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Let's bitch about quirks in videogame logic!

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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    If the concussive force is enough to set the bullets off, it's not like the few bullets that explode are going to add to the immediate lethality of the situation.

    Robman on
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    RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Aroduc wrote: »
    won't bullets explode if you shoot a clip long enough or set off a grenade at the right spot (ie, right on top of it)?

    No and probably not. Bullets need to be really really really hot to explode. Tossing them into a fire would do it, but normal heat, even in a desert, no. I doubt a grenade would be able to sustain enough heat in comparison to the concussive force to be able to do it either, but that's just speculation.

    So frag grenade, no, white phosphorus rocket, yes?

    RoyceSraphim on
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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    That entirely depends. And WP is mostly used for smoke generation and pissing off human rights groups in palestine oh ho ho in games molotovs are much more likely to set off ammo.

    Actually a nice touch in L4D would be having to position your molotovs carefully around an ammo dump, or else you risk getting shot and losing the ammo.

    Robman on
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    SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I can only speculate, since I've never actually seen ammunition go off intentionally (though this one time, back in the barracks....), for obvious reasons, but wouldn't small arms ammunition be at significantly less risk of going off than, say, the ammunition used in artillery shells, and accordingly, that is at less risk that the ammunition used on big-gun dreadnoughts.

    I mean, obviously, battleships had their ammunition magazines heavily shielded, though a direct penetration by a bomb or a properly directed shockwave from a torpedo could literally rip an entire battleship in half.

    But pistol and rifle ammunition? I think the nature of the sizes involved and their casing makes them considerably less risky? Of course, the actual force of the explosion is a factor too.

    Company of Heroes handles this pretty nifty, I think--most ammunition resource points feature boxes of ammunition as part of the environment. But if they get shot or, more likely, ran over by a vehicle that's not interested in driving around them, they go off and ricochet everywhere. Pretty harmless to a tank big enough to run over the boxes, anyway.

    Synthesis on
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    emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    What was Max Payne doing when he reloaded his guns during bullet-time? In MP2, he did some kind of freaky squatting spin and we saw the old clip fall out from the force of the spin but then his weapons were suddenly reloaded. Could you imagine how freaky it would be to see a guy squatting and spinning in the middle of a gunfight?

    emnmnme on
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    IceBurnerIceBurner It's cold and there are penguins.Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Actually, the very idea of leveling up belongs in this thread. What is leveling up? You kill 99 quill rats and then BING! you're suddenly enlightened enough with the 100th killed that you can choose a new skill and gain a stat or two.

    ???

    And then you can't wear some armors if you're not at the proper level. This makes even less sense. It's armor. You found it. You're carrying it around but you're somehow not skilled enough to put it on.

    ???

    http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=215
    Actually, playing Monster Hunter taught me exactly what leveling up feels like. Suddenly you realize that the monster which had been terrorizing you is now below your abilities. It hadn't dawned upon you until the moment after you completely whip its ass without breaking a sweat and you realize you're not scared of it any more.

    IceBurner on
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    ArrathArrath Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    won't bullets explode if you shoot a clip long enough or set off a grenade at the right spot (ie, right on top of it)?

    Earlier automatic weapons, especially machine guns had an issue where the gun would get hot enough from extended firing to cook off a few more rounds in the chamber before it cools down. Imagine letting off the trigger and the gun keeps firing for a little bit.

    Arrath on
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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Really though, if your mag or clip gets hit then you're probably now the proud owner of a sucking chest wound. It's not that big of a deal. Although it would be hilarious if the remaining ammo in l4d or other games went off if you died in a fire.

    Robman on
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    emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I wonder if Faith from Mirror's Edge ever had to deal with blisters on her hands or sprained ankles? When she's leaping twenty feet to grab onto a vertical pipe and then hop down twenty feet to the ground, you'd think she'd be feeling some pain the next morning.

    emnmnme on
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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    If she can shrug off bullet wounds without incident, I think we can assume she's actually a super robot alien thing.

    Robman on
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    BasilBasil Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Would have been right creepy to see blood running down Faith's arms and legs, staggering around with her vision fading, but still running along.

