Ragdology: A Study On Ragdolls!

A guide detailing EVERY intricate and noteworthy property of ragdolls in Team Fortress 2 as well as the Source Engine in general!

WARNING: GUIDE IS NOT BENEFICIAL TO ACTUAL GAMEPLAY

Introduction

WARNING: CONTAINS USELESS INFORMATION THAT HAS NO BENEFIT TO ACTUAL GAMEPLAY OR SKILL

Ah, the ever-elusive ragdoll. When a player dies, their player character disappears and is replaced with what we call a ragdoll. Named for its limp, titular ragdoll-like movements and properties, ragdolls are often used for wiggly objects or, more oftenly (and amusingly), dead people! When a player is seamlessly replaced with a ragdoll, the ragdoll is placed in a similar position to when the player died, with proper momentum maintained and added. In this guide I'll share with you interesting but pointless doodads and trivia that you probably didn't know about our dead, noodly friends.

Firstly, let's talk about the basics of ragdolls.

Technical Details

Ragdolls are client based. Which means that while that backstab sent you flying across the map, for other players you just flopped over! Take this into mind while discussing humorous ragdolls with your teammates, and instead take a screenshot.

However, it is possible for ragdolls to be synced with all players, but only under certain conditions. Being nailed to walls via arrows and such synchronizes the ragdolls for all players. So yes, everyone, including the owner of the ragdoll, can see that Soldier hanging from the ceiling with his arms flailing about.

Another is console commanded suicides. Meaning that if a player types "Kill" (or "Explode" if you want to gib) into the console or changes class, their ragdoll will be synched with all other players that are within a certain distance of the ragdoll. Feel free to shotgun the body around and giggle how their pelvis thrusts when you shoot it. When a player suicides via teamswitch, the body is synched with all other players except the owner itself. Instead, the owner will see their ragdoll flop over next to the person they spectate. Also their ragdoll will change into the owner's new team's color.

Also, while not related to ragdolls, ever see players pop up out of nowhere for a split second? That's a glitch where the player character is spawned before the player itself spawns. Which means that if you see a Heavy on your team pop up in front of you and disappear in a split second, it means that a player who was playing Heavy died, and was spectating you while waiting to respawn, and had just respawned!

Oh, and because I mentioned console commands, there is a very interesting console command called "cl_ragdoll_collide 0". Change the "0" to a "1" and...nothing happens! But in other Source games, setting the value to 1 makes ragdolls collide with each other! So when you're playing Half Life 2, and those pesky monsters all turn the corner right into your shotgun blast, you'll see with glee that they stack on top of each other! In Half Life 2: Episode 2, this glitches the game, and in Source Engines past Left 4 Dead versions, this command is removed.

A less amusing and more...functional console command is cl_ragdoll_fade_time. The default is 15 seconds, but you can make the time ragdolls disappear shorter or longer. Note that ragdolls disappear if their owner died again.

Also, ever notice that players fly away instead of gibbing when killed by rockets occasionally? What causes this phenomenon? Player's ragdolls fly away when they're just barely killed by an explosive, usually with no more than roughly 20 damage points of overkill or so. Meaning that if you have 51 health, and you're hit by a long range rocket that dealt 52 points of damage, you'll fly away! This is called a "fling," however it also refers to a player flying away due to an explosive in general, not just being ragdolled by it. Critical explosives always result in gibbing. You can make it so players never gib by typing "tf_playergib 0" into the console, but only if you own the server.

Next, we'll discuss how ragdolls, usually the client-based kind, gain momentum. Before we dive into that, there is a way to alter how dramatically ragdolls gain momentum by using the command "phys_pushscale X", with "X" being replaced by any number you want. 1 is the default, and in general means that a ragdoll's physics (including gibs) have a 1:1 transference rate from an impact. The lower the value, the less it will react to physical force. Negative values make the ragdolls fly into the impact, and higher values amplify the reaction to the impact.

Gameplay Properties

Ragdolls, on the victim's end, "fly away" from the following:

• Melee deaths
  
  
• Close range shotgun/scatterguns/Force-A-Natures
  
  
• Mid-air deaths
  
  
• Extreme close-range minigun/Natascha deaths (practically touching the Heavy)
  
  
• Headshots
  
  
• Backstabs
  
  
• Crits!

Of course, other players will only see the victim of these deaths merely flop over, although rarely they will fly away, but not as dramatically as on the player's end.

