DEVELOPMENT OF GAME PHYSICS AND ANIMATION

ANIMATED ACTION

Early video games used manually created animations for characters' death sequences. This had the advantage of low CPU utilization, as the data needed to animate a "dying" character was chosen from a set number of pre-drawn frames:

CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN (1991)

RAGDOLL PHYSICS 

As computers increased in power, it became possible to do limited real-time physical simulations. By 1997 the 3D "skeleton" of a character model could be built of multiple physical parts called rigid bodies that connected to each other just like the bones in a physical body, and were tied together by a system of constraints that restrict how they might move relative to each other. When the character dies, their body begins to collapse to the ground, much like a toy "ragdoll", hence the name.

HITMAN: CODENAME 47 (2000)

DYNAMIC MOTION

In 2007 the Euphoria physics engine was developed that combined 3D rigidbodies with realtime Artificial Intelligence. This enables the rendering of dynamic behaviours with characters responding spontaneously and realistically to changes in their environments:

MAX PAYNE 3 (2009)

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2006/05/10/e3-2006-indiana-jones-eyes-on