    Sometimes we should be grateful that our characters are bullet proof, I think.

    Basil on
    9KmX8eN.jpg
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    RoyceSraphimRoyceSraphim Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Robman wrote: »
    Really though, if your mag or clip gets hit then you're probably now the proud owner of a sucking chest wound. It's not that big of a deal. Although it would be hilarious if the remaining ammo in l4d or other games went off if you died in a fire.

    step 1 give Kyle all the extra ammo he can carry

    step 2 Kyle charges the homeless and undead

    step 3 Cartman snipes Kyle and puts him out of his misery

    step 4 Cartmen, Stan, and Kenny give Kyle a viking funeral with tnt and molotov cocktails.

    step 5 ???

    Step 6 Profit!

    edit: WHOO HOO! JUST GOT PAX TICKET AS I TYPED THIS!

    RoyceSraphim on
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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Basil wrote: »
    Would have been right creepy to see blood running down Faith's arms and legs, staggering around with her vision fading, but still running along.

    Sometimes we should be grateful that our characters are bullet proof, I think.

    Have you ever played the game You Only Live Once?

    Pretty solid little flash game, really snarks away at a very common gaming convention.

    Robman on
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    BasilBasil Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Yes! That was an amusing one.

    Basil on
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    RobmanRobman Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    It would be neat if there was a Rainbow Six realism level game that had you complete a whole slew of training missions, and then set you loose in an environment without quicksaves or do-overs. Something like that flash game, only you set up missions and operatives that die stay dead (without the ability to re-do a mission). Something with dynamically generated missions where your failures emboldened the criminals, but your successes meant they got more and more devious.

    Robman on
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    emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Robman wrote: »
    It would be neat if there was a Rainbow Six realism level game that had you complete a whole slew of training missions, and then set you loose in an environment without quicksaves or do-overs. Something like that flash game, only you set up missions and operatives that die stay dead (without the ability to re-do a mission). Something with dynamically generated missions where your failures emboldened the criminals, but your successes meant they got more and more devious.

    I read the Masters of Doom book a good while back but one thing really stuck in my mind. One evening, John Romero, John Carmack, Hollenshead, and some others were playing Dungeons and Dragons. Carmack made up incredibly detailed scenarios complete with maps on graph paper and notebooks filled with information. He must have spent days working on it all. Eventually, it came down to Romero's character making a choice - take a powerful weapon and make a deal with some evil monster or move along. Romero made the deal and chose the weapon but the consequence was demons began flooding into the Dungeons and Dragons world. Then they overwhelmed the party and eventually the demons destroyed the world.

    Carmack then folded up all his maps and notebooks and never played again even though everyone else wanted a 'do-over'.

    emnmnme on
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    SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    At the risk of sounding like a sociopath in the making, I'm kind of annoyed that pretty much all games ignore the "writhing wounded". First-person shooters are particularly guilty of this--it's the visualization of the health bar. So long as you're between 100 to 1, you are fully capable of moving and shooting. At worse, you might be slowed and your vision might have a reddish tint (not that anyone besides you would realize this). But once you hit zero, bam, you are out of the game.

    First off, dead bodies are actually capable of some sporadic motor functions, if memory serves (think of a chicken loosing its head--sure, that chicken may not be technically dead, but by FPS, loosing your head is plenty dead). Besides, unless you're a perfectionist, chances are every person you shoot in an FPS will not have succumbed to a headshot.

    Second, people don't just go from fully functioning to dead immediately. Okay, well, they usually don't. And it isn't that hard to do an animation of someone crawling about or writhing in pain, especially given how many animations you see in games nowadays, and the fact that it can be used for multiple characters. Just something to ease the transition between "running around, guns blazing" and "ragdoll on the floor".

