Well, basically, it stops you from having to use preset death animations, which is very uncool. Other than that, it only really brings the satisfaction of seeing your enemy get dynamically moved by your bullets, and tumbles to the ground, slumping over the rock below you.
Its just plain cool
The Robomaniac
Project Head / Lead Programmer Centaur Force
its not only used for death. You can blend ragdoll with normal animations. In the Havok2 demo they have zombies walking around, and when shot by a gun their ragdoll physics made them take hits-- but they keep coming at you. If you only hit their shoulders they half-turn from the torso up, and their speed is slowed, but then they right themselves and keep coming after you.
however, its definately more of a finesse than a vital feature
Ragdoll physics can make one crappy game awsome. Take some cows throw them on top of some sky scrappers with lots of obsticals, cool camera angles, and start shooting them with a sniper rifle letting them plundge to there deaths. Now tell me that isn't a million dollar game!
like if an explosion sends you flying, or your body would hunch if you were hit in the stomach, stuff like that
it adds a little glitz to an fps, and it looks neat, that's about it....
-Ted
My irrlicht-based projects have gone underground for now, but if you want, check out my webcomic instead! http://brokenboomerang.net
makes sense - well, my next step was to add breakage to objects - then i guess that will tie into the ragdoll features - it sure would be nice to have soft body physics, buoyancy and spring in there too.
i believe so although i havent done it on my version yet - i will do that today and see what happens - there should not have been any api changes that effect irrtok
