Havok Announces Support for Wii

[pc999]

Los Angeles, CA, May 9, 2006 - Havok, the game industry's leading supplier of cross-platform middleware solutions, announced today at the "E3" Electronic Entertainment Expo that it will optimize all of its game-play physics and animation software technology for the new Wiiâ„¢ platform from Nintendo.


Havok has long been a supporter and advocate of Nintendo, with more than fifteen Nintendo GameCubeâ„¢ titles released using Havok middleware. With this latest announcement Havok strenghtens its relationship with Nintendo, and helps accelerate the development of exciting new titles that take advantage of the Wii's unique capabilities.

"Nintendo has always captured the imagination of game-players and developers alike around the world," says Jeff Yates, VP Product Management at Havok. "Havok is no exception when it comes to the Wii platform. We look forward to seeing the amazing range of new experiences that this game system brings to new-generation developers."

"Havok has become synonymous with state-of-the-art physics in games in recent years," said Ramin Ravanpey, Director of Software Development Support, Nintendo of America. "With this announcement from Havok, we feel Wii developers have another critical tool in their hands that helps unleash the real magic of the Wii platform."

http://www.havok.com/content/view/315/53/

This may not be completely real as under this designation there is Havoc: Hydracore and FX.

 

[StefanS]

Another PR

New CodeWarrior® Technology from Freescale Named Official Toolset for Nintendo's Wii™ Console; Freescale Helps Game Developers Turn Imagination into Reality with Industry-trusted CodeWarrior Technology

http://www.planetgamecube.com/newsArt.cfm?artid=11498

 

[NANOTEC]

Hmm...interesting. This is great news. It means the Wii will have some realisic physics in future games. For example ragdoll physics as seen in HL2. This may also mean the controller may have some interactive physics based games coming. Like pickung up stuff with the Wii controller and throwing it against other objects etc.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Of course physics could be progammed with or without Havok, but I like the idea of a Puppet Combat game where a virtual puppet combatant hangs from virtual strings off the Wiimote and responds to it's control to punch up other puppets.

 

[pc999]

Hmm...interesting. This is great news. It means the Wii will have some realisic physics in future games. For example ragdoll physics as seen in HL2. This may also mean the controller may have some interactive physics based games coming. Like pickung up stuff with the Wii controller and throwing it against other objects etc.

Having Havoc does not mean it can have HL2 level of physics, in fact there are severalgames on current gen that does use Havoc and are way bellow that level of physics.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't know that NANOTEC was saying that level of phyiscs, just ragdoll physics, like you see ragdoll physics in HL2. Could just as easily have cited another example like 'Smugglers Run' on PS2 which I think was the first time i saw ragdoll physics. On cows too. I was cruel. But they got up afterwards, so I wasn't really cruel...

 

[Ty]

I expect/guess a cowboy game, complete with lasso, to come out shortly.

 

[NANOTEC]

I expect/guess a cowboy game, complete with lasso, to come out shortly.

Yeah that woulld be pretty neat combined with some real action like Jumbo Safari.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Having Havoc does not mean it can have HL2 level of physics, in fact there are severalgames on current gen that does use Havoc and are way bellow that level of physics.

Well how are the physics in the XBOX version of HL2? That should be a good measuring stick.

I'm not sure why this is noteworthy really, GC and Xbox both used Havok, why wouldn't Wii??

 

[pc999]

Well how are the physics in the XBOX version of HL2? That should be a good measuring stick.

I'm not sure why this is noteworthy really, GC and Xbox both used Havok, why wouldn't Wii??

Never played but from a VR from GT they said it has reduced and they showed fremerate problems while physics calculations.

Shifty Geezer:

In RS they seemed very nice, althought there are few people on screen.

 

[pc999]

Sorry to not bring you a proper source, I try to track it but now I cant find it, but it defenitively it looks very interesting.

http://boards.revolutionreport.net/index.php?showtopic=8334

"IGN: Is the hardware as easy to use on the Wii as it was with the GameCube? The two systems are very similar is structure we're told.

Konami: Yes, the structure is very similar to GameCube, but you already knew that. The development was not that difficult, as the Wii system has built in physics simulation. That helped the process. "

Dont know if it true but it would be a great addition.

 

[NANOTEC]

So the Wii development kit has built-in Havok tools?

 

[pc999]

Here is the source, it is official

http://revolution.ign.com/articles/708/708155p1.html

So the Wii development kit has built-in Havok tools?

I doubt, wouldnt they need to license Havoc to that? And he is talking about the system so I guess it is HW, meybe a DSP or ATI work(it seems its chip is yet unfinished).

 

[pc999]

Plus

What information was revealed at the conference was carefully picked by Nintendo, she said - and consequently tried to skip Matt's question on if more hardware suprises were in store. "Yes, next question!" she replied, before being pressed to reveal more. "Let's just say hardcore gamers should keep paying attention to us," she commented mysteriously.

 

[Teasy]

It would be very good news if Wii does have some kind of physics processor. Initially I thought this could possibly just refer to Havok. Though you make a good point about the term "built-in" and Havok being a license based engine.

So either Wii does have a physics processor of some kind, or Havok comes free with the dev kit, which was not mention by Havok in its press release.

 

[pc999]

So either Wii does have a physics processor of some kind, or Havok comes free with the dev kit, which was not mention by Havok in its press release.

I find that very hard, there is no beneficts for that and Nintendo wouldnt pay for that.

 

[Fox5]

It would be very good news if Wii does have some kind of physics processor. Initially I thought this could possibly just refer to Havok. Though you make a good point about the term "built-in" and Havok being a license based engine.

So either Wii does have a physics processor of some kind, or Havok comes free with the dev kit, which was not mention by Havok in its press release.

Well, I wouldn't be suprised to see the Wii to have some extra hardware of some type. It has a slightly higher power envelope than gamecube, yet is developed on 90nm SOI instead of 180nm. I guess that could be taken up by the increase in ram to 96MB, the jumps in clock speed, the full size dvd drive, the wifi, and the flash drive, but from what we've seen in the PC space, a drop from 180nm to 90nm should more than cover the additional power required by all that. Well, unless WiFi takes up quite a bit more power than I think, is it even announced what type of WiFi Wii has? I'd expect 802.11b (the DS uses 802.11b too, but only 1Mb/s) but 802.11g could be a possibility.
Too bad it's PhysX that has the physics processor and not Havok.

 

[pc999]

Personally, if there is any, I would bet on ATI work (also the GPU is not finished yet).

 

[Fox5]

Personally, if there is any, I would bet on ATI work (also the GPU is not finished yet).

Well, ATI is pushing for physics acceleration on the PC, maybe the first actual use of that will be in the wii, though I doubt it considering there are probably better areas to put the power at this point, anything nintendo put in would have to be cheap.

 

[pc999]

Well if there is anything in there I expect it to be something very simple (low number of transistores and probably integrated on the GPU), for todays standards, but for exemple a SPU, in logic, is only 7M transistores yet it can give a really good aceleration to GC HW on this kind of jobs (physics, animations and math intesive). I would expect something like this small specialized processors or even DSPs for this jobs.

Probably it wouldnt be even near from XB360/PS3 but it should give a good advance over GC.