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View Full Version : Dead bodies EVERYwhere... or not?!?


cuorebrave
16-10-2008, 19:29
Ok, hey folks - new to the forum, but have been a diablo fan for like... 40 years. And I figured this is one of the best places to throw out a couple of things I've been thinking/wondering about DIII.

The first, like the subject line, has to do with dead bodies. I've read as much D3 coverage as I can find, and nowhere does it talk about this, albeit minor, aspect of the game. Do the dead bodies STAY after the enemy dies?! I think in a game that focuses almost ENTIRELY on brutal, bloodsoaked epic battles with literally thousands of monsters being slaughtered by your hand, it's an extremely underrated and CRUCIAL point to be able to stand over your downed foes and gloat over the 20 carcasses laying there in a heap (like in D2 and D1).

Take Dawn of War, for example, different type of game, but they had the OPTION to make all bodies, craters, bullet holes and scars STAY FOREVER on the map. When the enemy or your own troops fell, they'd switch to a polygonal model MUCH less complicated (and less resource-draining), but still BE there as the mountains of corpses piled up. I'd play for hours JUST using troops (no vehicles), just so the floor would be littered with bodies and at the end I could survey the desctruction. It was awe-inspiring. It felt 50x more realistic to me, just having that option turned on... instead of taking part in a massive battle, only to see everything perfectly clean and mopped at the end... like it will be in SC2. I've seen the videos, I KNOW those bodies disappear within seconds (why? I have no clue, the technology IS available). It just really takes me out of the world when bodies inexplicably evaporate within seconds.

Now, I haven't seen all the videos for D3, but I DID see the one with the barbarian on the little catwalk type thing and was mortified to see that when he killed those little imp guys, they gibbed and the pieces disappeared, leaving a perfectly clean pavement after such an nice fight. Can someone set me straight? Are they really going to have all the mobs disappear when dead? Why don't more people care about this? Since in D3 they're desperately trying to create a MOOD, it will ruin that mood for me if my kills go POOF!

Which leads me to one more thing, that I hope someone can help me with... Please tell me enemies aren't going to just gib as their death "animation". Something that has been SERIOUSLY lacking the last few years since everyone made the jump from 2D (like in Diablo 2, Fallout 1 & 2, etc.) to 3D... is good death-animations. Remember in D2? The little imps would get clubbed in the face, spin around spraying an arc of blood on the ground? The giant ogre's belly would split open, the fallen archers would get hacked up and their spirit would scream out toward the sky... and remember another 2D great, Fallout? Pump a dude with a magnum and his arm, along with a good chunk of ribs would blow out? Use a Tommy Gun, and the guy would jerk back and forth as his chest was riddled with bullets??? Or nail the fat tub Gizmo at his desk and his gut blows open and ribs pop out before he falls face-first onto his desk? Talk about rewarding! Even the first Starcraft!! The marines' deaths were glorious! Gurgling blood, head popping off and the rest turned into a smear on the ground!

But what about WoW or Warcraft 3? You kill a mob and they just tip over. Kill them with a crit and they sleepily fall to the ground. Or one of the latest Diablo-clones, Titan Quest? Talk about a snooze, when you finish someone off, every single enemy in the game just goes limp and hits the floor using ragdoll physics. Wow. Creative. Anyone have some solid info on this? Will we see creative kills that take advantage of the M-rating this game will have? Or will every enemy just slump to the ground, as is pretty standard in 3D games today... who knows?

Thanks for listening!

cuorebrave
16-10-2008, 19:33
In case no one wants to read my "novel", lol, I'll sum up here:

1) Will the bodies of your kills in D3 disappear like I saw in one of the barbarian videos, so you can survey the wreckage of your fallen foes?

2) Will there be cool death-animations in D3 like there were in older 2D games, like spinning imps with arcs of blood (D2), or getting riddled with bullets from a Tommy Gun (Fallout)? As opposed to WoW-deaths (and other 3d games today) where the enemy just falls to the ground lifelessly no matter if you scorch him with a fireball or bash his face in with a mace?

Starving_Poet
16-10-2008, 19:39
1) In one of the interviews they said bodies would remain so long as you remained on screen they would time out later and fade. Jay, I think, said they wouldn't be permanent because of the fact they are actually objects that can be manipulated while they exist.

2) Yes, some enemies will have specific deaths, but also 2 - bodies go into limp-ragdoll mode on death and then rule 1) applies.

cuorebrave
16-10-2008, 20:05
Lame. Lazy. If you read the longer post, it already explains why I think it's lame. But lame on both counts, the bodies disappearing and the badguys just slumping. That's very sad to me. That always really brought out the originality, the personality in a game, to me. What's to set this apart from any other point-and-clickfest out there (visually, every action-RPG has pretty graphics, a lot of skills, cool spell effects, loads of monsters and tons of loot), and WHY don't people care more about the bodies staying and looking like you've actually ENGAGED in some sort of battle, instead of just meandering through a clean, empty forest/cave/desert? And unique death-animations? Blizz doesn't have the manpower/resources to implement it? SURELY Blizzard has more resources, and better art-direction than just about any studio out there... it seems lazy they can't/won't make enemies die uniquely and can't find a way to make it look like you actually fought a battle, cutting a swathe through enemy territory and leaving behind hundreds of corpses. Does anybody sympathize with me?

