Or, more appropriately,the
Havok Game Dynamics SDK, commonly referred to as Havok 2 (since the current version is the second version).
You may have heard the name Havok 2
passed around casually every now and then. Or you may have enjoyed similar effects via
Porrasturvat. Perhaps you've downloaded the
Stairs mod for
Unreal Tournament 2003, and enjoyed flinging hapless space marines to their endlessly fascinating, bone-cracking, physically articulated doom. Or maybe even you've used it first-hand as a developer or artist.
Or perhaps not.
What it is
The simplest definition is this paraphrase from the official blurb on Havok's site (www.havok.com):
The Havok Game Dynamics SDK allows you to easily insert physical objects into your game.
Where "objects" refers to just about any
virtual entity embedded into a game, be it a piece of wood, a
vehicle part, or a
humanoid body. What this means for gaming is that it is now far simpler to achieve dynamic special effects. Where before careful
scripting and plotting of all objects was necessary (and usually played out identically each time it occurred), now in-game objects respond realistically to
stimulus. Let's have a
simplified example...
In the very early part of the game
Half Life, the
intrepid nerd hero
Gordon Freeman is picking his way carefully through the
devastated underground government lab,
Black Mesa. As the player moves past a certain spot, there is a nearby explosion which topples over two huge
mainframes, falling nearly on top of our hero (and providing a gratuitous
heart attack to the player). What happens behind the scenes is that the game is actually setting off an
explosion effect, and then triggering two objects to shift position from
vertical to
horizontal. None of these objects actually interact physically; their behavior has to be painstakingly specified by the
programmers, and is identical every time you play the game.
With Havok, all you have to do is designate the two mainframes (and a nearby lamp, and a
guard standing by, and his
weapon, and the two cups of
coffee on top of the mainframes) as Havok objects, then set off the explosion. The force of the explosion will make all of these objects react appropriately, flinging them about with abandon, without further programming needed to make this happen. Since Havok uses some sort of
randomness in its
algorithms, this event will occur differently (the differences will be small, but still present) each time you play the game.
And that's pretty damn cool.
More features
A few more cool things that Havok offers:
Who's behind it
Havok was founded in 1998 by
Hugh Reynolds and
Steven Collins and has its origins in the
computer science department of
Trinity College Dublin,
Ireland. That's what the website says, and the little timeline there reads like a
success story right out of
fairytales. In an
industry where ideas and indeed whole companies come and go without having had much impact, Havok has only grown in recognition.
Havok is still located in Dublin, right along the
Liffey:
First Floor
The Digital Depot
Thomas St
Dublin 8
Tel: +353 1 472 4300
Fax: +353 1 671 0022
Email: info@havok.com
Future...?
Games Havok is (or will be) in: Half Life 2, Deus Ex: Invisible War, Max Payne 2,
Second Life,
Painkiller,
Freelancer,
Lord of the Rings:
Middle Earth Online,
Starcraft: Ghost,
Starsky and Hutch. So far, it appears that Half Life 2 will be the first game to truly utilize Havok's potential. Max Payne 2 mostly used
ragdolls and boxes that could be shot; Painkiller is all about gratuitous overuse of the ragdoll effect; Deus Ex: Invisible War did have a few places where hurling boxes was useful as a distraction or a weapon, and a place to use physical objects as stepping stones to a high place, but we have yet to see a more thought-out use of the SDK. I do not doubt that as games become more interactive, we will see more of Havok as well as more competing physics packages.
Sources:
http://www.havok.com