Bodies

[snEEkie Villain]

Originally Posted by Vanrick

Itsy-bitsy question, might of been asked before but I can't find it. Ok, here goes. In the game, do bodies dissapear, or remain at their dead postion forever?

Don't be to harsh, I waz just wondering.

Ok people, i read this somewhere but i forgot where,

Levine talked about this issue, he said something like that the body will not dissapear so quickly like in other games, they will last a bit more than average of what you'd expect, also he said some time limit that the body will last, i'm sorry but i can't remember where i read this, but i am sure that i read it. trust me it doesn't seem like the bodies will dissapear quickly.

[Camp1nCarl]

Its probably like 5 minute after the LS is there.

[Goddy Of War]

If you watch carefully in "The Fisheries" video, the guy who trips over the tripwire towards the end of the video stays in the spot he lands until the video finishes completely.

With this in mind, we can assume the bodies stay for a reasonably long time, long enough at least until the player leaves the area. If the player comes back later and finds the body gone, we can assume they were harvested by the Little Sisters or something.

This game will be awesome, but it won't be perfect to the extent that the bodies stay for the entire game

[ckline]

Originally Posted by Vanrick

Itsy-bitsy question, might of been asked before but I can't find it. Ok, here goes. In the game, do bodies dissapear, or remain at their dead postion forever?

Don't be to harsh, I waz just wondering.

They stay around for as long as possible. However, if there are so many lying around that it could cause a performance problem, the game tries to remove the oldest un-searched body.

If there are no unsearched bodies that can be removed, it will remove the corpse but leave the loot for you to pick up.

-Chris Kline, Lead Programmer, Bioshock

[Camp1nCarl]

Originally Posted by ckline

They stay around for as long as possible. However, if there are so many lying around that it could cause a performance problem, the game tries to remove the oldest un-searched body.

If there are no unsearched bodies that can be removed, it will remove the corpse but leave the loot for you to pick up.

-Chris Kline, Lead Programmer, Bioshock

Awesome! Thanks for clearing that up, I loving having the team come and answer our questions!

[v.dog]

Originally Posted by ckline

They stay around for as long as possible. However, if there are so many lying around that it could cause a performance problem, the game tries to remove the oldest un-searched body.

If there are no unsearched bodies that can be removed, it will remove the corpse but leave the loot for you to pick up.

-Chris Kline, Lead Programmer, Bioshock

Interesting. I would have thought you'd start by culling the searched bodies where the player has cleaned them out.

[v.dog]

-the searched bodies that the player has cleaned out.

fixed. Don't read this.

[Amazing Larry]

Well considering that the bodies are a resource that effects little sister and therefore big daddy AI I think it's reasonable to assume that bodies will therefore stay around either until the player leaves the area or until so much Havok realated crap piles up in one place that something has to give.

Here's the thing about bodies in newer videogames, they aren't taxing to the AI because once an NPC is dead it stops having an AI and at most just becomes another minor object in the world that the AI has to react to so in that since it doesn't require much processing to keep a dead body on screen beyond rendering it. The introduction of ragdoll physics however brings in a whole other bunch of problems, when an NPC is alive the physics engine pretty much sees it as a cylinder with the command of "this end up" pointed toward it's head, but once it's dead it becomes a ragdoll and therefore becomes much more complicated from the perspective of the physics engine.