Assuming that prone will be implemented some day, I'm suggesting that revived players start in prone position. Of course, first it'd be necessary to check if there's enough space around the player. If not, then he respawns standing. It'd just make more sense if the players actually got up themselves, and also decrease the risk of getting repeatedly shot by the same camper around the corner, just after being revived. I think we're all familiar with these kinds of situations, especially from District. Another change, not affecting gameplay at all but enhancing the visual aspects of reviving; make the corpses quickly fly/warp to the real positions of the players upon being revived, rather than just "teleport". It'd be a neat little tweak to make things look smoother.
Being revived in a prone position makes sense. The dead players ragdoll wiggling into position to live again is ... scary. It would look like he got a seizure.
I don't believe HL2 uses animation morphing or whatever the freak it's called. Look it up in the crytek2 engine. Looks pretty nifty. Basically you set the position of everything the way you want it and then you tell the model as it is you go to that position. With some smart constraints it manages to do it quite realistically.
Source engine does this. Actually that's how all the animations are done. Various single keyframes, and the engine interpolates between them at a predetermined framerate while blending multiple different animations over the skeleton.
They did it in Dark Messiah, but what they did probably requires access to the source code. Honestly, I would think that the fact that the ragdoll is usually a decent distance away from the point players were killed is more of a problem.
I don't think this is a good idea, starting in prone will not make it harder for the enemy to shoot at you, if they decide to camp the dead bodies, the only thing that is going to help you is be able to run away, if you're locked to the ground and being camped, engineers will think twice before reviving somebody. Which I find to be a bad thing, engineers shouldnt hesitate to revive, they should try risky situations, thats teamwork. Saving your own ass because the guy is gonna start out in prone anyway does not promote teamwork.
this isn't a bad suggestion. something i REALLY want implemented is that you cannot revive from prone. thus, like a real medic, you have to be over the corpse, not just dolphin dive onto him, magic him into existance, and then run away again.
It all depends on how fast people will be able to move in prone or get up. I'd be happy even if the ragdoll was simply turned into a model with the prone animation on, and then moved into the correct position.
it takes less then one second to kill a person, it doesnt matter how long getting out of prone will take, just because they cant run straight away makes it too hard to escape campers already. What makes it so easy to run away is that the camper isn't able to predict the exact sedcond you get revived, atleast most of the time, giving you a split second to run to cover. I really don't see a good reason to have someone that is revived be in prone, because the ragdolls are client side, no matter what, it will never look good for everybody, and flying looks just as unbelievable at warping, not forgetting it teleports instantly to the real location they are. It wouldnt look believable for a person to start in prone, because prone is a defensive position, and a person that is revived would probably still be licking his wounds.
I'd really rather have people revived in prone position if it occasionally covers them from enemy fire and saves them, than have someone repeatedly reappear in the same position out of thin air, get shot each time, and waste engineers' builder ammo. In fact, I don't think a bit more reluctancy in reviving would be bad at all, since right now we have engineers running across the open in an attempt to revive half of the team in a few seconds, and I think it's a bit silly how reviving doesn't take any time at all.
AFAIK, it's impossible to transition smoothly from a ragdoll to a model in the source engine. Valve had trouble trying to do it with the spy feigning in TF2, so nothing against Krenzo but I don't think it can be done. I wouldn't be against making revive take a short time, rather than being instant. That way, you'd need to have covering fire before you moved out to revive someone. More realistic, and promotes team-play too.
This is probably just me, but I don't find that requiring teamwork is the same as promoting teamwork. It'd be great if you had more control somehow over waiting for your revive, somekind of menu, or maybe pre set options
in order for a person to reappear where their ragdoll landed, then the position of their ragdoll would need to be server tracked so that it was the same for everyone. ouch. one alternative is: the torso of the body is the only thing given a vector, and that moves according to how the server sees it. so the torso just becomes another object like a TV/car/radiator or some other object (and is thus tracked by the server), and the way the limbs flop around serverside. negative: lag response- as the body only appears when the player hasn't spawned, then the server will get the extra lag of the model instead of the lag of the spawned player. so no extra lag than when all the players are alive will ensue. positive: removes what could be seen as a very irritating bug. negative: sounds like a coding nightmare response- krenzo's a coding god! and hey, it's just a suggestion. and, for added extra code work pisstake, let's just say "we can make this a server option so that good servers can have it and not such good ones wont." :p
Would be too expensive, imo, especially since it's not relevant for gameplay. I cannot think of any cheap solution that would always look good, so I guess it won't be worth the effort.
Not what I was asking for. I meant for the ragdoll, upon being revived, to fly to the position where the player is. It would be an entirely client-side effect, as the ragdoll's position is different for every player. Also, I wouldn't mind even if there wasn't a transition between the ragdoll's pose and the prone pose on the fly. However, I really like the idea that some single torso vector would be made server-side. That way, all ragdolls would be in the same place for everyone, even if not in the same pose.
sounds buggy to me, all other vectors trying to find a way, constrained to a rig, to line up with the torso's vector that is server side. Logically, the torso would be the worst part to pick of all as all the limb bones and head are attached to it, depending on how it was rigged and skinned theres loads of possible outcomes where all the parts might start going berserk on you because they are in an impossible position. Don't expect anything like this to work with source. Of course I don't actually know anything about it, but just imagining what would happen makes me shiver :S
