Is it just me do the downed animation seem slightly weird to you? The characters seem to do the same motion repeatedly and in a very small loop. There doesn't seem to be any variation by the looks of it if they are downed at the same time by a grenade they would all move at the same time, which would be a bit off putting. They might have changed it, but from what I've seen or at least remember, they seem to have the same animation.

This isn't enough to stop me buying the game or anything, just looks kinda freaky.

Yes I do remember seeing this too I hope they add some variation to the downed animation. Of course the one thing that really bugged me was the lack of different death screams where everyone sounded exactly the same no matter how different the person was.

I don't mind it being this way. You know he's down but not out. For enemies it's easy to see that they can still be revived, so they know that he's not completely finished off. For teammates it's easy to know that he can still be revived.

I don't know how they could improve it. Removing it would be a problem, because otherwise you can't see the difference between being death or just incapacitated.

im not sure they wanted it to be removed. A solution would be to add a number of animations one of which is selected randomly at death.

rather than randomly at death, it would be better if it depended on the way you were gunned down ..
ya know? like if you were running and were shot in the back, you would fall forward, so your downed position could be on your chest, not on your back ..



just a suggestion

It would seem realistic, but in a game it's unpractical. You wouldn't see what's happening around you, just a black screen, which makes it almost impossible to see when to revive yourself.

Exactly.
Animations for each and every death leads onto ragdoll physics which the devs left out of quake wars and im assuming brink because medics need to revive you. With ragdoll physics you will often get people stuck in awkward positions being unrevivable. It would be silly for this type of game.

The animations work the way they do, because they serve a purpose. Here is why ragdoll, or even a variety of death animations wouldn't work:

When players drop in Brink, they are not dead, they are incapacitated. They can choose to wait for a Medic or respawn. There is also a skill that allows players to fire while in this phase, so players would always need to be in the same position when they die. Somehow everybody who gets downed needs to end up on their back in a position where they can still see and possibly shoot. This wouldn't work with bodies flying around, piling on top of each other, or getting pushed by explosives.

A single animation across the board is the most simple, balanced and reasonable thing the devs could do, and frankly, I don't get why it's such a big deal to have varied death animations. Really guys? Bickering about the death animations? Did I miss milk and cookies and nap time?

Precisely what the Captain said. You are downed first which is the repeated animation that is easily identifable. Dead will be motionless.

There's also these posts from Richard Ham:


"When you're incapped, you're still alive, waiting for a medic to come save your ass. But that's a tough state to be in if your ragdoll has landed in a half-gainer headstand goofiness...

Revives work largely like you'd expect, to answer the other question... "
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showpost.php?p=197050&postcount=23


"Yeah, incapacitating someone with ragdoll is tricky; since it's a ragdoll, they could end up anywhere in any pose. But we're working on the standard "being able to blend from ragdoll craziness back to proper animation" stuff now "
http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showpost.php?p=197027&postcount=17

No but I think I got what the dude who said a variety based on death was saying.

Lets say you were running down a hall and you get shot in the back, you fall forward, and start crawling with your chest to the floor. You can still shoot, and it's still clear your downed since there is no prone.

Unless (Like in real life) the animation has you fall on your face and roll over onto your back. Ready to be revived/shoot people (if you have the ability).

There is also no crawling....

you obviously missed the part when I (and the Rahdo) explained that death animations need to be constant for gameplay reasons.

You just seem to asking for extra "flair," without thinking about how it would affect the game, and your prime reasoning for it being along the lines of, "because it would be cool."

No, I thought about how it would affect the game.

Since there is no prone, if you saw someone crawling around with their gun pointed you'd know that he's downed, not dead. So instead of 1 constant, theres 2

Really!? What other kind of motion could being dead have?

But was does crawling add? What significant gameplay element?

Well metaknight seems to think there needs to be two. Dead no motion, downed groaning on the ground. Also the operative can fake death so watch out.

Also, crawling on the ground wouldn't work, because it would offset other abilities.

Ex. trying to interrogate someone who is crawling away could prove frustrating at the least. Engineers planting mines under bodies as traps, kinda looses it's purpose if they crawl away.

Agreed no crawling. I need to booby trap corpses.

It adds more realism to the game. Oh wait, I forgot that's not SD's main concern.....it's "balance."

Oh quiet you. "Balance" is way more important then the game being like every other game out there. Upon rewatching the video a lot. The downed animations were obviously staged to look okay in relation to what was happening and will probably look goofy in some other contexts once the game is released... but I'd rather have a system where I can see my teammate is able to be healed and is not dead yet. And that animation allowed them to land in a prone position that shows me as a medic "I can save this guy." just by looking in his direction. Take BC2 for instance. You get that flatline icon when you have to revive someone... half the time you can't find the guy because the positioning on the map is wonky and there's other dead guys nearby maybe bad guys and then you finally make out the icon over him. I'd rather see the guy lying there struggling to stay alive and have an arrow direct me to him. It's a lot less frustrating as a person who has played medic.

Excuse me? Can you point out where I said that balance wasn't important? I made a rather sarcastic comment....relax.

But don't you think it's a breath of fresh air that they take "balance" seriously?

Yes, I absolutely do. However, it's possible to have balance AND realism.

The "realism in games" debate never works, since it is always subjective. It adds "realism" if a body has ragdoll physics, but no one questions using syringes to fully restore health to teammates or magical ammo boxes that have every type of ammo in them, and can refill a weapon to full capacity. Don't even remind of the Operatives ability to steal a players look and physique...

It's not supposed to be real - that's why it's a video game, and not a war-time simulation. If video games were 100% real, they would be 100% boring.




Not unless you make compromises to one or the other.