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.

Comments

I've seen some awfully impressive motion work

[0x0d0a]

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.

Control

[dolo666]

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.

Well that's unfortunate

[Phil the Canuck]

It started two summers ago, me and some friends decided to make a short kung fu film, just for some laughs. We had a budget of 50 pounds. We had some really bad fake bald heads, and the stunt man was a floppy blow up doll. It seemed natural to make a game to go with it.

It's a movie license, so it's obviously going to be a disappointment.

Re:And that's why I love Lionhead

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the full cast!

master tak fung...tak fung.
haj ji mi...mark healey.
fat bong...kareem's mate.
ming mong...Abbey.
puk buul kum...kareem ettouney.
ninjas...tony dawson, martin johnson, nathan smethurst.
bridge troll...tony ciniglio.
mad gayorg...georg backer.

P.s I,m sure people are going to find the control a lot easier than you might think, and the game has a slow motion mode which allows for some truly graceful moves.
My main ambition was to create a game of pure skill - one that you really can get better at the more you practice - just like real Kung fu!
Mark.