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Wreaking Havok with Starcraft II

Hello, I was asked back to do a bit of writing about the technical specification of StarCraft II again for StarCraftWire.net; this time I'll be looking into a very specific field, computer game physics, which is what a feature of the game engine known as Havok is designed to perform. StarCraft II features physics emulation through licensed Havok software and tools which are currently still in use in the game's development and modelling work. As there were quite a few questions into what Havok was, I put the following together hopefully to serve some way to explaining the nature of Havok and the physics emulation programs that have appeared only very recently.


What is this 'Havok' and what does it mean for StarCraft II?

In basic terms, when Blizzard developers want to design their games, and indeed most game developers, it would take an awful amount of time to create the entirety of a game. I'm not just talking about level design and triggering, but the actual base functions and features themselves. From three dimensional sound to proper interaction with hardware, developers usually acquire certain other companies, such as Creative Sound providing their expertise and tools in return for having their name in the game and usually a large amount of capital (read as 'money'). Havok is a software system designed to emulate the laws of physics in a simplistic manner, basically taking the world environment and building it up with techniques that appear to give it weight, density, momentum, gravity, and friction; with the ultimate aim to make the game look more realistic.

Havok Tools make up a portion of what will feature the Blizzard engine that powers StarCraft II. What exactly Blizzard developers will do with the tool is completely up to them and some effects could be as yet unseen, but it is likely to have a focus upon the unit models and wrapping that emulation of real world physics to their movements, and it is likely to feature in the terrain and objects destructibles, that is the character models and the world environment e.g. You fire your Crucio Siege Tank's 120mm Shock Cannon to impact a blast upon a rock, breaking it into several pieces. In a more realistic appearance some bits break off and fly off in different directions with different distances, speeds, and angles, some soaring overhead while others bounce for a meter or so across the ground to come to a halt barely any distance from their starting point. In order to make this effect work truly well, physics emulators like Havok come into play to make this effect come to life in a brilliant manner, adding increased processing loads but a greater degree of accuracy to the world we inhabit.

Another good title that used Havok in an exceptional manner

Havok has been seen to be very good at destructibles, such as in the RTS game Company of Heroes by Relic Entertainment, where the whole world from buildings to walls to haystacks can be destroyed in various manners and aren't static such as in the world environment of WarCraft 3 as a counter example. Stray mortar shells, tanks in transit, and hails of bullets all have their own effects pretty much generated by the game engine, rather than using a stock and standardised "Death" animation from which you could kill the same unit model hundreds of times over to be greeted with the exact same actions and apparent manner of demise.

So as you can imagine, having something which is usually restricted to quite graphically intensive and modern games in the industry having been licensed out to Blizzard is quite exciting. Should certainly please the types that seek jaw dropping graphics, the same type of gamers that frequently knock the "cartoony" style of the last series of games released by Blizzard. Should be pretty cool in for the ordinary players as well, being able to watch as a Battlecruiser shatters under energy weapons' fire and falls to the ground in several pieces in a unique death would be pretty cool, and that would be possible with Havok's aid if Blizzard so chooses.

A good demonstration of Blizzard's own use of Havok can be seen in the following link, an animation of a Thor being killed and falling to peices (Not for Dial-up users, hence not embedded into the page) Thanks to Troglodyte for finding this for use in this article:



Physics Emulation: Birth and Emergence

For the last three years or so, there is quite a bit of talk about physics implementation in three dimensional games, and several companies came into being to create software to ride on this hype. Two well known physics companies are Havok and Agena, Agena having created an addon PhysX card, functioning like a secondary graphics card in a way that works alongside your existing graphics card to enhance the physics rendering; however the product did not meet with wide acceptance or popularity. These two small companies have now both been purchased, Havok by Intel, and Nvidia bought up Havok's rival Agena and their PhysX advances. During even the initial years of development, there were two directions seen for mainstream physics processing, it could be done by the CPU (Intel/AMD's processors) or the GPU (Nvidia/ATI(ATI is now owned by AMD). There wasn't much support for another add-on card for physics alone, and PhysX card was not a dramatic success for the company.

Obviously whichever direction they decide to build the physics into increases the demand upon that component, which would be advantageous to the hardware manufacturers that bought them as that would mean having to pay out for components to upgrade with. Physics-on-GPU (Graphics card) became a reality last month, as Nvidia implemented their PhysX technology into their graphics card drivers, essentially boosting the capability of the 8 and 9 series GeForces. This integration with their drivers shakes things up a little, as the effects are very visible and many users state improvements in games that take advantage of the technology; the new drivers also have the effect of taking the weight off the processor to let it focus on the other things such as AI, coordination, positioning etc.


Analysis of Nvidia/AMD/Intel positions, effects to Starcraft II, and Conclusions on Page 2.

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