- Shishka
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- Exalted Mythic Member
A couple things to point out...
First, Halo did not have true ragdoll. It had a substitution for ragdoll that calculated body position after the body came to rest. The main reason ragdoll is so popular is because it dynamically solves to way the body moves, and reacts to the solid objects around it.
Part of a good ragdoll system is setting up a series of constraints based on the skeleton used to animate the model, dictating maximum ranges of rotation for each joint, so that, for example, a character's spine doesn't bend backwards . Poorly implemented ragdoll systems do not take this into account.
I prefer ragdoll over manually animated death because a person falling dynamically and hitting the ground based on their weight is far more realistic than killing 20 monsters that land the exact same way- Ever see a grunt end up on it's back after death? No, you haven't. Ever seen a Grunt's dead body roll until it could settle face down? Yes, you probably have. ;)