By Jim Rossignol on January 13th, 2011 at 10:23 am.
A GTA4 video which features “frictionless cars” has been doing the rounds. I post it here in case you’ve not seen it already. It’s moderately amusing in an ouch-but-haha-ragdoll-horror sort of way.
Funny how games try so hard to produce realistic physics, and then we are amused by physics gone crazy.
13/01/2011 at 10:27 Rich says:
Terrific. Terrific.
13/01/2011 at 10:29 Brumisator says:
Who broke the laws of physics? Somebody call Sir Isaac Newton!
Good times…
13/01/2011 at 10:38 Rich says:
Oh great. The universe is on the blink again.
13/01/2011 at 10:45 opel says:
Who broke America? Somebody call Christopher Columbus!
13/01/2011 at 11:12 Rich says:
Christopher Columbus? Oh you mean the guy who discovered the West Indies.
13/01/2011 at 14:07 ChaK_ says:
South of the west indies, vikings were there first !
13/01/2011 at 16:04 simonh says:
What are you talking about, the Vikings didn’t discover the West Indies, they landed in Newfoundland.
They could never have survived that warm climate anyway, they would’ve thawed!
13/01/2011 at 20:15 Shadram says:
Thored, surely?
I liked this video. I especially liked the bit when he was hit by the car.
13/01/2011 at 10:39 Stephen Roberts says:
It looks like Just Cause 2. Proving that people falling over is a neverending source of humour.
I’ve just realised an ingame video editor system was missing from Just Cause 2. And would have made for one of the best sources of entertainment…
13/01/2011 at 10:59 Jhoosier says:
Yeah, I’m surprised there’s not an editor out there somewhere. Not even a create-your-own-mission device. Was it just not that popular?
13/01/2011 at 11:47 Kryopsis says:
It was a PS3 exclusive feature for Just Cause 2, though it has been made redundant by the PS3′s own video capture/upload feature that was added recently.
13/01/2011 at 16:44 Rich says:
Hard surface!
13/01/2011 at 11:05 Moni says:
This is how I imagine Roland Emmerich would have made ‘Cars’.
13/01/2011 at 11:23 Jahkaivah says:
This would make a great film.
13/01/2011 at 12:40 Quintin Smith says:
This would make a great /game/! I suppose it already is a game, though.
13/01/2011 at 11:25 MadTinkerer says:
This is even funnier than the super low gravity + double (triple? something like that) default driving speed cheats in San Andreas.
13/01/2011 at 11:35 Hoaxfish says:
Typical women drivers!
(and they say games aren’t art)
13/01/2011 at 12:01 Jahkaivah says:
http://tubedubber.com/#Drp9o4E7G7U:lOJqicM6x84:100:100:0:1:true
Yeah I know Mind Heist is overused.
13/01/2011 at 12:39 EthZee says:
It may be overused but you’ve picked something good there, it really works with the video.
Of course, SYNCS PERFECTLY
13/01/2011 at 18:54 lokimotive says:
Always a worthwhile dub
13/01/2011 at 22:53 BAReFOOt says:
LOOL. I KNEW, Yakety Sax would be in there! And I also knew, the Inception theme would be in there! :D
Although I think this must be by far the best Yakety Sax dub I have ever seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkyc1dxL3N0
16/01/2011 at 06:37 dragonhunter21 says:
http://tubedubber.com/#Drp9o4E7G7U:04QpInkz9so:0:100:0:0:true
Works actually really nicely. Thank god for the human mind’s affinity for patterns.
13/01/2011 at 12:11 Songbearer says:
I was playing the original Carmageddon only yesterday and words can’t explain just how happy this video makes me. My dream game would be a brand new Carmageddon, with all the humour and grotty atmosphere of the first game, ridiculous car customisation and of course Euphoria physics.
Except I’d make it so the ragdolls were even more exaggerated than they are in most games. Running someone over in GTA 4 feels like a tragedy, while in Carmageddon it’s not unusual to punt a witless pedestrian some 30ft into the sky spraying gore everywhere. It’s a shame there doesn’t seem to be much call for a new game in the series, because for its time it was a pretty astonishing achievement even putting aside the controversy.
13/01/2011 at 12:23 Hoaxfish says:
Same thing happened to FPSeses… no more rocket jumping, it’s “unrealistic”, lets all play in the desert and shoot the “other team” from inside a rusty barrel. Fun isn’t real enough.
13/01/2011 at 13:01 JeCa says:
Well Hoaxfish, thank God for TF2 aight?
13/01/2011 at 12:42 Catastrophe says:
Woah, Frogger 2 is looking way too difficult… and hilariously fun.
