2 replies to this topic

[mv348]

I recently became acquainte with the amazing Euphoria Engine and I realized how extremely useful this would be for my particular game project. Sadly this engine is not freely available, but I was wondering if anyone knew of a similar alternative,even if its slightly less sophisticated. Any engine that's specifically designed to handle the physics of moving and colliding human bodies would be of interest to me, and self balancing/preservation AI would be fabulous too.

[Hodgman]

It's a pretty complex topic with a lot of crossover with advanced robotics AI, so there's a good reason natural motion are able to charge so much for it ;)

It's been around long before Euphoria, and is a lot simpler, but you could check out Russell Smith's biped controller:
http://q12.org/phd.html

Edited by Hodgman, 06 October 2012 - 06:19 AM.

[ifthen]

Well... the thing is Euphoria doesn't really work like they present it. Look at the integration in GTA and The Force Unleashed – it really doesn't solve much more than traditional procedural animation and the motion looks jerky. Do you know why the GTA used it only for things like flying ragdolls and drunks? And why The Force Unleashed used it just for the stormtroopers hanging on poles? Exactly. It isn't a magic controller that always works. You just contact NaturalMotion to make animations you need in that game. (I came to this conclusion from an aigamedev.com article.)

That said, you could use DANCE. I didn't use it, but it looks similar to Euphoria. Note that it is distributed under non-commercial license, but it could give you some ideas to develop your own physical animation system using a physics engine like ODE or Bullet.

Edited by ifthen, 06 October 2012 - 07:17 AM.