Hi, first, I want to say I'm dying to play Brink. It's the next big thing. Probably It's going to be the best FPS game in 2011.

I've seen lots of videos about the game on this site and some other gameplay videos from the E3 and etc. I notice something... could turn out to be a negative point for the game. weapon hit feeling and death animations of the characters...

http://img535.imageshack.us/img535/9619/brinkpod4ushd.gif (.gif is around 3.5 MB)

I captured this gif from the "Endless Horizon" video.
This looks not good. Character does not react to anything and it has a terrible death animation (jumping back?)

One of the very important things in action games is the feeling of the weapons. If the enemy character reacts to hitting bullets or improved with a special hit sound (like Call of Duty series have) players will be much much more satisfied. Call of Duty have bullet hit sound with great ragdoll death animations plus kill sound (experience point sounds). Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have these aswell. All the great online FPS games have these kind of effects and I think, as a proffesional gamer, this is very important. Players play these games for numerous reasons. Mostly for relaxing and this is provided by the feeling of achievement by reward system. And this basicly achieved by sounds and character animation. Then other things like unlocks and perks but mainly it's the weapon feeling.

I felt I need to create a thread about this cause I really care about this game. My main genre is FPS and I loved the new direction we are heading. Loved the Mirror's Edge, loved the visual style and quality of the Brink and dying to try S.M.A.R.T. system. I'm gonna pre-order it (even though Black Ops PC version failure, I pre-ordered it, and still can't play the damn game because of the poor optimisations). And this thing is the only issue this game seems to be having. Those videos don't show much but If I'm right there is still time to change this.

Ragdoll physics wouldn't really work for brink, because when you get shot down, you aren't dead yet. Your team's medics can still revive you, or the enemy can finish you off to prevent a revive. So the "death" animations end up taking a hit because players need to land in certain positions so they can still look around for medics.

I would like to just say Welcome and enjoy your stay!
As for the 'death' animation, Shadowcat, is correct, but i agree it does look awkward, and i believe they should tweak it slightly before the game is released, if not, i believe its a minor inconvenience.
And ....




Your a Professional gamer?

But the character could react a little when shot. That's kind of weird. And maybe some randomized system where they spin round or ragdoll but land in face up position somehow through a preset pattern. It'd look really dumb if a grenade didn't even move you but just made you fall over.

I have noticed some no so great animations in the vids also. This will no hurt the game but might take away from the intense visceral combat, hopefully they will be a little more believable when the games released.

As far hit animations go Killzone 2/3 are very impressive.

The Brink developer diary vids contain beta, possibly alpha footage. It is not an accurate description of the final product, and content is subject to change.

People keep confusing "Movie actions" with reality, IRL bullets won't spin you around or knock you back, they just go through, a kill shot just makes you drop. A bullet can only move something around it's own weight. The laws of physics are very hard to break.

Sort of... I was several years ago, in Counter-Strike era. And I'm from Turkey so whatever you do you only became "semi-professional gamer" . But I've worked in WCG and CPL tournaments as a referee etc...

If there are medics of course rahdoll is not going to work, then character reactions when they take hit could be improved with those sound system and a little character anymation.

I remember Richard Ham was talking about the death animations in the game, and how people react strange to real life death animations, because in real life, people do just "drop dead" when they are killed. So in Brink, instead of going for real life, they are trying to emulate what it would look like if an actor was pretending to be killed, like in a movie.

Pretending to be killed in a terrible action movie? Or in a movie that's trying to realistic portray a death? Your statement could mean anything.

I'm saying, in movies, actors rarely acurractly portray what it looks like to get shot and die, due the simple fact that they aren't really dead. Their muscles still contract, their brain is still aware, and they need to fall in such a way to not hurt themselves. If you have ever seen a person get shot and fall over dead in real life, it looks like a crash test dummy falling over, and appears "weird" to may people, since all or most of the deaths they see, are ficticious on TV.

Richard Ham said they experiemtned with this, and found that it was a better result to have the animations resemble an actor pretending to die, rather than real life death animations.

Well whatever looks good and ends up with them face up. I suspect they have different animations for the heavy medium and light.

The character does react, you just hardly can tell because it can be confused with a shooting-animation.


In every movie death by weapon is a completely random thing and never ever happens continuously the same way.
In one scene, people will drop dead (read: dead before hitting the floor) after behind hit by one bullet somewhere; in another scene another person will die slowly and under alot of pain (and much attention by the camera) after being hit in the head or chest area.


The death-animation in that particular OP's .gif is not necessarily the best, but it portrays the player getting taken out quite well.

Yeah people do look strange when shot, thing is that fact that people just drop when shot (killed) does disturb a lot of people.

Oh and Happy Christmas everybody (Seasons Greetings to everyone else if you don't celebrate Christmas)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3U3UNJQBjc

(not my video)

This is an example of quite nice hit and death animations BUT this is single player and also I didn't like it's bullet hit reaction too. MW2's singleplayer did it better. Multiplayer is whole lot different of course.

I think a small sound for bullet hit is enough. Because if the character doesn't react like in the gif from my first post, you don't understand if you are hitting or not, but a small sound could help like the one in the COD multiplayer. And it's satisfactory enough. I'm gonna test it with MW2, Black Ops and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 than I'm gonna write my results.

BTW, Thanks OddWorld for the greetings. You're welcome.

Well, Modern Warfare had some of the best death-animations until today, I think. However, in MW enemies would drop dead after two or three hits, whereas people in BRINK survive half a mag.

Or do some crazy death animations like TF2 (flying across the map.) I've played KZ3 beta and the death animations are awesome, BRINK should follow this.

TF2 has ragdolls fired out of a gravity gun. The blades on Sawmill are the best example.

Perhaps they could nurse the site of an injury like Zombies in L4D? Depending on where they're shot, they fall differently, make different sounds and have different incap aniimations.

I couldn't care less about death animations. It's all about the functionality. Ability to revive >> Death animations.

I must disagree right there.
Animations are a very important factor to a game. Even if the graphics are mind-blowing, the game will look ludicrous without proper animations. However, it works vice versa. A game with average-to-bad graphics can still look very good with excellent anmiations.

Now BRINK has a solid art-style which gives it good graphics. And Splash Damage have assured several times that they do care a lot about the animations. But if they turn out to be just about average, the game will lose a chunk of it's magic.

Especially in a fast paste game like Brink

I beg to differ. Weight of bullet is not equal with force,they release on object, as defined by physics. Its weight muliplied by speed, in N( newtons) same like in standing objects its weight multiplied by g (gravity).

Check those death animations on the link below. Its the same for multiplayer and players still can be revevied by medic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StjPa6Mdl2E
from 0:16



or those death animations from multiplayer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHsX4UcXYkI


I cant see why brink cant have something similar to impress.

Weight/gravity = Mass?

Actually bullets will move you, If it's wasn't a kill-shot, you would move, Because pain wouldn't let you stand still unmoving. If you get shot you move, lose balance, step back, keel over, run, whatever, but YOU DON'T HAVE NO REACTION AT ALL.