Regarding HL2 & General Havok's Physics....

P

Polardude

Guest
Well, here's my first post after many months of antipation and enjoyment of this community (before I even registered)....



I was thinking a few minutes ago about how physics can be improved to be more realistic in a gaming environment....

Having played Max Payne 2, I have to say that the Havok's engine was a major step for games, but there was some points of the game that the ragdoll techinque doesn't cut it.... (Still, it was frickin' awesome!!!! ) :cheers:

Where is the next step?

Where does HL2 change as compared to Max Payne 2?



Hope this will encourage interesting replies and finally bring this forum away from the dreaded BETA/LEAK crap to the orginally intellectural & exciting forum.... :cheese:
 
Don't fret... When Valve means they've done a large change to Havok, they actually mean that they EXTENSIVELY changed it. No boxes wiggle around like Karma, dead Combine soldiers have realistic joints and have FRICTION, and lets not forget that with the SDK you can probably edit the corpses so they weight like half a pound. Would you like a rocket launcher with that?

And thank you for not discussing the goddamn beta.
 
I've still yet to experience anything in-game relating to Havok's engine, but from what I've seen it does all look pretty cool.

MP2 and HL2 wont be the first games to use ragdolls obviously. The UT physics, along with the Hitman series, were quite good also, but they're getting much better now.

The next step will always be improving on what we've got. I can't actually visualise what the next step will be. Things seem to be getting pretty realistic now. I think the next major step will be in quite a few years when we'll start getting photo realistic graphics and animation.
 
Hitman was the first game to ever use that technique...as far as I know. And there were some major mistakes with that physics engine, because they could bent joints in totally unrealistic ways, that no man can or should do.
 
In fact, Dave Mirra's Pro BMX was the first game to implement ragdolls of any sort, and I believe that game was released in 1999! It had poor production values and bad collision modelling, but it did indeed have ragdolls.

As crummy as the ragdolls were, playing with them were the pinnacle of my day.
 
"Hitman was the first game to ever use that technique...as far as I know. And there were some major mistakes with that physics engine, because they could bent joints in totally unrealistic ways, that no man can or should do."

Kind of like they were made of rubber. That's the feeling I get from some of the ragdoll physics seen so far in HL2. Like rubber chickens or something. It still rocks though.
 
I asked Gabe if the same Hitman-rubber-joint feeling would be in Half-Life2 some time ago, so here it is:

Hey, Gabe!
In Hitman and Hitman 2 the models were flexibel as in Half-Life 2, but one thing that annoyed me was that in Hitman the models could bend their joints in unrealistic ways, like twisting their feets 360 degrees. But the worst thing was that they could bend their knee in the wrong direction. Have you made sure that things like that won't happen in Half-Life 2?

Gabe: Constraints prevent unrealistic joint behavior. You can use this for more than character models.
 
Havok physics is cool. I've been using the Havok plugin for 3DS Max, and it freaking rocks. It will add a further degree of chaos to the game, some more unpredictability. The first thing I learnt when I started studying 3D is that chaos is reality.
 
Originally posted by Frank
I asked Gabe if the same Hitman-rubber-joint feeling would be in Half-Life2 some time ago, so here it is:

Hey, Gabe!
In Hitman and Hitman 2 the models were flexibel as in Half-Life 2, but one thing that annoyed me was that in Hitman the models could bend their joints in unrealistic ways, like twisting their feets 360 degrees. But the worst thing was that they could bend their knee in the wrong direction. Have you made sure that things like that won't happen in Half-Life 2?

Gabe: Constraints prevent unrealistic joint behavior. You can use this for more than character models.
Click to expand...


Constraints are a feature in Havok.
 
Strange that game developers don't care to use Havok very frequently. I'm not sure if it's easy to use, but Havok (or Source) is the main draw of Half-Life 2, and it's a sure-fire effect! If a game like HL2 (only dumbed down a few shades) was created a year or two ago, HL2 wouldn't be so impressive anymore.

Luckily, we got the masters to immerse us in the world of heavy cars and sinking barrels and light soda cans. Add VR and you might get extremely confused as to why you can only see pixels. Better see the optometrist...
 
