Possible to adjust ragdoll decay timer?

aeroripper

When you kill say, an onos, his ragdoll (and any other alien for that matter) will disappear after a few seconds. Is there a lua file, or better yet, a console command I can use to adjust this time? Was going to play around with 30 seconds just for giggles.

Tharos

No console command but kRagdollDuration = 6 in Natural Selection 2\ns2\lua\Ragdoll.lua

PaLaGi

This is one of my many annoyances with NS2. Would be great if you could limit the immersion like you can with the decal limit.

aeroripper

Apologies for ressurecting this thread, but I started messing with this again. Same question remains, and I've tried editing kRagdollDuration = 60 as Tharos suggested in that file to no effect when testing in the game. I've also altered the same variable in RagdollMixin.lua as well to no effect.

Not sure why it isn't working.

BeigeAlert

aeroripper wrote: »

Apologies for ressurecting this thread, but I started messing with this again. Same question remains, and I've tried editing kRagdollDuration = 60 as Tharos suggested in that file to no effect when testing in the game. I've also altered the same variable in RagdollMixin.lua as well to no effect.

Not sure why it isn't working.

Keep at it! I want this sooo badly. It'll go great with hour-long decals.

Mendasp

I haven't checked, but have you tried changing the dissolve delay too in DissolveMixin:OnKillClient()?

aeroripper

Mendasp wrote: »

I haven't checked, but have you tried changing the dissolve delay too in DissolveMixin:OnKillClient()?

DissolveMixin.lua
local kDissolveSpeed = 500
local kDissolveDelay = 500


Ragdoll.lua
local kRagdollDuration = 500

RagdollMixin.lua
local kRagdollTime = 500

@‌Mendasp These are the changes I've tried in each file. The only thing I can get to affect the ragdolls at all is the Dissolve speed, which makes them disappear instead of dissolve. This is the contents of the code you cited in DissolveMixin:

function DissolveMixin:OnKillClient()
// Start the dissolve effect`
local now = Shared.GetTime()
self.dissolveStart = now + kDissolveDelay
self:InstanceMaterials()

According to that, the dissolve effect should be getting delayed.

xDragon

I don't think this is something that you can easily do, since for *most* ents the ragdoll is not a new entity, its just the players entity. Increasing the time they stick around would probably become quite messy. If you want to play around with testing it tho, I suspect this is the code you need to remove/comment out:

function RagdollMixin:OnTag(tagName)
    
        PROFILE("RagdollMixin:OnTag")
        
        if not self.GetHasClientModel or not self:GetHasClientModel() then
        
            if tagName == "death_end" then
            
                if self.bypassRagdoll then
                    self:SetModel(nil)
                else
                    SetRagdoll(self, kRagdollTime)
                end
                
            elseif tagName == "destroy" then
                */DestroyEntitySafe(self)/*
            end
            
        end
        
    end

Be warned though that you would want to have a way to make sure the ents get Destroyed.

aeroripper

After playing around in these 3 files for quite a while today I can't achieve the desired result I'm looking for. The 'easy' values to set in each file do not work. I'm commented out and experimented with different pieces of code in each file but can't achieve any real results. RagdollMixin.lua is the key I believe, but I'm not sure if I need to add code or not.

@XDragon I've tried commenting out that info (among other parts of RagdollMixin and Ragdoll (the fake ragdoll after the physically simulated one). No results

BeigeAlert

Bump... cuz I really wanna be able to wade through an ocean of dead skulk bodies.

xDragon

Hmmm i just noticed this... let me take a look and see what happens.

xDragon

Made this little mod which works.. but be advised a good number of ragdolls absolutely destroys FPS with the physics calculations... and I dont think there is a way to make the models static after a time and keep the deformations.

https://github.com/xToken/Ragdoll

McGlaspie

@xDragon You might be able to add another time field, use it on the update routine then change the physics group of the ragdoll so it doesn't collide with anything. Admittedly, that's off-the-cuff and untested. Ideally, a new phycis state could be added that would "freeze" a ragdoll, thus skip it when the update pass occurs.

BeigeAlert

Multithreaded physics?

xDragon

Yea i was looking into changing the groups for the ragdolls, but didnt experiment much with that after my initial trial just made them return to default pose. I dont think there is any way to keep them fully dynamic even if you had perfect multithreading.. its just too many calculations. The best solution would be some way to make them non-collideable, and hope that causes them not to be updated.

BeigeAlert

xDragon wrote: »

Yea i was looking into changing the groups for the ragdolls, but didnt experiment much with that after my initial trial just made them return to default pose. I dont think there is any way to keep them fully dynamic even if you had perfect multithreading.. its just too many calculations. The best solution would be some way to make them non-collideable, and hope that causes them not to be updated.

Even without physics at all, how does this impact performance having this many skulk bodies rendering?

McGlaspie

If no collisions could occur after X time, then they wouldn't need to be updated. Right now, players can collide with ragdolls, which means they need to be updated every frame even if no collisions actually occur.

The prefered method would be to change a ragdoll's collision/physics group after X time. Eliminating the need to perform any kind of update on them. Now, technically, they'll still be updated. However, since we know they couldn't change after X time, then it would be a faster process.