    Granted, a few games actually address this, in various forms. The obvious example is Gears of War, which uses it as part of the revival mechanic. This has caught on a few games, though for the most parts, enemies still just drop dead, no crawling or anything. Company of Heroes actually does this--and is to my knowledge, the only RTS to do it--infantry can be merely wounded, and will write about until a medic picks them up or they are killed by something else (macabre, yes, but a step in the right direction). My favorite older example is Hitman: Contracts which would have enemies become wounded and writhe on the ground, depending on the extent of their injuries. Didn't make it to Blood Money, for some strange reason. Apparently, Call of Duty: World at War will sometimes have AI shoot at you from on their backs, and multiplayer will allow you to be revived?

    Though maybe the best form of this was in the old game Rise of the Triad--the so-called "Lightning guard" (basically, a grunt in a brown uniform who would steal your weapons from you) would fall on his knees after being wounded, beg you not to shoot him, before feigning his own death. He'd wait till you turned around and take the chance to shoot you in the back. We need more of that--or at least, getting up and running away.

    But yes, give us some steps between "alive and kicking" and "dead as Steven Segal's career", okay?

    Synthesis on
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    emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Star Ward: Republic Commando, Kane & Lynch, pretty much any turn-based strategy game on the PC, Full Spectrum Warrior, and Army of Two let you drag a dying comrade out of harm's way so you can patch them up later.

    Though it is pretty silly that the Doom marine is just as steady and fighting fresh at 1 health point as he is at 100.

    emnmnme on
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    SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Yeah, it does occasionally appear with team-mates (come to think of it, Rainbow Six: Vegas also has it), but my complaint is mostly that enemy AI goes directly from "full-charge adrenal-pumping action man" to "ragdoll", with no steps in between.

    Ghostbusters does it pretty badly--basically, your partners can get 'knocked out' by ghosts, being slimed, or having stuff thrown at them, and they're clearly not unconscious (Since they call out for you), yet they are completely still until you pick them up. Will Bill Murray got slimed that first time, he sure as hell wasn't perfectly still.

    Synthesis on
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    LewiePLewieP Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    RE4 did a pretty good job of zombies reacting to being shot in specific places. Shoot them in the knee, they fall to the ground, shoot them in the hand, they drop their weapon.

    That kind of thing should be standard imo.

    I'd also like to see enemies pick up weapons that their colleagues just dropped. There's two guys, with an uzi each. Shoot one of them, and he drops his gun and dies, so the other guy grabs the gun and dual wields at you.

    LewieP on
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    emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Yeah, it does occasionally appear with team-mates (come to think of it, Rainbow Six: Vegas also has it), but my complaint is mostly that enemy AI goes directly from "full-charge adrenal-pumping action man" to "ragdoll", with no steps in between.

    Take a look at Mafia. Some thugs hold their guts in as they try to crawl to safety. And god forbid you ever set one of them on fire. Mega disturbing. D:

    emnmnme on
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    OptyOpty Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Steel Battalion had the same concept: if you didn't escape from your mech, you'd die and have to start all over. If you do manage to escape, then you need to buy a brand new mech.

    Opty on
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    BasilBasil Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    The lack of reaction to burning alive most npcs have has always struck me as odd.

    Surely it's not that hard to get a blood curdling scream out of a voice actor.

    Hell, record some kids at a playground and screw with some settings.

    Basil on
    9KmX8eN.jpg
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    emnmnmeemnmnme Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Basil wrote: »
    The lack of reaction to burning alive most npcs have has always struck me as odd.

    D:

    emnmnme on
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    fragglefartfragglefart Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Shooting mans in Goldeneye was always fun because of the wound-grabbing.

    And taking damage in Operation Flashpoint would more often than not leave you crawling around the floor, barely able to aim straight, while the enemy zones in on your position. Made multiplayer co-op amazing.

    More games need that stuff. The last example I can think of is Gears 2 "crawling around" bleed-out time.

    fragglefart on
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    Rhesus PositiveRhesus Positive GNU Terry Pratchett Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Basil wrote: »
    Hell, record some kids at a playground and screw with some settings.

    Would this involve changing the "onfire" state from 0 to 1?

    Because that's where my mind went first D:

    Rhesus Positive on
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    BasilBasil Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Well it's not as if there's any shortage of petrol or urchins.

