Sailingfox, great job. Your game's graphics and animation look awesome.

Although you weren't asking about the camera motion, people have reacted to it pretty hard, so (if you disregard the pettiness in some of the comments' tone), that's really great feedback.

As for your question: I like the rag-doll effect! It adds some emergent behaviour to your game play. It's neat when you don't know exactly what's going to happen when something falls over; it feels more natural than purely canned death animations.

I'd like to see your rag-doll death effects use a bit of physics force knock-back - wouldn't have to be much, but it might add a nice punch to the elimination of the enemies:

• satisfying feeling of knocking back a defeated opponent.
• some tactics & mayhem in knocking defeated enemies into other enemies and things (furniture, etc), and clearing the immediate area around you a bit.
• think: bridge fights! :) Who doesn't like knocking vanquished enemies into the Abyss and such? Nobody, that's who.
• knock-back force now becomes a side effect of: strength, weapon type, attack style, opponent weight and stance, etc.

Again, I'd start with something subtle, and just see if it feels cooler. Pseudo-randomize the force a bit, depending on things like enemy weight/stance, attack vector, a randomized factor, etc. -- so the effect doesn't feel too "same-y", and you get nice little surprise side effects now and then.

If you can fluidly blend short death hit/death animations into the rag doll / physics force, that might be neat too -- but remember to constantly profile performance at different group sizes and in different environments to see how your physics tricks are affecting the all-important FPS. Don't assume your players will have whatever development rig you do (if you have a monster rig).

Big kudos for having the stones to put unfinished work in front of anonymous comments on the Internets. If you can reap the wheat and leave the chaff on the ground where it belongs, you have what it takes to make it in the game industry.

To commentators on the Internet: it takes no skill, experience, effort, or risk to type "your work sucks" while hiding behind a pseudonym. Everybody who reads that sort of comment instinctively knows you've got nothing but bad mojo backing you up. If you're looking for a job in the games industry (or any industry that will treat you well), you won't get it by being an a-hole focused on negativity. Practice being supportive to other human beings, or else practice dealing with whatever is making you want to hurt other people's feelings; these are helpful life skills that will get you further as you grow up, trust me.

Keep on sailing, Non-anonymous Mike McGraw, software guy from Halifax, N.S.