Matress in the HL2 vids -- first "ragdoll" inanimate object?

[UnmarkedOne]

I did a search for this topic... seems it hasn't been brought up before, or at least for a good while. I'm trying to confirm whether the matress in the HL2 vids (there's one at the top of the stairs in TrapTown, and one in the E3.2k3 Physics Demo) is the first inanimate object ever to possess a ragdoll quality.

To clarify, I'm not talking about humans or other living or dead creatures, but rather flexible objects.

I've played through the Hitman series, Max Payne 2, Far Cry, UT2k3/4, Painkiller, Raven Shield, Doom3, and several others that depended heavily on physics, yet have never seen an object like the matress. Though a minor feature, this is one more way HL2 will differ from any game out there.

Anyway, point of the topic is to see if anyone has seen a "ragdoll" object in a game before HL2's time. Thanks for any comments/flames/what-have-you.

-UnmarkedOne

 

[ShinRa]

Did you just say max pane 2, far cry, ut2k3/4, painkiller, ravenshield, hitman, and doom 3 depended heavily on physics?

 

[GuNzABlaZiN]

I can just see this in 5 years "Superbabes 5 had the first realistic matress ragdoll" "ERM NO, it was that game called Half-Life 2", etc.

 

[UnmarkedOne]

Ah, I had a feeling someone would nail me for that. The games don't depend on it, per se, but most of them have a ton of simulated objects sitting around to be shot, pushed, or blown over.

Anyway, that's not even the point of the thread so try not to go too off-track on me. Think of anything like the matress?

-UnmarkedOne

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Well far crap...i mean cry had chains that when you shoot would dangle and stuff.

I think that counts as inanimate.

Doom 3 had that scene where you have to pick up barrels and stuff with that grappler hook. It was hanging by a rope that was physicsing to the shisenhausen.

 

[She]

Think of anything like the matress?

a bed??. hmm, Sofa?..

 

[blahblahblah]

Here is something to do. Load up Doom 3 and spawn a bunch of zombies and kill them (but don't gib them). Open up the console and type "g_dragentity 1". It is a way to pick up objects. Click on the rag dolls and stack them. See what happens when you start to have multiple complex objects interact with each other. Frame rates start to crash because so many physics calculations are needed.

Even more fun is making your own room and spawning 20 zombies (and then kill, etc) and watching my frame rates go from 35 FPS (with 20 zombies in the room) to 5 fps when they are stacked in a zombie pyramid.

Most games usually have a bit of code that says that 2 ragdolls can't interact with each other because of performance reasons.

It surprises me that HL2 has ragdolls that interact with other objects. I predict much fun can come from this.

 

[UnmarkedOne]

Yeah that's true, Fusion, I had forgotten about the chains. There were electrical wires near the end of one level, on a dock, that were strung between poles, and you could knock either over and it would affect the chain. It was a decent effect but they were really eratic in many cases. I suspect HL2's wires/ropes won't be any better, as game physics just aren't at that level quite yet, but if the level designers did their job, it won't be noticeable anyway.

-UnmarkedOne

 

[wchristiansen]

Not to my knowledge

Nope, I haven't seen "ragdoll" on inanimate objects before. But other games have never used physics so much. I think the gratest about the matresses concept is that is has tension in it. If you were to say, prop it up against a door, whoever was chasing you sould be able to get through... unless it was a wooden door and they eventually shot through it.

-Will.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

In UT2k4 you could have a dynamic light swing around. Just that you really wouldn't have those kinds of things in a multiplayer game due to performance reasons.

Oh and it would be spring physics, not ragdoll ragdolls are only for moving characters/npc's

 

[Petabyte]

I can just see this in 5 years "Superbabes 5 had the first realistic matress ragdoll" "ERM NO, it was that game called Half-Life 2", etc.

That game called Half-Life 2. Superbabes 5.

Just messing around with physics in Half-Life 2 will be better than most games out there right now. Its going to be even better using them in gameplay. Not as good as superbabes 5, though!

 

[Tiddalick]

Deus Ex 2....