Apocalypse
16-10-2008, 21:01
i dont care if the bodies stay after i am gone, why would i? its not like i plan to go back there just to make sure none of them came back to life or anything. its pointless, if the bodies stay on screen while you are on it then its a non issue in my opinion

Starving_Poet
16-10-2008, 21:02
Lots of people agree with you. In the last debate over this argument it really boiled down to asking why not give us a slider so we can set our 'maximum' number of objects in the settings.

Apocalypse
16-10-2008, 21:11
that would be a good solution but would need to be shut off for bnet i assume

konfeta
16-10-2008, 22:06
In the last debate over this argument it really boiled down to asking why not give us a slider so we can set our 'maximum' number of objects in the settings.

Multiplayer wise -

A. Their servers, their decisions as to what to load them with.

Ehh.. that was a short list, wasn't it?

Single-player wise - a slider would be just peachy. But I won't be playing singe-player beyond 1 time, so it doesn't rend my heart if such a slider wouldn't make it.

Gigashadow
16-10-2008, 22:53
I prefer effective physics to tons of bodies on the floor. Both would be great, of course, but that's not yet possible with today's technology and DIII is not Crysis or DooM III...

cuorebrave
16-10-2008, 23:10
One thing I mentioned, that totally seemed to work was Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. They had a slider, AND great graphics at the time... and when a troop was killed, the body, once it landed on the ground, switched to a lower-poly model just to give the effect of a battle having taken place - withOUT using up tons of resources. Any of the people responding, saying they don't care if the bodies stay... don't you feel a little weird though, running back through an area where at one point pools of blood were spilt and mulched bodies hit the floor... is now all sparkly clean with no sign of anyone passing through? It's not a BIG thing, but it is enough of a reality check that it pulls me a bit out of the world.

Could anyone link me the "last debate" over this subject, so I could peruse people's opinions, as well as a link to any interview where the subject of body counts and death-animations is covered? That would ALSO be "just peachy"!

MooCQ
16-10-2008, 23:15
Just think of the life cycles.. you kill a zombie, it rots, no wait its already rotten! Therefore it has nothing better to do than disappear!

If you kill an oompa loompa in stage 1.. why care if its still there in stage 10? If you want "glory" to post online -photoshop it..

Gigashadow
16-10-2008, 23:19
don't you feel a little weird though, running back through an area where at one point pools of blood were spilt and mulched bodies hit the floor... I have yet to find a game these days where I can feel weird, unfortunately. After seeing tiny sorcerors that could wear heavy plate and carry 5 more in the inventory, or legs of my 3D characters getting stuck in apparently solid walls, or after not being able to pass a seemingly empty area because the developers put an invisible wall there, it's kind of hard to feel weird at something as small as disappearing bodies...

poonagi
17-10-2008, 00:04
One thing I mentioned, that totally seemed to work was Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War. They had a slider, AND great graphics at the time... and when a troop was killed, the body, once it landed on the ground, switched to a lower-poly model just to give the effect of a battle having taken place - withOUT using up tons of resources.

i'm sure somebody else has mentioned it but i just want to chime in here..... this isn't particularly possible with diablo 3 because you can still interact with corpses once they're gone. for example: kill a zombie, the corpse is on the ground, somebody causes an explosion near it, corpse goes flying off. cool! :)

with an engine like this each corpse has to take up a certain amount of resources. sure maybe you can use a slightly lower poly model but there are still limits to how much the system can handle. (by the way i can't compare specifically of DOW because i didn't play it). imagine a big battle that leaves 40+ corpses. now somebody uses one corpse explosion. the system has to handle 40 corpses flying in all different directions? i just don't think that's possible.

to give my personal opinion: i wish each corpse didn't disappear. it would be amazing to see the carnage of flesh flying every which direction... but i'm willing to sacrifice that for smoother gameplay and easier system reqs. i'm happy they chose to allow us to interact with corpses at all... so if they think 5 or 10 or whatever number of corpses is the max, i'm fine with that.

stillman
17-10-2008, 09:00
Cuorebrave,

Blizzard does care about this issue you have. A while ago a mod made "Blizzard cares...about corpses" on their home page and there were quotes from Bizzard stating how they recognized that fans didn't like the bodies disappearing so they changed it. It's just not the exact change you would prefer, perhaps because (as stated above) you get to interact big time with the boddies. Sure, some of them disappear after a while, but you can play soccer with the ones you see.

The way I'd like to see it is how they have it changed so far, plus, some decaying process shown on the bodies that are doomed to disappear. Just cover the bodies with maggots and a few minutes later, the maggots gradually die off or turn to flies and fly away leaving no body. Where are the bodies? Well the maggots ate them, obviously.