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First Person Shooters (Games)

Havok Team Interviewed 27

Posted by Zonk from the gravity-gun-for-teh-win dept.
Chris writes "There's an interview up with the Havok Team on FileFront, talking to Chief Technology Officer Steve Collins about his company's physics engine. Questions are about development of the engine, getting developer support and the demands they have, and research. The Havok physics engine is responsible for allowing players to lob toliet bowls at unsuspecting Combine in Valve's Half-Life 2 and powers several other popular titles." From the article: "the realistic portrayal of characters is what we hope will define the next generation of games. You're going to see a lot more soft-body dynamics, hair dynamics, clothing simulation and all that cool stuff."
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Havok Team Interviewed More

Havok Team Interviewed

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  • Way to dig! (Score:3, Funny)

    by suckamc_0x90 ( 716974 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:38AM (#11349129)
    I'm glad they asked the questions foremost on everyones minds:

    "Q: Could the engine be perfected, theoretically, to correctly display how the fat bounces around on a really fat woman during sex?"
  • Q: At what point were you most happy with the successes of the engine?

    A: The release of the first games with Havok was a huge boost for everyone involved, but I guess that this holiday season has seen the release of many titles that we've been eagerly waiting for, like Halo-2, Halflife-2 and Medal of Honor Each year we see developers getting more and more value out of Havok physics, pushing it harder, and incorporating it more and more into their game design, so it's hard to point at any one success.

    I tho
    • yeah I was surprised too, I'm pretty sure Halo2 (like DOOM3) use their own physics implementation.
      I checked the Havok website and nowhere do they mention Halo2.
    • Yeah, it does. As a matter of fact, that was pointed out in an episode of X-Play last night, where they showed the physics of Half-Life 2, Theif, Hitman, Halo 2, Psy-ops, and more. If the dumbasses at X-Play know, you'd think the people who actually developed the engine would too.
      • some reviews mention halo2 has its own physics engine, some mention havok.

        Again, go to www.havok.com (check http://www.havok.com/company/careers.php to see how much fun those guys seem to have), and show me where you see a reference to Halo2...
        • Did you not actuall read my comment? Like I said, yes, Halo 2 uses it's own physics engine, which X-Play got right.
          • Heh, I did read your comment twice.
            But since you quoted games that do use havok (HL2, PsyOps) I thought your "yes it does" meant that Halo2 does use Havok.
            I thought the rest (about the dev knowing what they code) was some twisted third degree sarcasm :P

  • Destructing Environment (Score:3, Interesting)

    by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Thursday January 13, 2005 @11:53AM (#11349292)
    What would it take to create an engine that allow the destruction of the entire environment. Sure it's nice to toss toilets at a wall, but I'd like to see the wall collapse after 20 hits.

    • Mostly a bunch of mathematical calculations that can be translated into realistic graphics and physical reactions understandable by the human eye. Mostly...
    • Soldiers: Heroes of World War II or Soldner: Secret War let you blow up the enviroment. Warning: Soldner sucks. So I'd stick with Soldiers.
    • I wouldn't imagine making it collapse after 20 hits would be difficult, nor would making it collapse in a seemingly realistic way. The real kicker would be if you could take out enough of the supporting structures and make the building fall. And not only fall, but make it fall realistically as well, that is, make the top floors crush the bottom floors under them. That would be a sight to see.
    • Ever play Red Faction?
    • What would it take to create an engine that allow the destruction of the entire environment.

      Lots. For each object in the game you would need to know how it breaks apart. All parts stay in the game world, so they must be separately and correctly textured (i.e. each brick in a wall becomes a real brick instead of rendering lots of bricks as one object). And the game engine must keep track of all this information too, and save it when you leave the area if there is any chance if you coming back (people qui

      • Havok can do that now, its just not feasable on the machines we use now. Currently you can create a wooden structure with 'real' boards that when taken appart, it falls entirely accurately. But to do so to every object in even a single room would create a massive load on your processor. I expect the tech will advance within the next 10 years to the point where at the least, dual cpu is standard for gaming, and one cpu can be used for more dedicated physics work. Maybe even an onboard FGPA or two that can b
    • What would it take to create an engine that allow the destruction of the entire environment. Sure it's nice to toss toilets at a wall, but I'd like to see the wall collapse after 20 hits.

      I read an interview with John Carmack where he commented on entirely destructable environments. He said you could do that now but you couldn't use current lighting systems, so graphics would look very dated.

      I've been reading reviews of the new game Mercenaries, everything is suppossed to be destructable there but I have

    • I'm actually trying to implement a game that does just that.

      For a fully destructible environment, you have to:

      - detect contacts between thousands of objects.
      Most of the classic sorting structures like BSP are optimized for static world only.

      - handle those contacts:
      either impacts - easy to solve
      either resting contacts - hard to solve

      E.g it's easy to model a thousand pieces flying up in the air, the hard part is to have those pieces come to rest realistically on the ground as a big stack.

      - when you h
  • I would love to incorporate some basic physics in my small non-commercial demos. For example just basic gravity and limited objection interaction.
  • Interesting article. The guy doesn't mention the reason why they backed out on the Mac port of Havok, resulting in the cancellation of Uru for Mac.

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