GTA IV had one of the best implementations of NaturalMotion’s Euphoria, a procedural animation behavioral physics-driven system for the AI and player character. It’s a CPU-intensive piece of middleware technology that was scaled back drastically for GTA V. Well, some modders have taken time out to really work over the game’s physics systems and managed to bring GTA V up to par with Red Dead Redemption, Max Payne 3 and GTA IV.
Modder jedijosh920 and bravercoolio worked together to completely reconfigure the physics module for GTA V, giving the ragdoll effects more bounce and swagger, the pedestrian falling and behavioral effects more dynamism, and extending the AI behavioral routines so that they reach and grab for things, attempt to keep themselves standing, and react in more unpredictable ways during gameplay.
You can see a demonstration of the physics overhaul known as RAGEuphoria with the video below.
As you can see, the AI grabs and holds onto the area where they’ve been injured, staggering from the force of impact and loss of blood. Depending on where they get shot will depend on how they’ll react and also determine how long they’ll stay standing. Headshots will put them down real fast. Jedijosh920 still has some more tweaking and improvements to do, but overall it’s looking really good.
The way they die now is also fairly dramatic, almost mimicking classic gangster films in a way. It most certainly does improve the cinematic aspects of GTA V… on PC, at least.
Rockstar had to tone down the use of Euphoria in GTA V to accommodate the processing limitations of the home consoles, which resulted in a far more arcade-style feel for the gameplay and world dynamics compared to the layered depth and interactions present in GTA IV. NaturalMotion’s Euphoria is a CPU-intensive piece of middleware, and as we know, both the Xbox One and PS4 Jaguar APUs aren’t the most proficient when it comes to CPU-heavy software.
Nevertheless, Jedijosh920 is a savant in the modding community, making all sorts of awesome improvements and updates for Rockstar’s title. If you want to play-test the RAGEuphoria mod you can do so by downloading the mod right now from the GTA5-mods.com page.