    Basil on
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    IceBurnerIceBurner It's cold and there are penguins.Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Synthesis wrote: »
    <stuff>
    But yes, give us some steps between "alive and kicking" and "dead as Steven Segal's career", okay?
    Rigging and animation are the costliest parts of 3d outside of lighting; the good folks tend to get paid a lot. As soon as they had an excuse to stop creating interesting death animations and quell player demand for corpses able to slump over objects, guess what was on the chopping block?

    I do miss the days of the actual death animation.

    IceBurner on
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    jothkijothki Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    This reminds me of a related annoyance I have, MMORPGs that promise open roleplayable PVP but don't actually allow for any hostile interaction besides outright murder. In real life, bandits don't need to slaughter people to take their stuff, just either let the target drop their weapons and surrender, or beat up and subdue their target long enough to get away with their stuff before the wake up/untie themselves. Most games don't have any allowance for that kind of thing whatsoever, leaving enemies fully capable until you kill them.

    I'd assume that EVE is the one exception to this? I've never played it, but from what I've heard about it, it sounds like you can target enemy engines and weapons to leave them helpless, or destroy their ship while leaving their pods intact, at which point you can make threats to kill them completely.

    jothki on
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    override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Or how about shopkeepers in RPGs? All of reality could be in danger from a mighty, evil force and yet those greedy bastards won't lower their prices to help the heroes finish of the big boss.

    It's quite simple actually, video game merchants are Rayndians.

    override367 on
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    SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    IceBurner wrote: »
    Synthesis wrote: »
    <stuff>
    But yes, give us some steps between "alive and kicking" and "dead as Steven Segal's career", okay?
    Rigging and animation are the costliest parts of 3d outside of lighting; the good folks tend to get paid a lot. As soon as they had an excuse to stop creating interesting death animations and quell player demand for corpses able to slump over objects, guess what was on the chopping block?

    I do miss the days of the actual death animation.

    That's the thing though....we still do have death animations. Very rarely do I see a game where killing an enemy simple means he drops to the ground with no animation whatsoever (Hitman games come to mind). For example, all three Halo games feature strung-out death animations where the dying will discharge their weapons or grab their wounds.

    What we don't see as often is an additional state between death and life, i.e. something meaningful. Though I'm sure it wouldn't be cheap...ultimately, to keep costs down, you might have to cycle the animation in a loop that would look fairly unconvincing, but it's a step up from nothing. Hell, if any game used the technique from Hitman Contracts, I'd be hugely impressed, and that's several years old now.

    Truth be told, I don't miss the days before ragdoll physics (the earliest true ragdoll game I can remember is Hitman 1). Even considering that early ragdolls looked awkward and jerky, the second an enemy got killed on a stairway or tilted surface, even the worse ragdoll is a huge step up from a flat-as-a-board corpse suspending part of itself in mid air. Hell, every so often people will die on guardrails in games like RE5, for hilarious and very unimmersive results (though given that bodies 'dissolve' in RE5, ragdolls would be hard to implement, I assume).
    emnmnme wrote: »
    Synthesis wrote: »
    Yeah, it does occasionally appear with team-mates (come to think of it, Rainbow Six: Vegas also has it), but my complaint is mostly that enemy AI goes directly from "full-charge adrenal-pumping action man" to "ragdoll", with no steps in between.

    Take a look at Mafia. Some thugs hold their guts in as they try to crawl to safety. And god forbid you ever set one of them on fire. Mega disturbing. D:
    Basil wrote: »
    The lack of reaction to burning alive most npcs have has always struck me as odd.

    Surely it's not that hard to get a blood curdling scream out of a voice actor.

    Hell, record some kids at a playground and screw with some settings.

    The Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret games didn't feature ragdolls (they were isometric, having predated most 3D games), but they did have some fantastic "Oh my god, I'm burning alive" animations for enemies set on fire. The game even advertised itself on this fact. Best of all, they had a good chance of setting things near them on fire as well, and given that the whole environment was 1) destructable and 2) filled with barrels of highly volatile explosive liquids, this was pretty awesome.

    Funny note: Crusader games were a prequel of sort to Origin's later Wing Commander series. Even System Shock is tied in, with the mention of SHODAN.

