Havok, wow, apple, blizzard, engine, physics, warcraft

Havok Licensed to Blizzard

In a press release that went out yesterday, only to be instantly smothered in a sea of Wii, Havok announced that Blizzard Entertainment has licensed the physics engine for god knows what.

Interestingly, Apple is mentioned specifically:

Jeff Yates, Havok's Vice President, Product Management comments, "The Mac is an important piece of technology and because of the cross-platform nature of Havok's technology, the port to Mac was easy to do. Furthermore, Blizzard Entertainment's commitment to OS X and to the Mac community is a good indication of the growth potential of the Mac as a games platform. Blizzard has always put out great games on the Mac, and we look forward to Havok becoming a part of that tradition."

Blizzard has always been good to the Apple community, even when Mac gamers were even worse off than they are now. Eliza Gauger

Havok Press Release [Havok]

3:40 PM on Fri Sep 15 2006
By Eliza Gauger
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10 comments

Comments

Toneman at 02:55 PM on 09/15/06
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I smell StarCraft 2 with ragdoll physics. LOL!
Ryanraven at 02:56 PM on 09/15/06
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Connectedness Index: 166

Im so buying the next mac blizzard game. but will i need to upgrade for it? who knows? hopefully not... MBP is pretty high end right now that is..
gwangi at 02:57 PM on 09/15/06
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Ragdoll Diablo
iameleveneight at 03:10 PM on 09/15/06
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Hey you silly Mactards just got a portable gaming system... You know that ipod game thing. Hey at least the ipod has newer game ports like Pac-Man.
The Bans at 03:23 PM on 09/15/06
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Interesting I wonder for what game..
Spank at 04:04 PM on 09/15/06
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Ragdoll Lost Vikings.
SixSider at 05:11 PM on 09/15/06
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God bless Blizzard for not ignoring us. Perhaps Starcraft: Ghost will return from the dead.
navstar at 06:20 PM on 09/15/06
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Well, Havok and long said they have a Mac OS X version ready to go... but it wasn't free. Mac developer's profits are so slim that no one could afford it. (Unfortunately, Apple didn't want to pay blackmail money to get Havok on the Mac)

It looks like Blizzard flipped the bill! YAY!
The Commissar at 04:11 PM on 09/16/06
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Verbatim from Wiki:

The Havok Game Dynamics SDK, better known as simply Havok, is a middleware physics engine designed for computer and video games by allowing interaction between objects or other characters in real-time. By using collision detection Havok allows for more lifelike worlds and animations, such as ragdoll physics, that adds to the overall game by making these interactions appear natural.

Havok is available for the Microsoft Xbox, the Microsoft Xbox 360, the Nintendo GameCube, the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows, and Apple Mac OS X. Havok Version 1.0 was unveiled at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2000. Version 2.0 was launched at the GDC in 2003.

World of Starcraft? Now with ragdoll physics?

I think they're looking at a common platform for a coming game rather than a Mac-only development.
MattB at 12:50 AM on 09/18/06
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Blizzard make all their games for both Mac and Windows and usually include both in the same box. As The Commissar suggested, this is probably why they specifically mention the Mac support for Havoc since otherwise they're be going Windows only. I don't give Blizzard too much credit though, the Warcraft games pre-WoW and the Diablo games were buggy as anything on the Mac before masses of patches.