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Rag Doll Kung Fu Project Showcased
Thanks to VE3D for pointing to a Lionhead Times interview discussing the unique-looking PC tech demo/game called Rag Doll Kung Fu, a side-project of Lionhead graphic artist Mark Healey. He explains of the demo he's been working on in his spare time: "You control the characters on screen with the mouse - there are no pre-scripted animations in the game - it's all up to you... this means you get to create your own style, and can act out whatever you feel like, and of course, if you really feel like it, you can have a fight." The page also includes screenshots and several links to a video trailer of the demo/game, which should be finished (for free download?) "this summer", though Mark is currently helping complete Lionhead's long-awaited Xbox title Fable.
I've seen some terribly impressive motion work from Jessica Hodgins' research.
I also saw a student at CMU produce a swordfighting game as a class project using techniques based on this -- it was truly astounding to watch. It looked absolutely real, fluid, and had all the little nuances that make people move. Normally, you only see this with motion-captured pre-rendered sequences. The improvement here is that hours and hours of motion-captured data are captured, and then split up and combined to form a move that fits the designed constraints. For example, you capture someone doing a number of martial arts forms. You then place an arbitrary path on the ground that you want them to place, and they travel along the track using chunks of captured data from the motion capture that are automatically smoothly transitioned together. It looks really amazing, better than anything I've seen character-animation-wise in a video game yet.
May we never see th
I've been a fan of rag doll physics since I first read about it, and I hope it continues to gather improvements, but when are we going to get controllers for games that are more intuative than a mouse, and less expensive? It's one thing to say you have control of your character's every move, but clearly another to realize such freedom; the controls of video games are what sets them back.
If nothing else, those cats are DAMN interesting.
I don't know why, but I can't wait to give it a try.
I just wanna know which weirdos of the Lionhead team we saw in the videos.
Anyone know?
I think it's an interesting idea; but like many of the other posters it seems like a complicated technique to execute mid-game. What would be interesting to see: if a developer built this into their game so you could "practice" techniques by using the ragdoll physics, but capture it and bind it to key/mouse commands. That way, it would be a matter of pressing keys to execute fight sequences. But who knows, maybe his system will be more intuitive than we think.
Anybody else remember Die By The Sword with it's Virtual SIMulation (VSIM) engine which let you execute pretty much any sword swipe you wanted?
You could even record a few moves and execute them with a single key press I think.
While this was a decent system of play (fairly traditional controls with VSIM mapped on top) I don't remember spending a while lot of time using anything but the basic attacks...
"There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
I didn't see this mentioned, but it would be quite fun if they included the ability to record and play back motions. Coupled with multiplayer functions, that could be great for creating little kung fu movies.
Considering the amount of time I spent fooling with truck and stair dismount, I'm sure I'll be giving this a whirl.
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