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Comment by cyber_kinetist | Hacker News Reader

It seems that the devs are experiencing some serious stability issues with their physics engine (which is likely homebrewed), and is causing most of the bugs the players are complaining about (the next problematic being character AI and animation). Which I understand, since I also spent some time implementing my own physics engine and encountered the sorts of bugs similar to these... (though I still expect veteran engine devs to do a lot better than me!)

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It's like everyone's forgotten entirely about the (wonderful) madness of Havok which characterises basically every Bethesda and Source Engine 2 game... The sound of agressive slapping and thumping as a corpse or four hundred cheese wheels get caught in the ground is music to my ears, bringing me back to the halcyon days of my youth when times were simpler and video games were...... Still a humongous crunch culture and populated with vocally angry impatient dorks for fans, but physics glitches were apparently just part of a game's charm back then?

We took what we could get. Back then, the sound of 4000 cheese wheels rubbing ominously against other surfaces was one of the most glorious experiences available. Just the fact that it resembled any functionality at all was impressive to us.

You're right, physics simulation are still the most jankiest part of a game engine and for good reason. And these buggy parts are what brings humor to many games like the one's you've mentioned.

Still, I never expected ragdolls to be THAT buggy in Cyberpunk. I thought ragdolls were mostly a solved problem, they're still funny to look at but aren't that glitchy anymore. You can probably eliminate most of the stability issues of ragdoll systems (which have lots of constraints between rigid bodies) by damping the hell out of them (along with adding some realistic joint constraints). But I really don't understand what Cyberpunk's engine is doing, the 1% of cases when things align well it looks very realistic, but most of the time it glitches out weirdly (unrealistic poses) in ways I don't expect. Looking at the way how characters can get stuck to objects it seems like there are some serious issues with contact resolution...

all games that try to have real physics have these glitches. you can’t not have them and also have good frame rates.

Yes, but the best studios minimize these glitches to a minimum. Compare this game with GTA5 or RDR2. Rockstar uses its own proprietary engine that works together with the animation engine. When taking into consideration how much interaction there is with game world in GTA5 and RDR2, the glitches are fewer and farther between. Rockstar is the gold standard of technical game development these days.

They may have been the gold standard, but not anymore since the GTA remaster release last year... that was so bad they had to apologise for releasing it.

The Definitive editions were developed by a mobile game studio (Grove Street Games) rather than in-house by Rockstar. Rockstar still published them though, so they do bear some responsibility for the quality issues.

I’m playing through Dark Souls at the moment - superb game, but Havok shenanigans abound. Good times.

I think people were too busy being amazed to nitpick the jank. My own experience with “realistic” physics in games at that point was limited to Elastomania and Worms, so Source was mind-blowing. I remember spending more time in the CS:Source beta throwing grenades at piles of junk than playing the actual game.

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