Oh what mayhem can be created with the use of Havok.

You know, Havok (for 3dsmax) USED to be free, about eight or so years ago. Then it went commercial...and now it's free again.

Wheeeeee..

Cry Havok!, and let slip the Mods of war.

I'm really excited to see the opening of so much gaming technology we're seeing these days, it could prove to be amazing!

Our good old uddy Jack Thompson is going to love this...Game Companies giving away "Free Murder Simulator Creating programs".

@deathsyth8888:

One might say you could cause much havoc with Havok.

wasn't Havok bought by MS?

oh...wait...it was Intel...

that's so nice of them...

hopefully we'll see lots and lots of user created games with physics built-in....

Wow, thats real big of them, nice stuff guys :) I always get a tear in my eye when I hear news like this.

if it works like Endorphin for the PC (only for the Mac) I'm game....

Its only a matter of time before there is an apology statment for the opening sentence of this article.

@Koztah: Autodesk licensed Havok for use in 3ds Max.

*salivates*
I really like how the industry is suddenly going so homebrew. What with M$'s XNA Community and now Havok going free, maybe it won't be so hard to get into the game business a few years down the road.

Cool about the news, but was it just me or was the joke about shooting up your school a little off color?

Great business model. Give the razor away and sell the blades.

that was nice of them. I hope it works out for both consumers and the company.

I hope that it will be easy to use.

@deathsyth8888: 3ds max still has it. It's called reactor.

I'll admit I didn't read the long press release, but I'm struggling to understand how they'll make money by this move. Do they get royalties for comercial game sales using it, or are they just going to rely on other apps?

And has anyone here used it, and if so, how easy is it for indie devs and modders to use?

As if gaming doesn't get a bad enough rap, Fahey finds it prudent to quip about making school shooting games. Good move Fahey.

wow the potential HAVOK + XNA= Community games...people will combine these to create fire games

@HurricaneDave: Not a great business model. A PERFECT business model! They've already developed and perfected the core model of Havok, and now all they have to work on from this point forward, is its peripheral features such as the cloth animation.

Personally, I think it's an excellent move...I wonder if it can work seamlessly with the Torque engine?

@AlreadyDead:

YES FAEYH! HOEW COALD YOU???!11111111one GAEMS AER NOES JOKARS WITH SRS ISSUES!111111111111

@Krondonian: They will make money via add-on applications, such as the previously mentioned Cloth and Destructions apps. It is a similar move taken by lots of free-to-play MMOs where premium content requires a fee but the basics are free. It will at least encourage more entry-level designers to create games using the Havok engine and therefore have more games supporting their technology. Basically it is free advertising for their engine while the technical add-ons will still cost a licensing fee.

@Krondonian: I believe they'll be charging mucho cash for the cloth and destruction simulators. This free stuff is the "core" physics engine. Model weight and collision. You know... basic stuff.

SOMEONE JUST TOLD ME THE FFVII REMAKE HAS BEEN CONFIRMED!!! LEMME JUST FIND THE SITE...

@NKato: Of course! In thier press release, it states that the free Havok core is a commercial free license, which means you have to go through an "agreement" with Intel to sell your game. That applies for releasing the game on consoles, too, more "fees" will be required. The guy who said give away the razor and sell the blades was dead on.

@Krondonian: From what it says in my quick read through, it's free for free games and select game developers, but it will still cost cash money for consoles and such.

It's not a bad idea, get new developers using Havok off the bat, and when they are making bigger titles for consoles down the road they'll want to use it because they are used to it. Same basic idea as XNA and the free Visual Studio really.

Oh sorry, it was a false alarm... @!?!*%&! Dagnabit

@AlreadyDead:

Yeah, I agree... that wasn't a real smart move...

compined with sony's now free PHYRE engine. this could be a very good time to be a basement game developer.

Ah. You can't use it for comercial games. I was wondering how it would make sense giving something away for free when everyone was paying for it anyway.

This could truly revolutionise homebrew and indie games. I remember when [comercial] games first started using Havok, and it just increased even the lowliest attempt into something genuinely fun to muck around with. Half-Life 2 anyone? [It's not a lowly game, it's awesome- just clarifying]

Again, does anyone know how accessible it is to use?

@AlreadyDead: I don't see that now. Was it edited out?

@Kuromankuro: Got a link with a good description of PHYRE? The first few hits in google are less then helpful, the best I could find is this joystiq article:
[www.joystiq.com]

PC version only and its a non-commercial license. To me that reads as "demo version". Anyone else?

@Nintenboy01: Still there, right at the beginning of the post:

Trying to create your own PC game of you and your friends shooting up your high school but lacking the physics and animation technology to bring the whole project together?

We spent many hours trying to create an effective mod of our physics classroom in Marathon when I was in HS, so I can relate to the joke, but yeah others may not see the humor ;)

@DaiMacculate: That's because it's not humor. It's stupid to say something like that.

Oh wait. School shooting simulations. Haha.

Nope, it's still not funny.

@DaiMacculate: Thanks. HOW COULD I HAVE MISSED IT RIGHT THERE AT THE START?!? [Flushes head in toilet]

@skrame: Perhaps it would only be a fun game if all the wicked teachers mutated into mindless beasts in the chemistry lab and it was up to the students to take them down. All while saving innocent students along the way of course.

