Blips: Raggedy Dismount

Source: Why are ragdoll physics so funny?
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

In my most recent piece for Kill Screen, I focused my thoughts about the virtues of physical comedy in video games onto one particular element: ragdoll physics. Essentially, when game design moved into a polygonal 3D space, a more realistic physics engine was also needed to make characters and objects more reactive to one another –more able to negotiate and interpret contact and what occurs afterward on a relational basis. Since many games still had such a large emphasis on killing enemies, death animations we actually rather prominent. Ragdoll, where a regular human figure turns into a boneless, floppy mass, was born out of this situation. Though ragdoll has gotten better over the years, it still often shows its flaws in moments where body parts can't find a settled resting place and spasm in perpetuity.

Finding humor in all this is definitely morbid, but ragdoll animations are so ridiculous, it's kind of difficult not to laugh. Lucky for everyone, games that focus primarily on ragdoll humor are more prominent than ever. I looked at Turbo Dismount for my article, which is basically the premise for a series of fatal Jackass stunts, complete with variable ramps and obstacles to hurl your crash-test dummy protagonist against. That said, I do think the scoring system in Turbo Dismount works against its humor to a certain degree. The funniest crashes aren't necessarily the highest scoring ones and repeating a level over and over to try for a better ranking eventually dulls the joke's edge. While there is still some good laughs to experience playing dedicated ragdoll games, I think my favorite instances of ragdoll are usually when they pop up unexpectedly in games that aren't trying to be funny.

Blips: Fall Fling

Source: Untold Riches: An Analysis Of Portal's Level Design
Author: Hamish Todd
Site: Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Portal's a pretty smartly designed game. I played it for the first time a few months ago, and was impressed by inventive physics-based puzzles. Portal has proven to be a tremendously influential game in terms of environmental storytelling and making your standard block-pushing minigame even more boring that it already was. There's just something kind of amazing about staring into a portal you've created and seeing an entire area, just waiting to be stepped into. It has a similar appeal to mirrored surfaces in games; offering moments where you can see your character and the world around you from a different perspective than the one offered by the game's camera.

Now, the article by Hamish Todd that I wanted to share is all about Portal's physics –specifically the "fling" technique. The picture above illustrates what flinging is all about. Basically, you set up a situation where you jump from a height through a portal on the ground, only to emerge from a wall portal with he forward momentum gained from your quick descent. The result is that you are flung forward through space. The fling ends up becoming one of Portal's core conceits, sometimes asking that you rotate or shoot a new portal in midair to change trajectory. It seems so simple, yet it hadn't really been done before –not like this anyway.

In his article, Todd walks through a number of different puzzle rooms from Portal and some of the extended challenges, showing how many different ways the fling was implemented (some great illustrative GIFs in there too). The fling was a naturally occurring phenomenon in the game engine before it became central to Portal's gameplay, as if it was something to be discovered. This reminds me of how Devil May Cry's air juggling mechanic was born out of an Onimusha glitch where enemies weren't falling to the ground after being launched above you. It's a philosophy of looking at something that happens unexpectedly and embracing it for what it is. How refreshing.