 

[aeroripper]

Did you just say max pane 2, far cry, ut2k3/4, painkiller, ravenshield, hitman, and doom 3 depended heavily on physics?

haha i laughed at that

nice

 

[Burn]

Must say that I was impressed by the matress too, never seen a "soft" object like that with realistic psy on them.

 

[iamaelephant]

blahblahblah that is fricken hilarious, I'm definately going to try that.

 

[craig]

Splinter Cell: The First. There weren't ragdoll physics per se, but the curtains / drapes (whatever you want to call the damn things), basically had the same qualities as the matress.

FarCry: Not sure if it uses Havok, but there are physics objects in this (lights for one), that are technically inanimate objects that are physics driven.

 

[Cyanide]

Since ragdoll physics have been around for a while now, I highly doubt that nobody has ever applied it to a non-humanoid object before. Weather it would still be considered ragdoll if it wasn't applied to a "living thing" I'm not sure. At its base, ragdoll physics is nothing more than a combination of inverse and forward kinematics applied to the bones of an object and governed by gravity, momentum, ridgid body dymanmics, and rotation limiters. None of which is anything new. It's just that most game designers have rightly felt that it would be better to put CPU power to use for something other than a flexible matress. The difference now is that CPUs are getting so fast, and video cards are taking more and more of the graphical load, so you have more resources to play with and you can do little details like that without sacraficing much.

BTW, curtains and drapes use cloth physics, not ragdoll.

 

[Aphal]

Must say that I was impressed by the matress too, never seen a "soft" object like that with realistic psy on them.

Do they not have mattresses where you live? Because although HL2's mattress ragdoll may look cool, they don't bend like that in real life.

 

[iamaelephant]

Nope, matresses don't bend nearly as much in real life, but the HL2 ones are alot of fun to play with. Erm... I mean they look like alot of fun.... yesss.....

 

[Beast206]

Well, if you had an old crappy run down mattress like you'd expect in that city, they can get pretty "floppy". I helped a friend move once, and his mattress was that bad. I swear that matress was made of snail snot.

 

[UnmarkedOne]

Do they not have mattresses where you live? Because although HL2's mattress ragdoll may look cool, they don't bend like that in real life.

Stop and think about it, though. The springs in a matress cause it to retain it's shape, and like the poster before me mentioned, a well-used or damaged matress would be become very floppy and act almost like a real thick blanket, as seen in the vids.

I guess, to most of the people that came up with intelligent responses, I'd say that I wouldn't put wires and chains and hanging lights in the ragdoll-inanimate-object category. Props to the guy who brought up SC's cloth (did you know Hitman 2 and possibly the first one, made years ago, had cloth just like it? Your body could move it, but bullets didn't affect it like they do in SC).

Think about it this way, though. I mean, hell, even OpFor had "rope physics" if you want to look at it that way. I guess I didn't lump that together with the really nice physics job they did on HL2's matress. Still, many of you came up with inanimate physics objects examples I didn't recall, so thanks for indulging me. Case closed.

-UnmarkedOne

 

[poseyjmac]

Splinter Cell: The First. There weren't ragdoll physics per se, but the curtains / drapes (whatever you want to call the damn things), basically had the same qualities as the matress.

well thats more like cloth physics, there were a few older games than SC that had those kind of physics

 

[Citizen 1150421]

you do know that you can make ragdolls happen in maya all the time. even thought its not in game the physics are there..

wait wait.. physics are there in real life too .. WOW..

you see when you have the technology ANYTHING can get ragdolled..
so this should be no more exciting than xmas nowadays.

there is a game called Silent Storm... it is an RTS, but it has more physics and rag dolls than most gamesnowadays.. walls break cause of nades. bullets can penatrate thru surfaces to kill. fences break when hit, widows break.. the list goes on...

what would be cool is when this game is released and we all go WOOOOOOOOWWW

 

[Danimal]

I did a search for this topic... seems it hasn't been brought up before, or at least for a good while. I'm trying to confirm whether the matress in the HL2 vids (there's one at the top of the stairs in TrapTown, and one in the E3.2k3 Physics Demo) is the first inanimate object ever to possess a ragdoll quality.

