OMFG HAVOK WILL BE FREE IN MAY!

[smoth]

http://kotaku.com/359091/havok-goes-free-in-may

DEAR GOD, TELL ME THIS IS AS SWEET AS I THINK IT IS!!

[LordMatt]

What is havok?

[FLOZi]

A well known (think HL2, for a start) physics engine.

[clumsy_culhane]

havok was also used in the awesomely awesome Elderscrolls 4: Oblivion ....

[Relative]

So what's havok new business model? Technical support contracts and paid upgrades?

[imbaczek]

cool. it was the engine that allowed staking zombies to walls in Painkiller.

as for the business model, depends what "free" means - it may be free as in GPL, this would mean that everyone who doesn't want to pay would have to release the source code (like QT.)

[KDR_11k]

Hm, yes, GPL sounds likely. That's the best way to make something free for hobbyists without letting corporations take advantage of it.

I think Havok might make for a nice plugin for unsynced particle simulation. Should stay out of the synced engine though, the physics we currently have do enough damage.

[Pxtl]

Does Havok do ragdolls? If so, adding ragdoll support for dying, stunned, or impulse-airborne units would be nice. Still, a lot of work, since you'd have to return the unit to it's scripted-position after returning from ragdoll-state.

[rattle]

Ragdolls without bones?

[Pxtl]

Ragdolls without bones?

The part-heirarchy works like a bone-structure.

[rattle]

Yeah I know... thought bones also contain weight information which were needed for ragdolls. Well enlighten me if it isn't the case, I know little about either.

[Caydr]

Weight information would be needed, but more importantly you'd need information on which directions different sections of a unit were capable of moving. Notice you never see people with arms bent through their back, etc, in good-physics games.

IMHO if havok was used in Oblivion, my respect for it just fell through the floor. I'm not inclined to believe Bethesda are bad programmers, so I have to blame things like objects violently flying off a table when you pick up a head of lettuce on the physics engine.

[el_matarife]

I notice the distinct lack of the phrases "Open source" or "GPL compatible" in that press release. They are probably making the binaries free as in beer, but not as in speech. No one uses the term "free software" for the GPL in the commercial market, when they say free they mean giving away binary versions.

[KDR_11k]

Yeah but binaries could be used by commercial devs, GPL is too scary for most of them.

[BlueIce]

havok was also used in the awesomely awesome Micro Machines V4.... ok.. maybe it was not so awesomely awesome..

[Sheekel]

If it were fully integrable im picturing something like this:

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/14589.html - video's music sucks sorry

with a better physics engine we could have things like that, it would definitely give spring that final visual edge it needs. we have pretty units and pretty water and pretty skies but the units look so unnatural on the maps, like they are floating over the ground or walking on a treadmill

i was looking into walk scripts today, im thinking of combining the famous Z-bot scripts with a little program that will take the coordinates of the current animations and split them into lots of coordinates, it will make the walks look so much smoother and natural. the walking animations used now are static, the same movement over and over again. I'd be great to see them done as shown in Heavy Duty, where the unit doesn't care about how it moves.

[smoth]

the animation issue is another thing entirely.

[Sheekel]

yes but would it be worthwhile? I really think so. if i can figure out how to get input from the bos files to a C program so it can do some math on it, i'll redo all the units with true walk scripts and a coordinate smoother.

[Peet]

if i can figure out how to get input from the bos files to a C program so it can do some math on it.

That breaks pretty much every fundamental concept of sync and cross-platform functioning in spring...unless I'm misinterpreting you and you mean just processing the bos before compilation.

[Sheekel]

Yes ill just be replacing the current values with more of them, no actual new calculations being done by the script

i suppose i could make a fuction that does the math but i'd be doing a lot of calculations for each cycle of the animation