After Death Animations
Nossah
Join Date: 2002-11-11 Member: 8234Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2002-11-11 Member: 8234Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Short Study and Suggestions based upon it.</div>What i would like to talk to you people about today is a little something i like to call After Death Animations. Now, if any of you have ever played any other fps (and I'm betting most of us have) You have probably noticed that death animations and rag doll physics have gained increased popularity among game developers over the past few years. And while agree that they add a bit of immersion into the game i find it a bit strange that so little work is dedicated to what happens to a body after it has hit the ground.
So what happens after the player dies, the death animation kicks in and the rag doll physics seal the deal, then nothing. All of us can probably think of one or two instances of the following happening: The body either blinks a couple of times and disappears, doesn't blink at all and just disappears, it slowly sinks into the ground, goes transparent and then disappears or any other forms of unrealistic ways to get rid of unnecessary entities. We as gamers have simply come to accept this because it is what it is. This works from a game play perspective and i am not proposing a change in game play, since it's a good element that's been tried and tested and it has been proven it works, but i do think we can be a little more creative with the animation side of it to create more immersion.
With all the the technology the TSA possesses, and in this case phase technology, it wouldn't be unthinkable that dead bodies are phased back onto the orbiting TSA ship where the body is either prepared for reconstruction or destroyed and the mind extracted for transplantation into a new body. After that they phase into combat using the infantry portal.
What I'm proposing is this: After a player is killed and his death animation is played and his body hits the floor with splendid rag doll physics, another animation triggers, imagine something along the lines of star trek's beam up effect. This would be the effect of the body being phased back to the ship. This may seem like a really small thing to add but i do not think it would be heaps of work to implement something like this and i believe strongly it would add to the immersion of the game.
For the Kharaa there could be a sort of disintegration effect after a player or even a structure dies, imagine the model breaking up into tiny particles. This could even be explained in the lore as the organic form of the creature/building breaking up into microscopic (so small they are invisible, to avoid having to animate this) particles that travel back through the air to the hive to rejoin the gene pool.
What do you people think? am i on to something here?
So what happens after the player dies, the death animation kicks in and the rag doll physics seal the deal, then nothing. All of us can probably think of one or two instances of the following happening: The body either blinks a couple of times and disappears, doesn't blink at all and just disappears, it slowly sinks into the ground, goes transparent and then disappears or any other forms of unrealistic ways to get rid of unnecessary entities. We as gamers have simply come to accept this because it is what it is. This works from a game play perspective and i am not proposing a change in game play, since it's a good element that's been tried and tested and it has been proven it works, but i do think we can be a little more creative with the animation side of it to create more immersion.
With all the the technology the TSA possesses, and in this case phase technology, it wouldn't be unthinkable that dead bodies are phased back onto the orbiting TSA ship where the body is either prepared for reconstruction or destroyed and the mind extracted for transplantation into a new body. After that they phase into combat using the infantry portal.
What I'm proposing is this: After a player is killed and his death animation is played and his body hits the floor with splendid rag doll physics, another animation triggers, imagine something along the lines of star trek's beam up effect. This would be the effect of the body being phased back to the ship. This may seem like a really small thing to add but i do not think it would be heaps of work to implement something like this and i believe strongly it would add to the immersion of the game.
For the Kharaa there could be a sort of disintegration effect after a player or even a structure dies, imagine the model breaking up into tiny particles. This could even be explained in the lore as the organic form of the creature/building breaking up into microscopic (so small they are invisible, to avoid having to animate this) particles that travel back through the air to the hive to rejoin the gene pool.
What do you people think? am i on to something here?
Comments
I'd like to see them melt, as if the bonds between their alien cells are breaking apart. Then it forms a puddle and evaporates.
The teleportation for marines is a nice touch.
Vote: Yes
Your ideas are good reminds of the HL2 effect when you kill guys with the glowing ball things.
Also I think I saw an interesting melting/bubbling effect in some RE5 videos (never played the game), however that one is a bit too over the top. But Kharaa dissolving sounds right.
I like this idea.
<!--quoteo(post=1753662:date=Feb 17 2010, 05:09 PM:name=Nossah)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Nossah @ Feb 17 2010, 05:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1753662"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->With all the the technology the TSA possesses, and in this case phase technology, it wouldn't be unthinkable that dead bodies are phased back onto the orbiting TSA ship where the body is either prepared for reconstruction or destroyed and the mind extracted for transplantation into a new body. After that they phase into combat using the infantry portal.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
and this:
<!--quoteo(post=1753662:date=Feb 17 2010, 05:09 PM:name=Nossah)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Nossah @ Feb 17 2010, 05:09 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1753662"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->For the Kharaa there could be a sort of disintegration effect after a player or even a structure dies, imagine the model breaking up into tiny particles. This could even be explained in the lore as the organic form of the creature/building breaking up into microscopic (so small they are invisible, to avoid having to animate this) particles that travel back through the air to the hive to rejoin the gene pool.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
a very cool ideas. While reading I thought about a swarm of little flies like the nymphs that travel through air or just fade out.