To clarify, I'm not talking about humans or other living or dead creatures, but rather flexible objects.

I've played through the Hitman series, Max Payne 2, Far Cry, UT2k3/4, Painkiller, Raven Shield, Doom3, and several others that depended heavily on physics, yet have never seen an object like the matress. Though a minor feature, this is one more way HL2 will differ from any game out there.

Anyway, point of the topic is to see if anyone has seen a "ragdoll" object in a game before HL2's time. Thanks for any comments/flames/what-have-you.

-UnmarkedOne

Oh, in Doom 3 an arm that i fished out of a toilet with a flashlight had some ragdoll in it. So did a torso

 

[Reaps]

As far as i remember, gabe or someone from valve said that any entity in hl2 can have physical properties. I.e. for the matress they say "it's blah big and has a flex property".

Same goes for the wood in the ravenholme video, it has stress points and shatters into smaller bits.

 

[Dagobert]

well thats more like cloth physics, there were a few older games than SC that had those kind of physics

Nocturne for PC in 1999/2000 that had cloth on the main character's coat.

 

[^Ben]

Water in UT2K3

 

[Line Bender]

I remember the leaves in the Hitman 1 jungle were pretty cool, they would bend as you walked past them and flop back to shape when you let go. Als Hitman 1 is the first game i remember having ragdoll physics. It was really cool to drop a body half into a well, and see it slide and eventually tumble all the way down. I think Tresspasser was the first game to use real-time physics, or were there games before Tresspasser with physics?

P.S. a bit off topic, are there any cool physics things to spawn in the CS:S demo? Man i really wish they'd put a manipulator in there to play around with.

 

[RoguePsi]

Splinter Cell: The First. There weren't ragdoll physics per se, but the curtains / drapes (whatever you want to call the damn things), basically had the same qualities as the matress.

I was gonna suggest that.

 

[Rupertvdb]

Hitman 1 did it the most impressively at the time, some serious sick fun was had dragging semi naked chinamen around.

 

[Lobster]

Wow, a discussion about the realistic floppy-ness of a used mattress, now ive seen it all.

 

[Ol'Master]

Wow, a discussion about the realistic floppy-ness of a used mattress, now ive seen it all.

Valve REALLY REALLY need to give us something to play with. :rolling:

 

[Bigcheese]

you can put a ragdoll on what ever you want... but what they did is ez its just deformation each point is a phsic object and they are linked and the colision is done per-poly...

UE3 will have somthing kinda the same but better. (yes i know its comming out in 2006 but they already have it running on curent hardwhere they just need to make a game for it.)

 

[Drayvn]

I liked the part where the flying sentry thing can produce physics from its wake of the fan on the end, as u can see its powerful enuf to start moving the car and the wires and stuff like that, in one of the vids, its the part where ur on the beach and the buggy and stuff...

 

[CrazyHarij]

Splinter Cell had soft hanging stuff

 

[djkanuk]

I swear that matress was made of snail snot.

I just read something that by the time a pillow is about 6yrs old, 10% of its weight is live mites, dead mites, and mite feces (they live in our skin and hair :O ). The same would probably be true for a mattress, so while not snail snot, you're pretty close!

 

[cyborgguineapig]

I just read something that by the time a pillow is about 6yrs old, 10% of its weight is live mites, dead mites, and mite feces (they live in our skin and hair :O ). The same would probably be true for a mattress, so while not snail snot, you're pretty close!

I will have to keep note of that... :x

 

[poseyjmac]

I just read something that by the time a pillow is about 6yrs old, 10% of its weight is live mites, dead mites, and mite feces (they live in our skin and hair :O ). The same would probably be true for a mattress, so while not snail snot, you're pretty close!

speaking of that, its almost 4am, i gotta go bury my head into mite feces

 

[Beast206]

Oh great.. between snail snot and mite turds, I may never think of my bed the same way again.

 

[Raziaar]

What if my mattress is 18 years old? is 30% of its weight all that stuff? lmao

Just kidding, i'd never keep a mattress that long =P