Havok is a physics engine: a library that works out how objects in a game move, fall, collide and tumble, so that the programmers do not have to. It came out of Dublin at the end of the 1990s. Its first customers were racing games, where vehicle dynamics were the point. Havok 2.0, in 2003, turned it towards characters and ragdolls, and Half-Life 2 put objects driven by it into players’ hands. By 2005 Edge called it “the standard by which the others are judged”. Intel bought the company in 2007, and Microsoft bought it from Intel in 2015.
Fast facts
- Origin: founded in Dublin in 1998 by Steve Collins and Hugh Reynolds, “spun out of research from Dublin University”, meaning Trinity College.
- First releases: beta code to developers in 1999; the complete package was first shown in 2000.
- Merger: with the German physics company Ipion, reported in March 2001, leading to version 1.5.
- Havok 2.0: due at GDC 2003; “up to ten ragdoll models in realtime”.
- Named users: Valve (from 2000), Remedy (Max Payne 2), Ion Storm (Deus Ex: Invisible War, Thief III), Nihilistic (StarCraft: Ghost), Bungie (Halo 2), EA.
- Owners: independent until Intel bought it in 2007; Microsoft from 2015.
Arrival
Edge‘s November 2000 Codeshop column found the company “in the middle of a licensing frenzy”. A year after the beta, and six months after the complete package was first shown, the team had “already grown from eight to 35”. Its business development officer, Alan Murphy, was already saying “We are working with Valve”. By March 2001 Havok had merged with Ipion and was combining the two companies’ code into version 1.5 of what its communications director, Paul Hayes, called “our Uber-engine”. A cheaper, cut-down edition covering hard bodies and constraints was planned for studios that did not need soft bodies. In June 2001 came Reactor, a physics plug-in for the 3DS Max modelling package, with rope, cloth and fluid dynamics, at £745 on its own.
Havok’s main rival was the Oxford company MathEngine, whose Paul Topping put the pitch for the whole category in one line: “It’s not about better physics, it’s about a faster implementation of physics while making games.”
Havok 2.0 and characters
Havok’s chief technical officer, Steve Collins, explained the first wave to Edge in March 2003. Middleware had made its “initial impact not by providing developers with a set of new features but because it offered existing features cheaper and faster”. So the first titles “were concentrated within realistic genres such as vehicle-based racers”: “With a car game, the vehicle dynamics are a core part of the gameplay, so developers were happy to spend processing resources simulating high-fidelity dynamics.” But “now, 70 per cent of top ten games are about characters”, and “gamers aren’t happy seeing characters sliding along with their shoulder or arm embedded in the wall anymore. It removes the illusion of reality.”
Havok 2.0, due at that year’s Game Developers Conference, was the answer. Collins said its core had been re-engineered because “when you start off building a physics engine, you concentrate on the maths and tend to end up with something which is too processor expensive”. The new version could run the dynamics of up to ten ragdolls where the old one had struggled with one at a time. The ten beta partners included Remedy, whose Markus Stein reported collision detection and character controllers implemented “in a short timeframe” for the Max Payne sequel; Nihilistic, on Blizzard’s StarCraft: Ghost; Ion Storm, on Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief III; Activision; and Valve.
In games
Edge’s review of Max Payne 2 in January 2004 noted that “most objects within the game are animated with the Havok physics engine” while the light sources stayed static. Its May 2004 review of Astro Boy called it “the first Japanese title to use the Havok physics engine”, used “tentatively rather than with the abandon seen elsewhere”. Its Half-Life 2 review in December 2004 announced a change in kind: “Finally we have a game in which physics are more than just an excuse for ragdoll deaths… This time the world is there to be grasped.” The gravity gun was “the core tool”, used “to drag objects, pick them up and carry them about” and, in its second mode, “to drop, throw or smash them away”.
The standard
By May 2005 Edge’s survey of physics vendors put Havok first: “the standard by which the others are judged — not least in terms of the games it powers, which include Half-Life 2, Halo 2, Full Spectrum Warrior and Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault.” It listed Havok’s platforms as GameCube, PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, with the next generation of consoles to come. The product line had grown to include Havok Animation, and Collins had turned to tools and to the new machines: “We can’t wait for Cell.” His summary of what the company now sold was: “Physics engines aren’t about lines of code any more… Tools are what we spend most of our time on.”
Intel and Microsoft
In 2007 Intel bought Havok. Edge counted “over 150 games” that had used it by then, including Halo 3, Test Drive Unlimited and Crackdown, and expected Intel to optimise it for Larrabee, the graphics processor it was developing. Commentators worried that the engine might run less well on chips from Intel’s rivals, AMD and Nvidia, and that developers might turn to Ageia’s competing PhysX instead. Havok kept working as a separate business. When Edge visited the Dublin office in 2011, the company had seven products, from physics and cloth to AI and animation, updated its tools four times a year, and had offered its physics engine free for PC developers since 2008, which Edge credited to Intel’s ownership. Its founders had moved on. Collins and Reynolds started a new company, New Game Technology, which became Kore Virtual Machines in 2008, sold its console scripting system back to Havok and was rebranded again as Swrve, a Dublin firm supplying player data to game developers. Collins had also helped set up Trinity College’s master’s course in interactive entertainment technology.
Microsoft bought Havok from Intel in October 2015. By then the engine had been used in more than 600 games, and Microsoft said it would keep licensing it to the rest of the industry, including to Sony and Nintendo.
Sources
- Edge issue 90, November 2000, Codeshop, “Havok runs amok”: the “licensing frenzy”; the beta a year earlier and the full package six months earlier; eight to 35 staff; Alan Murphy and Valve.
- Edge issue 95, March 2001, GDC preview: the merger with Ipion, version 1.5 and Paul Hayes; the cut-down edition; Paul Topping of MathEngine.
- Edge issue 72, June 1999: “Oxford-based MathEngine”.
- Edge issue 98, June 2001, Codeshop, “Causing more Havok”: Reactor for 3DS Max 4, its soft-body, rope, cloth and fluid dynamics, and its price.
- Edge issue 121, March 2003, Codeshop, “The next step for physics”: Steve Collins on racing games, characters and processor cost; Havok 2.0, its ten beta partners and ten ragdolls; Remedy, Nihilistic, Ion Storm, Activision and Valve.
- Edge issue 132, January 2004, p. 105: Max Payne 2 review.
- Edge issue 136, May 2004: Astro Boy review.
- Edge issue 143, December 2004, pp. 102–103: Half-Life 2 review.
- Edge issue 149, May 2005, pp. 67–71, “Beyond the valley of the ragdolls”: the vendor panel, Havok’s games, platforms and clients, Havok Animation; Collins on Cell and on tools; MathEngine and Havok at the end of the 1990s.
- Edge issue 182, December 2007, “Intel cries Havok”: the purchase, over 150 games, Larrabee and the concerns about other chipmakers.
- Edge issue 233, November 2011, “Region Specific: Dublin”: Havok founded in 1998; its seven products, quarterly tool updates and the free PC engine since 2008; Collins and Reynolds as Havok’s co-founders, and New Game Technology, Kore and Swrve; Collins, Trinity College’s research group and the master’s course.
- Jim Thacker, “Microsoft acquires Havok from Intel”, CG Channel, 6 October 2015 (web, secondary): founded 1998, bought by Intel in 2007, more than 600 games, Microsoft’s statement on licensing. https://www.cgchannel.com/2015/10/microsoft-acquires-havok-from-intel/