MaxPayne 2's implementation, having beaten the game already, I can say, is not terribly relevant to the gameplay. I was really dissappointed overall with the game: the gameplay has hardly changed from the first. Occasionally Havok makes effects look better than they otherwise would, but it just doesn't come up that much. Max Payne would be ten times better if they redid the mechanics as a first-peron game with zoom outs to 3rd person with the bullettime. 3rd person is just not immersive: I think it's just there to cover for the terrible AI and simplistic gameplay.
 
It's obvious that HL2 uses a VERY modified version of Havok when you compare it to the untouched version of Havok Max Payne 2 uses. MP2 has good physics but the ragdolls are simplistic and some things just don't feel right, boxes fall to the ground and never come to a full rest, bodies twitch and stutter when in certain positions, and some other small things (although the overall effect is great and effective). HL2 has a system setup where objects interact with each other, the player, npc's, and the enviroment in a very, very realistic manner. Physics will also be important from a gameplay aspect for HL2. MP2 only uses physics for show, so they seem a bit shallow I guess. Don't try to judge what the feel of HL2 physics will be like from MP2. They are basically two totally different systems, just based off the same base code.
 
Yeah, the Max Payne 2 implementation of Havok is mostly about eye-candy, and I must admit, while it is very, very cool, it does feel a bit shallow, and while Max interacts with objects and the objects can interact with corpses, Max can't directly interact with corpses and in fact clips right through them and corpses clip through each other giving the whole physics system a slightly slip shod feeling.

Still, it does give a nice taste of what a robust in game physics engine is like (I had fun just kicking boxes down the stairs!) and I can only imagine the possibilities of such a system in Valve's hands.
 
The original Hitman was in fact the game that coined the term "rag doll" for the actions the enemies performed when they were shot. It was the first game to implement that sort of thing. Unrealistic but still cool for it's time. I liked the way you could drag the bodies around afterward though. :p
 
Originally posted by Chode
chaos is reality.
Click to expand...


got too agree with you there..

very excited to see the lifelike (or deadlike, or something) ragdoll effect in hl2,.. prolly will play mp2 in the next week, excited to see how it all works out..
 
What annoys me is that everything in havok seems too light.
Like in the HL2 movies where you push over a monitor. You cant just walk up to something heavy and have it magically fall down. Try pushing your montior now, its quite heavy.
I want heavier objects, It makes it more real and feels alot more satisfying.
 
Originally posted by Woggy
What annoys me is that everything in havok seems too light.
Like in the HL2 movies where you push over a monitor. You cant just walk up to something heavy and have it magically fall down. Try pushing your montior now, its quite heavy.
I want heavier objects, It makes it more real and feels alot more satisfying.
Click to expand...

I noticed that too. When he knocks over the monitor it seems to bounce a bit like it was hollow. It should fall and land solidly with a loud crash. Of course, with that much impact I would expect Dr. Kliener's response to be something more like "Watch it, dumbass!"
 
Well, it *is* the future... Prehaps the monitor is made completely out of plastic or something.








:cheese:

Seeya.
 
Another thing that annoys me about rag dolls from what ive seen in the HL2 movies and from playing Raven Shield is that when someone dies they INSTANTLY rag doll.

You know the effect im getting at how they can be walking along, you shoot them in the leg, and they just go limp and fall to the ground.... :(

What i hope they implement sometime is some sort of semi animation-rag doll. Where they might grab where they have been shot (not a hard thing, if you can get decals on the body you can make a hand reach for it) THEN they rag doll. Or perhaps they have a blood curdaling scream as they drop to there knees, reaching up to god, asking for him to spare his life, THEN he rag dolls

Aye, far more interesting :)
 
In the info from Valve thread Yahn says that they are going to have enemies jerk back when you shoot them based on where you hit them in the final game. This should make it a bit more interesting, but I'd still like to see animation blending in the ragdolls.
 
K*POW!

<grabs chest>

"Arrrgh!... Why? Why? Gack!"

<collapses and goes limp>
 
Yeah, the animation blending/ragdoll effect would be optimal. Ragdoll is only really nice when you are either fighting on top of a cliff or using 'nades to blow ppl skywards.

...or if you are running people over in a buggy;)
 
12 hours later...

No One Lives Forever 2 has great animators at hand. When you drop a corpse down a set of stairs, it rolls down until it loses "momentum". While not quite as good as a Havok ragdoll, it does give a higher level of immersion. Animation blending seems to be the best choice, but most likely very difficult to script AND look good at the same time.