Also, ragdolls freeze after a short time. You'll know when they freeze when their facial animation disappears suddenly or if they have, obviously, stopped moving. Freezing only occurs when the ragdolls moves only a insignificant distance over time. For example, if you nail a Pyro to the ceiling via Huntsman, he'll swing, but will abruptly stop if he swings slightly, but not significantly. This also can occur when you're watching a ragdoll slowly fall off of a ledge. Say you shoot a Soldier, and his ragdoll slowly begins to slip off of the ledge you two were standing on. If it moves too slowly, they'll freeze, no matter how physically impossible it would be for them to remain on the ledge. Of course, shooting the ragdoll will unfreeze it for a little while.

Now let's discuss sound. Yes, ragdolls make sound. If a ragdoll collides with a surface extremely fast multiple times in a short timespan, which often comes from the ragdoll sliding or being dragged, it will make an appropriate dragging sound, which gets louder the faster it is dragged. If a ragdoll collides with a surface suddenly, it makes a "splat!" sound depending on how fast the ragdoll collides with the surface, which often comes from being killed out of the air or off a high place.

Now for the general pain and yelling and such. When a player dies through an explosive, whether they gib or fly away, they'll make an "Omph!" sound, like the wind was knocked out of them. If they die by normal means, bullets and such, they'll call out shortly in pain. When they die to critical attacks (not minicrits, but FULL crits) or to melee attacks, they'll scream very loud and overly dramatically. Note that that dying to explosives overrides dying to crits, so a player will only grunt when they die to critical explosives. You can actually use these sounds to tell who died to what if you listen hard enough!

Overlooked Details and Glitches

Now for more interesting stuff. When you suicide, your character will react to how they last took damage. If they recently took damage from a melee attacks or crits, they'll scream dramatically, whether they suicide through teamswitching or through the console, even if they use the "explode" command to gib! If they died or took damage from falling, they won't actually make a sound but their ragdolls will make a cracking sound. This doesn't actually interrupt voice lines, which means that you can humorously make your dead body talk by suiciding by or after taking fall damage in the middle or right at the start of a voice line.

Speaking of dead bodies talking, if you taunt and died before a voice line plays, it continues uninterrupted as long as it didn't start before you die. Which means that if you backstab that Heavy about to eat a Sandvich, and you kill him before he can take a bite, his dead body will play the screaming associated with a critical/melee death abruptly, then the Heavy will make the expected "Nom nom nom om nom" sound. This works with all taunts and responses. If you kill an Engineer and his dispenser at the same time, even if he gibs, he may yell out "Dispenser down!" upon death.

And while we're on the subject of pre-death actions, your character frowns in a sad manner upon near death (red health). Use this to your advantage if you ever get close enough to see the enemy's expression. That's why your ragdoll looks sad when you die from low health! The facial animations still play upon death. If a Demoman or Heavy died when firing their weapon, they'll smile for a bit, for example.

Oh and while we're on the subject of small details, every character's eyes move, but it is client side. Every character will always have their pupils facing the player's perspective as long as the player is alive. If the player is dead or too far away, the pupils will be set to a "default" position in the middle of the eyes. And if a character dies, the character's pupils will usually roll into the back of their head, but occasionally if the player is close enough, the character's pupils will be frozen facing the direction the player was when the character died!

Moving from one subject to another, ragdolls, for about 10 seconds, will copy the lip syncing of the player they belonged to if they respawn, even if they changed class. Sounds confusing doesn't it? Well imagine killing a Soldier with a shotgun. If you stare at his ragdoll's face, and the Soldier switched to a Medic, and asked for a teleporter, the Medic's old ragdoll (which is of the Soldier) will lip sync to the Medic's line. If the same Medic died and stayed a Medic, and caught on fire and yelled "Fire!", the Medic's ragdoll, which is also a Medic, will likewise yell "Fire!" Note that this is still client side. The ragdoll will only copy the lip sync if the player can hear the character the ragdoll belongs to.

Alternate Ragdolls and Gibs

Let's move onto some of the newer ragdoll effects. Before we get started, there is a minor new ragdoll effect when an enemy dies to the Engineer's Frontier Justice taunt kill, namely their head just gets lower into their model. ANYWAYS, disintegration from the space-age weapons such as the Cow Manger and Righteous Bison cause the enemy ragdoll to spaz out before disappearing. Keen players will notice that this effect is literally the same as when a character dies via energy ball in Half Life 2 and its episodes. There's only two real differences, one being that there are pre-programmed death animations for characters to play when they die, mostly just the character raising their arms and jiggling. The other difference is that the particles that come off of the character will be the same color as the enemy team that killed them. Interestingly, if a player dies to the Cow Mangler's charge shot, they will turn into gibs which then disappear via the normal disintegration animation.

