Alpha Lab Crane (Spoilers)

I have done some testing with the Alpha Labs crane, and what it can pick up, and how it affects it. For all you people who want to Ohh over ragdoll physics in action here is your chance. I tested carrying ZSec zombies in it along with corpses, barrels (explosive and non), and a janitors bucket. ZSec do not seem to get hurt when falling from the crane. Neither do corpes or barrels. Perhaps it is not a high enough drop, to inflict damage. ZSec can not shoot while being held by crane or do anything else except run in place. If you drop them they will continue to chase you. When I attempted to contain them by setting up barriers of barrels, they managed to break through many of the times before I could run back to the controls. I ended up killing all but one and that made my life easier. It took me about 30min to get one onto the crane. When I tested moving corpses it shows just how well Doom3's physics engine was designed. The corpses dead limbs will react to the intertia and momentum of the crane, thus when they are being pulled right thier arms will start to "drag" left, and when the crane stops their arms will be thrown forward slightly and swing back and forth a couple times. Also when they are picked up by thier torsos, thier legs will hang limp off the side of the crane, and react to the cranes movement the same way previously described for the arms. When they fall they will land in a position unique to how they were dropped. However it does not harm them. The barrels will bounce when dropped but do not appear to take damage because the explosive ones do not explode. Also if dropped on a corpse the corpse will remain unharmed. I have not had the patience to try dropping a barrel on ZSec :D

See some screens and download the save for yourself to do more testing. For your convenience I have made the save so the crane is holding a live ZSec guard so you wont have to waste time catching one. I have noticed one thing however while holding live ZSecs and that is even though I have never seen one fall out, they will sometimes be so far outside the cranes boundaries that if it were real life they would.

http://www.wackyhq.com/stuff/doom3crane/

Enemies don't take falling damage, so I assume ragdoll objects don't either.

Another way to drag around ragdoll objects and most other map entities is to use the g_dragentity 1, so you can pick up any body from any joint you want and move it wherever.

wacky, you could have tried to notarget first and then spawn a Zsec. Then lift him up and finally notarget again so he can see you but is already hanging in the air. That might have saved you some trouble.

Heh, I was too lazy to look up how :D Plus it was a fun challenge. However to get up the stairs the ZSec slammed the barrels sky high out of the way. That's pretty good AI

You need something else to do with your time.