of course, all of these things are not really tied to technological limits, but rather the limitation of the people developing the game
Yeah That's Always Bugged Me... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm all for stacking the dead up chest high in the game but if you're going to do it then you should also make the in-game characters react with horror or whatever's in-character for them.
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In 'Thief' and 'Thief 2', if you left a body on the floor and a guard found it, they'd react by coming to look for you. And they'd look hard - not like when they heard you make a noise, and they'd give up after a minute or so, thinking they'd heard a mousefart or something. No, if they saw a body, the jig was pretty much up.
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The best handling of NPC reaction to dead bodies has got to be the Hitman series. They stop dead as if shocked, then run and hide, shout to alert guards, or start glancing around nervously
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So you see the idiotic spectacle of supposedly intelligent and goody two-shoes creatures reassembling on top of the corpse of their now dead companion, and i
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I was working on a mission in Oblivion a couple of weeks ago and had a funny moment. I got attacked by some bad guys in a house in town. I run out into the streets and the town guards make quick work of them. I come back days later and the bodies are still there in the street. One of the town guards walks by, sees one and says something like "There must be a murderer about." Not very realistic, but funny.
-Eric
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Lugaru was interesting... (Score:2)
Corpses in Lugaru do stay around, until you win -- and it's very realistic in a few other respects, too. For instance, if an enemy died from blunt trauma, there might be a bit of blood from wh
I'm waiting for a game where you... (Score:2)
Good thing there're no graphics in Slash'EM (Score:2)
This wasn't what I had in mind with ragdolls (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm responsible for some of this. Here's the first ragdoll falling downstairs [youtube.com], from 1997. Yes, that's how that cliche started. I'd written the first ragdoll system that really worked right, so it was time to make demos. The first try had six-legged bugs dropping through a funnel, which is tough technically but not very interesting. Then there was the big mecha toss [youtube.com], to show that we did heavy objects right. (Most game physics systems still get that wrong. The physically animated objects all move like they're very light. We call this the "boink problem". There's a cube/square law in contact handling that's not captured by the impulse/constraint systems.) So I was looking for a hard case that exercised the system and was way beyond what anybody else could do back then. The fall down a circular staircase was it. It's a tough multiple-collisions problem with friction against multiple surfaces, and contact computed against the polygonal geometry, not some oversimplified model. Every step and every stair railing is an individual object; the feet can slip through the space between the railings.
After we did that, everybody did ragdolls falling downstairs. It got to be a cliche, like caustics on shiny logos. One vendor in the early 2000s had a waterfall of bodies falling downstairs as a GDC demo.
Our original plan was that this was a step to physically-based character animation, where the chararacters really balanced and moved because their feet had friction with the ground. My eventual goal was real martial arts moves, where the throws really were throws. But the industry went off in a different direction - motion capture with interpolation. This provides a reasonably good look without having to solve all the control problems of robotics. The companies trying to solve the hard problem went bust, even after some systems that worked, so that didn't seem to be a direction worth pursuing.
So what did we get from game physics engines? Dead bodies. As CPUs got faster and the algorithms improved, lots of dead bodies. Then, "infinitely destructible environments". Disappointing.
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NaturalMotion is a step in that direction, but not a very big step. That's a somewhat brute-force learning system, and those peak low. You need a little more abstraction than that. But it's progress.
They're about the third company to try that. Other companies are MotionFactory (defunct, very planning-oriented) and Boston Dynamics (doing OK, mostly selling to DoD).
It's a hard problem, but more CPU resources help. I spent some time on it around 1994, at 20 MIPS, and it took hours to simulate a few s
Are computers really that fast? (Score:2)
Are today's processors really that fast? You're talking about on the order of 1000:1 speedup to get real-time ragdoll physics in 3d if it took hours to get seconds a decade ago.
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Originally, I was using Working Model, from Knowledge Revolution. On hard problems it was painfully slow, and that was a 2D system. The problem just wasn't well understood in 1994. Then from 1995-1997 I wrote Falling Bodies, which was almost real-time for single humanoid characters at 200 MIPS. Since then, there's been steady progress.
The algorithms in wide use today aren't really that good, though; accuracy has been sacrificed for speed. That's why most ragdolls don't move quite right. The computa
Re:This wasn't what I had in mind with ragdolls (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our technology for high-quality ragdolls is patented. This broad patent covers most spring/damper character simulation systems. If it falls, it has joints, it looks right, and it works right, it's probably covered by our patent."
Thank you for stifling innovation yet again.
Re:This wasn't what I had in mind with ragdolls (Score:4, Insightful)
So, now, those who can, are not allowed to. Its that simple.
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The good ol' days... (Score:2)
It really does change the feel... (Score:3, Interesting)
And, uh, I loved it
There was still a technical limitation though, if you set it to keep them permanently and played a long round, your performance would degrade considerably over time.
Cheers.
Resource usage of dead bodies. (Score:2)
Eve-online (Score:2)
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M2TW (Score:2)
what games are missing right now is (Score:2)
What I haven't seen is any effort to make people die realistically. The most that is usually visible is a spot of red where the bullet hit, and some red painted on scenes behind. When someone is shot by a machine gun... or a tank for that matter, this is not what happens. A realistic portrayal of this would be a good deal more
Not actually that new. (Score:2)
Same with Half-Life 2, by the way, although they do seem to get rid of corpses of things that spawn infinitely (like Antlions) -- although I don't remember actually seeing the corpses fading, and I imagine they try to do it when my
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HackQuake (Score:2)
Before its official release for Mac (after being ported by MacSoft), all we had was an illegal source port compiled by some guy[s] who supposedly stole the source code (from Crackdotcom if I recall correctly) for the game and tweaked & recompiled for Mac OS (I can't verify the accuracy of this story unfortunately, but I vividly remember discussing it with various people on Hotline [wikipedia.org], THE way to get warez for Mac OS in the late
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Quake for OS/2 [os2ezine.com] - article from 1997
As an added note, Crackdotcom is no longer in business [loonygames.com].