As for disintegration via the Phloginblahblah, it's a brand-new animation Valve didn't just lift from Half Life 2. Simply speaking, the character model simply disappears and is replaced with dust particles that are programmed to fall down and disappear. The dust particles are placed in a roughly humanoid shape, but every class uses the same shape and number of dust particles. So a Heavy will turn into dust particles that are skinnier than he actually is, and the Scout's shape might grow a little bit when turned into dust. The actual ragdolls still exist for a little while after they are disintegrated, so you can shoot a shotgun in where you think the ragdoll might be and you'll hear the ragdolls trademark splatting sound.

I almost forgot about turning your enemies into statues! If an enemy dies to a backstab from the Spycicle or to the Saxxy Trophy, they will turn into an ice or gold statue respectively. When they die, they will be stuck in the last position their ragdoll was in. However, their lip sync will still continue to play! If they die to the Saxxy Trophy, they will usually just fall over. However, if they die to a Spycicle and were on the ground, they'll stand up for a little while. This is hard-programmed into the game, meaning even if you shoot the ice statue, it won't fall over. This is because the statue isn't an actual ragdoll, it's just a model that has no physical properties. However, after roughly 10 seconds or so, the ice statue becomes an actual in-game ragdoll, and usually will fall over.

The last of the newer ragdoll effects, decapitation, is fairly simplistic. When the character gets decapitated, his head model will actually just shrink so small that you cannot see it. It is possible to view the head if you zoom in really close and have a higher resolution, but the face is normally distorted beyond recognition. As the character dies, he will spawn a head gib and a ridiculous amount of blood along with the sound of somebody violently crushing an orange. From the player who dies's view point, they will see their body from their head gib's perspective.

There are a few overlooked details of dying via decapitation, however. For one thing, the character's death cry will come from the body, not the head gib (even though being able to yell upon decapitation is impossible anyways). Also if a Spy Dead Ringers a decapitation and does something like fall into a death pit, their view will change to their fake head gib, no matter how far away it is, as long as the head gib still exists.

Gibbing, gibbing, gibbing! Let's talk some more about gibbing. You're probably very interested in this, but there's not much to say. Gibs spawn as if the player died in a neutral position and fly into the air in a "blooming flower"-like pattern. Players gib from explosives or typing "explode" into the console to suicide. However, very rarely, you can gib from shotguns or fall damage. I haven't the slightest idea how this happens, but I believe it is somewhat related to overkill damage. When other people die via gib, they will only spawn the usual models such as arms, legs, hands, and the like. However, when a player dies, they will see their own organs such as lungs, livers, kidneys and the like. This is only client-side, and every organ has the same model.

While we're on gibbing; before Valve patched it, players who died from the explode command in the console would then forth always die via explosions, whether they were killed by explosives or not, and would play the respective sound responses. It was very amusing watching Snipers get headshot, explode into itty bitty pieces, and scream dramatically all at once, but alas. Valve has patched it, it is no more.

While we're on the subject of gibs and console commands, you can make it so people who gib while on fire will have burning gibs by typing "cl_burninggibs 1" into the console. This is one of the few commands that notably affect the frames per second that the game runs at, however. It seems as though this command is not entirely optimized but those with more powerful computers most likely won't notice much of a difference.

Finally, death animations. Death animations actually remove the player character, delay the ragdoll replacement, play a short animation of the character dying to either a headshot, decapitation or backstab (with headshot and decapitation animations having the same animations), and place the ragdoll in the same position as the character model at the end of the animation. They have a 1/4th chance of playing and are amusing. While you need to turn sv_cheats on, you can enter the command "tf_always_deathanim 1" into the console to oogle at the amusing animations. It's very disturbing watching the Scout and Demoman scream and turn around at you upon being backstabbed.

Before I forget, death animations themselves aren't entirely perfect. There are two examples that stand out. The first is that the victim's ragdoll still has momentum added in the direction of the last force that hit it after the animation finishes playing. For example, say you backstab a Heavy and he does his little backstab animation. Normally the Heavy SHOULD slump to the ground to finish the animation, but when his ragdoll spawns he suddenly shoots forward a few feet to match the momentum to his ragdoll that was added because of the backstab.