Your marine story is scary btw. heh
About the marines one could think about a DNA/Person Information extract glass bottle that is left on the ground while the body is selfdestruct by nanites.
Just think what the aliens will do with the dead marine bodies!
So after the battle that Extract would be taken away and the marine gets his new body/space viking funeral.
BUT, i kinda like it when there are douzens of bodys lying around so this should take effect after a minute or so and should be slowly over half a minute.
Just my thoughts.
Anyhow, my idea was very similar. If a Marine or Kharaa fell on an infested area, the dynamic infestation would slowly rise and bulge up around the body. Partly transparent decals of infestation would be generated on the ragdoll above and along the mesh line that was rising up around the model. Sort of how bullet holes and blood splatters are applied to models. I also imagined animated tendrils like the ones that can be seen in any infestation texture and in the end of all the NS2 movies stretching out before and above the infestation mesh and clinging to the dead body ragdoll. When the dynamic infestation mesh has fully enveloped the body it would start to sink down again (model is deleted at this point as it's not visible) as if it were digesting the body within the "pouch".
And for when a Marine or Kharaa died in an area still powered by the nanogrid eg. no infestation some of the nanites would take a break from the battle with the bacterium and deconstruct the bodies for resources. Might sound a bit macabre for it deconstructing the marines, but I figured they had to sign some contract agreement that should they perish on a station/facility their bodies would be put to good use :D
So for the visuals I had imagined that you see some particle emitters pop up around the body on floor level and starts spewing particles, symbolising the nanites towards the body. Then animated "noise" decals would be applied to the model near floor level (same as with the infestation decals posted above) and the body would start sinking through the floor, but with the effects it would look like the body was being deconstructed atom layer by atom layer at floor level.
But I realise that phasing bodies out is much more logical, perhaps even the kharaa bodies would get phased out in powered zones where the nanites could send the coordinates of the kharaa bodies. When they are dead their bacterium isn't fighting the nanites as opposed to on a living kharaa so phasing the bodies out for scientific research is a viable justification for the bodies being beemed out.
But I still think my idea for bodies dying on an infested area would look and be extremely cool as far as eyecandy goes and would be an effective way to up the immersion and to dispose of unwanted extra polygons in the form of dead bodies :D
In real life I would piss my pants if in a war zone I walked up to one of my fallen team mates and all of a sudden the infestation and ground around him starts flailing out tendrils round his body and the ground/infestation starts to rise and encompass his entire body only to quickly digest him down to ground level again.
Sounds cool, but that would take forever to code and animate...
If marine bodies phase out, then I guess alien bodies can redeem.
Here's some classic cliche's of after death animations:
Last 10 seconds of this one.
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Bootstrap Bill Turner (when he's absorbed by the ship) might be a good comparison or the infestation taking a marine body.
<img src="http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2007/05/23/gal_pirates_2.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Don't forget how the marines in Alien get cocooned. That might be worthwhile. If the marine dies on infested ground, he can cocoon over in about 10 seconds. Then the cocoon can either stay there or dissolve. Either way, we can get rid of that graphics intensive rag doll model.
And the bootstrap image you posted is pretty close how I imagined the decals being generated on the model looking, only more greenary bacterium and tendrils instead of bay barnacles naturally :D
But correct this is only an eye candy thing and a means to dispose of ragdolls without having them just vanish. But it could be coded in post alpha of course.
If he dies near a marine IP or PG then id disolves like you said in star trek bean up(away).
If he dies middle of map somewhere he is left there and the aliens can use it to heal(devour) small amount and then the body would disapear in chunks maybe.
If he dies near a hive then the "dynamic infestation would slowly rise and bulge up around the body". maybe healing the hive a very tiny amount like 5HP. The body would slowly sink into the dynamic infestation after words.
Alien death:
same with alien deaths except for in middle of map it would have a small dynamic infestation the slowly desolve completely.
If this effect is in the game, it should be fairly subtle.
If this effect is in the game, it should be fairly subtle.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
QFT.
Still, using something than instant disappearing of the corpse is a good idea.
The warp out of the Combine would work as a template for the Marines. There's this other one where the body dissolves/decomposes into blood from CoD multiplayer that could work well for Aliens.