Fun with ragdolls (gif heavy post)

The other day I got the idea in my head that I should try adding gored ragdoll corpses into my game -- I've always been fascinated with this and loved it in games like Fallout 3. They could be a little silly looking at times, sure, but the satisfaction they added I always felt made it more than worth it (plus the silliness can be part of the charm and part of the fun). I'd never done anything like this, but since my game engine uses Box2D I knew it must be possible.

After a little research, a new stencyl extension, and some tinkering, I had a functioning ragdoll.



It was simpler than I thought to get a basic ragdoll working -- Box2D already has features that are well suited to it. Just took a bit of trial and error to figure out what type of joints to use and how to set them up.

Here's what I got when I just swapped the ragdoll in on enemy death and nothing else:



This is a promising starting point, but we really need to start adding forces and playing with joint destruction to make it more fun.



Shotgun blasts can send them flying!



Physics can also cause some interesting bugs. I reluctantly fixed this after discovering it. :)