    Synthesis on
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    Skull2185Skull2185 Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Shooting mans in Goldeneye was always fun because of the wound-grabbing.

    The first Turok game was prety cool with this too. Knifing/shootin guys in the neck and watchin the spurts of tomato juice as the guy gurgled and slowly went down

    Skull2185 on
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    KorKor Known to detonate from time to time Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Skull2185 wrote: »
    Shooting mans in Goldeneye was always fun because of the wound-grabbing.

    The first Turok game was prety cool with this too. Knifing/shootin guys in the neck and watchin the spurts of tomato juice as the guy gurgled and slowly went down

    My 2 favorite games for death animations.

    Pulling off the crotch shot in goldeneye was really hard, but when you did it, it was hilarious. They'd double over, and squirm for a good 30 seconds, writhing back and forth.

    Then Turok 2 took it a bit further for me. Removing heads and watching the body convulse. Specifically the raptors. They'd stuble around a little bit, even accidentally roll over, when you decapitate them. I also love how you could remove their arms and they'd just have to do without them until they bled to death, or died by other means.

    Kor on
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    KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I remember enemy (AI) soldiers pulling out pistols and shooting at me just before dying as far back as Call of Duty 2.

    KalTorak on
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    MetalbourneMetalbourne Inside a cluster b personalityRegistered User regular
    edited August 2009
    jothki wrote: »
    This reminds me of a related annoyance I have, MMORPGs that promise open roleplayable PVP but don't actually allow for any hostile interaction besides outright murder. In real life, bandits don't need to slaughter people to take their stuff, just either let the target drop their weapons and surrender, or beat up and subdue their target long enough to get away with their stuff before the wake up/untie themselves. Most games don't have any allowance for that kind of thing whatsoever, leaving enemies fully capable until you kill them.

    I'd assume that EVE is the one exception to this? I've never played it, but from what I've heard about it, it sounds like you can target enemy engines and weapons to leave them helpless, or destroy their ship while leaving their pods intact, at which point you can make threats to kill them completely.

    Well with eve that was all player interaction. Unfortunately even that had flaws as it was somehow okay to blow up a guys ship, or okay to scam him out of tons of money, but if you were to scam him out of tons of money and then blow up his ship you'd have even other pirates hunting your ass down.

    Metalbourne on
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    mr-razzcocksmr-razzcocks Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    On the subject of ragdoll physics...

    Having just started playing Left 4 Dead, I'm finding myself mildly impressed by the ragdoll-ing in it. Shooting an infected in the chest for the most part does not = limp jelly ragdoll body, but rather starts a loosely animated death that can be interupted if, say, the infected hits a wall or falls down a hole. It's a damn sight better than most games where a ragdoll will always fall straight onto their back or front, depending on which direction you shot them from. To be fair, since they started using the Source and Havok engines, Valve have had this down a lot better than most other devs

    mr-razzcocks on
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    KorKor Known to detonate from time to time Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    Halo 3's ragdolls are the best. Shoot someone in the head with the sniper? You bet your ass they're flying backwards about 12 feet or so. Maybe some back slips in there, too.

    Of course, this is just multiplayer. The campaign death animations are actually pretty good.

    Kor on
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    ButtcleftButtcleft Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    sometimes i like seeing someone explode or go flying from being pelted with a pistol.

    It is a game afterall, and sometimes i relish and enjoy the overkill

    Buttcleft on
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    KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    One thing that annoyed me in Fallout 3 was that you could shoot next to a character and they would not flinch. They need to have a small "panic zone" around NPCs.

    Krathoon on
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    mr-razzcocksmr-razzcocks Registered User regular
    edited August 2009
    I'm not averse to dropping 30+ landmines in Fallout 3 and firing people across the map, or unloading a clip into a faceless goon in Hitman 2 and propelling them outside of the game zone. There's just something satisfying about capping a zombie in the nuts and watching him stumble towards me, before falling face first into a pit, or hitting them while they run down stairs and watching them trip over their own feet before smashing head first into the ground.

    Then again, I get way too excited about physics engines.

    mr-razzcocks on
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