7th August 2010, 7:34 PM
That's actually something close to what they're working towards, transformations from one animation to another.
Weltall, I get what you're saying but the problem is if a part of the enemy's hit box is on land, it's considered on land. The game just doesn't DO "center of gravity". Ideally, it would, but that's another step from the fabrics. While it may seem like that's incredibly complex stuff, most of it is handled by the physx engine automatically. Someone else did the work for them before they got there. Since the physics processing on things like breaking boxes and shredding fabrics has NO effect on gameplay, it was easier to add. Very little bug testing if it doesn't really DO anything.
You're probably already thinking this, so I'll say it here. The real disappointing thing is that MOST physics processing in modern PC games is entirely done to inconsequential "background art" animations. There are exceptions, yes, but look at the PC version of Batman and you'll see what I mean. Batman's cape is done in physx, and so is processing on some things like breaking wood or where a grate ripped off a duct should go, but actual fighting? Still preprogrammed animations. Yes, I would love to see them do better. However, PC games like Batman and Mirror's Edge are basically ported versions of the console games, wherein the consoles don't support physics acceleration. To do the port well, they may add some "purely visual" physics to it, but they won't add anything that changes the gameplay significantly so they need to go in and do a huge round of bug testing. When the next generation of consoles includes built-in physics processing, it'll become a lot more important.
Actually a lot of console games do tend to use Havok for physics, but as I'm sure you're aware that's kid's stuff compared to real physics acceleration, like comparing Super FX to N64.
Weltall, I get what you're saying but the problem is if a part of the enemy's hit box is on land, it's considered on land. The game just doesn't DO "center of gravity". Ideally, it would, but that's another step from the fabrics. While it may seem like that's incredibly complex stuff, most of it is handled by the physx engine automatically. Someone else did the work for them before they got there. Since the physics processing on things like breaking boxes and shredding fabrics has NO effect on gameplay, it was easier to add. Very little bug testing if it doesn't really DO anything.
You're probably already thinking this, so I'll say it here. The real disappointing thing is that MOST physics processing in modern PC games is entirely done to inconsequential "background art" animations. There are exceptions, yes, but look at the PC version of Batman and you'll see what I mean. Batman's cape is done in physx, and so is processing on some things like breaking wood or where a grate ripped off a duct should go, but actual fighting? Still preprogrammed animations. Yes, I would love to see them do better. However, PC games like Batman and Mirror's Edge are basically ported versions of the console games, wherein the consoles don't support physics acceleration. To do the port well, they may add some "purely visual" physics to it, but they won't add anything that changes the gameplay significantly so they need to go in and do a huge round of bug testing. When the next generation of consoles includes built-in physics processing, it'll become a lot more important.
Actually a lot of console games do tend to use Havok for physics, but as I'm sure you're aware that's kid's stuff compared to real physics acceleration, like comparing Super FX to N64.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)