Blizzard: Why Corpses Vanish

[Sol Invictus]

Blizzard poster Bashiok talked about the technical reasons why corpses vanish, as seen in the 20-minute gameplay trailer, on the Battle.net forums:

The main reason for the corpses not being able to stay permanently is the potential number of them on screen at one time, and specifically that each corpse is affected by physics, allowing them to be blasted and thrown all over the place by the force of player abilities.

It's one of the trade offs when integrating new technology, you can get really awesome effects, but they do have a cost. In a 2D world, a sprite of a dead creature doesn't really cost any more (system requirement-wise) than a sprite of something that's alive. Probably less. In a 3D world where a creature dies and then needs to have physics calculations thrown onto it so it can bounce and fall and fly around, they cost substantially more.

We remember fondly those situations where you've just completely obliterated a camp of Fallen, and as you're picking up items - marvel in your destruction. That's a feeling and part of the gameplay where if we can realistically keep some of it without sacrificing features or having insane system requirements we'd definitely like to, but no promises.

When questioned as to how skills like Find Item, Corpse Explosion and Summon Skeleton would work in D3, if they were indeed included, he responded:

We haven't announced any abilities outside of those listed on the website, so by discussing what is or isn't in the game I would be essentially making an announcement, which I'm not prepared to do.

Thanks for the tip, Dead9k!

[DerMetzgermeister]

It makes sense to me, i hope this doesnt affect the amount of corpses a player can have.

[Sol Invictus]

Player corpses might simply decay into low-poly skeletons or even mounds of dirt depending on how old they are (e.g. 5 corpses old) assuming that the death system works the same way in Diablo 3 as it did in Diablo 2, so it probably wouldn't have a heavy effect on performance.

[ryanmax24]

exactly and pretty much everyone these days as a pretty decent or high end computer to run this stuff with ease, i recently upgraded my computer to handle the games ive got and the ones to come, if blizzard make the game abit darker and get rid of the vanishing corpses id be really happy and would spend my cash on the game, but as it is right now i wouldnt bother, for one reason only it looks to much like titan quest.

O nd 5 chars isnt enough make it 7 like LOD .

But its good that they are actually reading peoples concerns and complaints about certain things in the game thus far.

[Kwic]

Nice info. I just hope they will find some golden mean, coz i would like the corpses to stay on the screen.. I think it should be given to choose in game options. Those who have better comp they would click "fuck yeah, don't vanish the corpses!" ON

[oren88]

Thanks for the new's.. not so great news but alright..

Anyway i made a thread about that some time ago here:
http://www.diablofans.com/forums/sho...t=12337&page=3

I hope blizzard and maybe great Bashiok will read my thread and think about it, maybe it will change something in the final product.
At least I and many other's hope so.

[Shere Khaan]

I hated corpse explosion anyway. Won't be missing it

[waddlez]

and don't forget, after you kill a group of people, you should be moving on to kill another group of people, though the quickness of which they dissolved is a little fast, I don't expect to be sitting next to them trying to launch them off the side of the cliffs, so I am fine with it...

AFAIK sc2 does the same thing, but the videos I have seen have had corpses last a little longer

[Chezdon]

I don't mind them disappearing when I've left that area and have moved on. I'd like them to stay dead, where they are whilst I'm still there picking up items etc. It sounds like this will be the case so that's fine.

[Lazarus]

I already wrote about this in a simillar thread and hope it's not a violation to repeat a post:
About the corpses, i unterstand that there will be performance issues and i have one suggestion and that is when we kill something the corpse is affected by physics for a certan time (lets say the time it took to dissappear) and than later, instead of dissappearing it becomes a simple sprite, just a part of a texture unaffected by physics. That doesn't consume resources and we can still have fun throwing corpses around for a while and than later we can enjoy the mess we made.
Cheers!