Anyone know the extent of Havok being used in GH 3?

@skrame: ? Are you the humor police?

@skrame:
So you get to decide what's funny now? I laughed at it, because i could clearly see it was sarcasm.

@Nissan288: HAIR AND BOOBIES!!!

@Kuromankuro: That was the extent of havok.

3rd Paragraph

...Available for non-commercial use, Havok Complete for the PC will be freely downloadable in May 2008....

@Cruithne:

Nice one.

Now if only they would make SpeedTree free for all my on-the-fly foliage needs...

Not funny, especially the timing. This industry is trying so hard to get of the bad rep they're know for, same could be said about us gamers. But yet, now you have a journalist in the same industry fitting into the annoying stereotype, that we're are mindless homicidal freaks, that don't have a care in the world, Thanks Fahey!

sorry Fahey, but gonna have to go with bad tastes on that joke...considering the whole NIU thing recently...oh wait, I forgot- that was like, last week- the media and everyone has already forgotten about it so it's funny now...

...I wish I was able to use havok for something...but I don't develop games so there's no use of me downloading it...unless I can somehow get it to make my desktop icons float around and collide realistically...that'd be awesome...

@JGab: And that's going to be my next project. :D
Hmm, I'd make IE fat and I'd use havok behavior suite to make firefox attack everything.

I think if nothing else, Fahey was just trying to beat the media types who feed off crap like this to the punch. He wasn't serious, and subsequently it was pretty funny.

Of course if he were serious, I'd probably still chuckle.

@AlreadyDead: I agree. As if gaming didn't already have enough issues tagging along with it. Why add fuel to the fire? Page hits?

Especially when it's something as hideously tragic as a school shooting, I think it is in very poor taste to make light of these things. It is the internet though, I guess anything goes.

@mizzle:
maybe its cuz i'm not originally from the US, but school shooting carry as much weight for me as people caught in a drive-by shooting, so the joke was funny to me. I just dont get why people get up in arms about such things.
/gets off mini soap box

pretty cool to release havok for free, now the terrorists can simulate attacks and bombings but at least the cape/burka tech isnt free
...see what i did there

@AlreadyDead: You don't remember this? [arstechnica.com]

Thats cool, but PhysX is a faster engine and is actually free for commercial use, so why bother with Havok?

Everyone is releasing their Dev tools for free...

 

And I love how Havok is used for most games from Portal to Super Smash Bros. Brawl to Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal...

@meltyman: Yeah... drive bys are pretty bad too.

I suppose for me I worry about where gaming is heading. Everyone seems so quick to ignite the nerd rage when someone, even in passing, snubs gaming. Authors that infer games are for children get flamed to bits. Politicians proclaiming gamers lazy get attacked. A bookwriter goes after Mass Effect and the rage machine attacks Amazon rating system. All this is incited and fueled by the directing force of popular bloggers pointing to the hardcore sheepwolves to go murderdeathkill the enemy.

It seems, if nothing else, extremely hypocritical to attack anything that portrays gaming in a negative light while making a comment like that about such a subject. If we dont want to be associated like this we should not invite such associations! The line that opens the article is so fucktarded it hurts.

Gaming is heading down the same path as big tobacco. For years denying what anyone with common sense already knew, they have been decimated. The hardcore has an obsession with pushing the envelope and there WILL be a backlash. I think gamers will get what they deserve and what they invite-censorship, AO ratings galore, and demonization. It seems that everyones favorite whipping boy is painting a target on its chest.

This went way longer than I intended. But this is what I think on the subject. And yeah, I saw what you did you cheeky monkey. :p

LOL this sounds too good to be true(not that I'm complaining) We'll be having our 3d animation classes in just a couple of months and this release from Havok is one helluva gift for us haha

@Sparkamus: Of course I do. I am a subscriber to that site. I try not to bitch much, but the above just pissed me off. It was like asking for trouble for no reason. People should be allowed to make whatever the heck they want as long as no one is victimized. However given the current climate in the U.S., making light, or even appearing to make light of school shootings is providing ammunition to the friends of gaming censorship. I would hope that a gaming journo would be concious of the current perception of "gamers" by the general public, and not write anything that would unfairly skew said perception for the sake of mere humor. Like it or not, Kotaku is quickly becoming one of the primary sources for the gaming press. Writers for this site would do well to remember this.

The joke was funny because it was obvious that only dickheads would take it seriously. Lighten up dickheads.

@skrame: Some of us went to HS before the whole Columbine idiocy, when most schools didn't have ID badges, metal detectors, security guards, etc. When we talked about doing this map and "shooting up the school" it wasn't to go after bullies, teachers, jocks, etc, it was (and this was never fully realized) simply to enjoy blowing up an environment we all spent many tedious hours in, and possibly each other, in a virtual setting.

I don't see any big deal with the joke or, honestly, the concept of such a map/game in reality as long as the intent is good and its all in fun, rather than a way to practice a planned raid or some such. We can't all go around reacting the same way to this stuff as idiots like JT, or he has already won :(

So does this mean Havok for Mac??