Soldier of Fortune has excellent death scenes, as a blow to the chest with a shotgun sends your enemies flying a bit, while a few blows to the chest with a pistol just makes them fall down.

Postal 2's ragdoll's also seem to please me, as shooting someone wounds them (they crawl like idiots), but ragdolls are still present.

Vive la ragdoll!
 
Originally posted by Brian Damage
Well, it *is* the future... Prehaps the monitor is made completely out of plastic or something.

I hope there'll be flat screens !!! not these bulky monitors... :|
Click to expand...
 
I prefer CRT monitors, but they're heavy - yeah. The CRT monitor in the e3 video is apparently light as a feather.
 
Valve as far as i can work out have added properties like friction, density (mass/volume) which allows you to do things like slow down objects in more real ways, and see wether they float or not. I expect they have things like viscosity variables which alter the speed at which materials can be forced through different liquids, like say tar or even thick sewage or something.

Wonder how far proper liquid and gas physics are off, probably quite a long way yet :/
 
Originally posted by Princess_Frosty
Valve as far as i can work out have added properties like friction, density (mass/volume) which allows you to do things like slow down objects in more real ways, and see wether they float or not. I expect they have things like viscosity variables which alter the speed at which materials can be forced through different liquids, like say tar or even thick sewage or something.

Wonder how far proper liquid and gas physics are off, probably quite a long way yet :/
Click to expand...

wow you ventured from the [H] to grace these forums., welcome ;p
 
i have no idea what most of you are talking about the havok in Max 2 is phenomenal and I hate to say it looks better than the HL2 ragdoll bodies
 
We can't have everything yet as no CPU would handle this. Wait a couple more years when HL2 looks like shit and some new amazing game comes out. Hell, I remember the first time I played Doom I, I was amazed at the cutting edge graphics and the fact you could play it at an unbelievable 640 x 480 resolution. Then I got the same feeling with Duke Nukem (looks similar to doom now but it looked amazing at the time) and when HL1 came out I was completely blown away. I could not understand how they could possible improve on graphics like that :).

All this new technology makes me extremely happy I wasn't born 20 years earlier as I wouldn't be able to enjoy all of this.
 
Does anyone still have the link to that combination physics/animation software that... oh, how do I describe it?

It was posted a while back in some thread speculating about what kind of physics & stuff would be in Half-Life 3.

The web-site had videos of a blocky human running along, then he would trip over a pipe that popped up in front of him, and roll around clutching his shin in pain instead of just going completely limp...
It also had him run and jump off of something and barely catch the ledge he was jumping to then pull himself up... and all kinds of stuff like that.

It also had videos showing off animation of non-bipeds... like horses.

... and it was all supposedly calculated in real-time.
It was an awesome combination of AI, ragdoll, and animation.
They would just tell it what it's target was, put out some obstacles, and it would do the rest.

... so, does anyone still have that link in their favorites?
 
Videogame designers will soon have to shoot real people in the face to see how they land 4/5 times.

Then we will truely have the perfect ragdoll result.

yup.
 
Not necessarily, they could just watch people with narcolepsy for a few weeks.

I suggest they use prisoners waiting for the death penalty... at least they would be put to good use.
 
Originally posted by OCybrManO
Does anyone still have the link to that combination physics/animation software that... oh, how do I describe it?

It was posted a while back in some thread speculating about what kind of physics & stuff would be in Half-Life 3.

The web-site had videos of a blocky human running along, then he would trip over a pipe that popped up in front of him, and roll around clutching his shin in pain instead of just going completely limp...
It also had him run and jump off of something and barely catch the ledge he was jumping to then pull himself up... and all kinds of stuff like that.

It also had videos showing off animation of non-bipeds... like horses.

... and it was all supposedly calculated in real-time.
It was an awesome combination of AI, ragdoll, and animation.
They would just tell it what it's target was, put out some obstacles, and it would do the rest.

... so, does anyone still have that link in their favorites?
Click to expand...

Sounds like some demo of reactor in Max 6, try www.cgfocus.com
 
wow you ventured from the [H] to grace these forums., welcome ;p
Click to expand...

Im a member of many forums, this and HOCP are just recent additions :)
 
That's the ticket!

Oh, yeah... endorphin... I knew it was something like that.

I want to see that kind of stuff in games.
 
Yeah, A.C.T. is really cool stuff. A little to complex for games right now maybe, but in a year or two I think it could become a reality.
 
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