13/01/2011 at 12:50 Magrippinho says:
“Funny how games try so hard to produce realistic physics, and then we are amused by physics gone crazy.”
I think it’s an extension of the comedic theory that slapstick is funnier the more intelligent the victim is.
Which is, of course, why Batman is comedy gold.
But it also reminds me of the GoW’s development team’s “groundbreaking” discovery, that people like brighter levels most.
So, yeah, people don’t like the dull, dark, “realistic” graphics and have more fun breaking “realistic” mechanics than working with ‘em. Everything you knew about “next-gen” game design is wrong!
I think I’ve just about run out of “sarcastic” quotation marks.
13/01/2011 at 13:11 starclaws says:
More like the ground is some kind of accelerator!
13/01/2011 at 14:32 PeopleLikeFrank says:
From the dude’s first video:
“I turned the wheel friction negative”
So, yeah, pretty much.
13/01/2011 at 13:23 Walsh says:
Why don’t more games use the euphoria animation system? It produces the best most natural looking blended reaction animations so far.
Like one of the last shots where the player goes flat against the car while it’s rolling.
I’d argue the animation system is the best part of GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption.
http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria
13/01/2011 at 13:43 noodlecake says:
Definitely. Euphoria is amazing and the way it’s utilized in GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption does present unparalleled realism in gaming. I’ve spent hours just chucking Nico into various things to see what would happen. I managed to get him to slide over a downhill moving car in his arse and then clumsily stumble without falling over at the other end. Yyyeah… I had such an exciting life back in the pot smoking days. :S
It’s still much more awesome without the friction. :)
13/01/2011 at 17:11 mwoody says:
I agree that it’s excellent; much better than traditional ragdolls. Before, I assumed that Rockstar had simply purchased the company and kept the engine for themselves, but looking at that page, I see other projects – The Force Unleashed II, for example – from other developers.
So I wonder what it is? Too expensive, financially? Too expensive, processing time?
13/01/2011 at 17:26 Nick says:
It really is so much better than the crap that most games have been using for years.
13/01/2011 at 20:27 safetydank says:
Maybe because Euphoria isn’t a real product. It seems to just be a hook for NaturalMotion’s consulting service.
See Wolfire’s post on Euphoria.
13/01/2011 at 20:53 Calabi says:
Personally I dont like it, it makes me not want to run over people. Seeing someone hit my bonnet, roll up and off it and then smack their head on the pavement, it was not nice.
13/01/2011 at 22:59 BAReFOOt says:
So that’s why GTA IV is so slow, no matter how good your graphics card is, with the CPU being the bottleneck. I wish it could be toned down or run (partially) on the GPU, because GTA is no fun with a dual-core, no matter what. :/
13/01/2011 at 14:07 Navagon says:
Imagine trying to complete it like that! :D
13/01/2011 at 14:08 clive dunn says:
How i do this in my GTA please nice people. Is possible yes? complicated? Maybe little tweak like game had nipples and i just tickle one and make fun happen.
13/01/2011 at 15:25 JonClaw says:
Overwrite the handling.dat file with the one obtained here.
http://www.mediafire.com/?0v7b4ul0a6oadbd
As always, make a backup of the original beforehand.
16/01/2011 at 07:12 dragonhunter21 says:
This is the most hilarious english I’ve ever seen.
13/01/2011 at 15:21 ArtyFishal says:
I used to turn of friction in Midtown Madness. Not as dramatic, but the ridiculous speeds and huge car pile ups were still endlessly entertaining.
14/01/2011 at 21:40 VelvetFistIronGlove says:
In Driver (the original), I editing the configs to give the cop cars huge mass and enormous acceleration and top speed, so they’d be like a freight train.
The thing was, you usually encountered them going the opposite way to you, so they’d accelerate to ludicrous speed while trying to turn around, and usually end up flinging themselves through the air. Utter hilarity!
13/01/2011 at 17:16 GameOverMan says:
I love the mobile phone snatching car at 0:34
13/01/2011 at 19:51 sinister agent says:
Same. It’s the doppler-effecty horn tooting that does it for me. Not content with haywirily mangling every pedestrian in sight, the driver feels justified in honking as he does it.
13/01/2011 at 19:04 Evernight says:
That was a riot to watch
14/01/2011 at 00:30 jamesgecko says:
This is amazing. Someone needs to run with it.
Put it in a Tron-like setting so nothing has to make sense. Get the flow of vehicles a little more constant. Let the player jump and kick off vehicles, and occasionally toss out a rocket launcher powerup. Instant classic.
15/01/2011 at 17:42 Hunam says:
Reminds me of GTA3 when you could stick the police cars to have 0 weight and then blow stuff up to get their attention.