The other imperfection in death animations is that occasionally the animation will spawn in the direct center of the map (vertically and horizontally, so sometimes the animation will float in the air or sink into the ground) rather than where the victim died. This is also client-side and will only happen if the player witnessing the animation was close enough to the victim, and can sometimes be seen by the player that backstabbed or headshotted the poor victim in the first place! Gibs have a similar problem to this if they are spawned by the Bombinomicon, which gibs players a short while after they die. Also client-side, if a player is too far away from a corpse with the Bombinomicon for the ragdoll to spawn, but then walks into range in the short time between the ragdoll spawning and the Bombinomicon blowing it up, the gibs will spawn in front of the player rather than on the victim's ragdoll, because the ragdoll doesn't exist for the player witnessing this bizarre and gory event.

Conclusion

So that's it! Like I said, this isn't useful in the slightest, but you can use the information to impress your friends and woo random players. Stand tall, and be proud that you can now call yourself a Team Fortress 2 Ragdologist! Now go out there and make some ragdolls!

-Theta Zero

Research, testing, and partial photo credits goes to the following:
Muddywater (Disco Demoman, Gibfest photo as off-screen Demoman gibbing everyone, Drowning Pyro)
Mr. Kaori (Hanging Pyro, Spy/Pyro mishmash as Pyro, Raked Pyro)
Skelter Helter (Spy/Pyro mishmash as Spy, Gibfest photo as off-screen Soldier gibbing everyone)
ASDF64 (Demoknight in Gibfest photo)

Also thanks to:

Veteran, for finding the correct command for "tf_always_death_anim 1"
The_Dude, for pointing out grammar errors.
Litagono, for pointing out the phys_pushscale command for me.
Crzy Paint, for having a posterior so huge it blocked the sun from getting in my eyes.

Console Commands Quick List

Command	Action
kill	Causes player to suicide into ragdoll.
explode	Causes player to suicide into gibs.
cl_ragdoll_collide X	"X" can be set to "1" or "0" with "0" being default. 1 causes ragdolls to react to other ragdolls; does not function in any Source engine builds past Half Life 2.
cl_ragdoll_fade_time X	"X" can be any positive number, with "15" being default. Sets time before ragdolls disappear according to "X" seconds.
tf_playergib X	"X" can be "1" or "0" with "1" being default. Causes players to gib or not gib in reaction to explosive deaths. "1" causes gibbing, "0" prevents all gib. Can only be used by server owner.
phys_pushscale X	"X" can be any number. Determines how much force is transported between a source of momentum or impact (like shotgun bullets) and a ragdoll. "1" is default; positive numbers cause the ragdoll to move away from the source of impact, negative numbers cause the ragdoll to move towards the source of impact. Increasingly larger negative or positive numbers cause more dramatic reactions. "0" makes ragdolls only affected by gravity, not impact. Can only be used by server owner.
tf_always_deathanim X	"X" can be "1" or "0" with "0" being default. "1" causes death animations caused by backstabs or headshots/decapitations to always play. Only works if inputted by server owner with sv_cheats set to 1.

[Wahmageddon]

Anybody know why the scout ragdoll's head jiggles sometimes?
Is it because of the dog tags on his neck?

[kaden0823]

i also suffer from killbind momentum cancel, and i wanna know if its just one of those unfixable things my luck loves giving me or if it can be stopped, cuz it removed alot of humor from killbinds

[okay]

The thing is most of the time I killbind, I have no momentum and my body just slumps onto the ground, if I'm lucky, I'll even slump from an A-pose position... how do I keep the momentum in my own ragdoll?

[Caffeing]

uh huh... those commands are useful to know.. I'm looking for a way to make the ragdolls spaz and fade away immediately, the fading away immediately part is easy enough. no amount of messing with phys_pushscale or something makes them spaz tho.
Also, no idea if this is mentioned already or not, but if you look away from the ragdoll in the first second if it existing it disappears no matter what your settings are.

[edgar]

tf_playergib 0
-This, I have been looking for a command that does this for such a long time. Thank you. :)

[CobaltNinja]

tf_playergib 2 always causes gibs

[Cheaple]

I have a problem, whenever I killbind I lose all momentum and just flop on the ground instead of going forward, backward, etc. can anyone help???

[atlantic_penguin2k]

Some one probably said this already, but I'll say it anyway.

This looks like it belongs in the Garry's Mod community, rather than just TF2.

[The Supreme Combine]

did u know if u decapitate someone, all his cosmetics will disappear? and the ragdoll cannot be moved with guns, but if u decapitate someone's head with the hitman's heatmaker the hats stay here but ragdoll also does the same, also tried with my brother account, both cannot be moved by gun.

[R3pliC4NT]

I have a small problem with spy-cicle
when I stab someone their "model" just quickly disappears in my view as if nothing happened
after that 10 seconds their model reappears and falls down it's so weird would you know a solution?