Havok just announced that their prestigious Havok 2 engine just secured its 100th and 101st game titles.
Havok physics came into the mainstream limelight with their inclusion in Max Payne 2 and with the announcement of their integration into the Half-Life 2 game engine. Although the great majority of those who have experienced the engine first hand have done so through Max Payne 2, Havok 2 has also featured in other current games such as Deus Ex Invisible Warrior, URU, and Crash Nitro Cart.
Some will, of course, associate Havok 2, mainly with H-L 2 and the possible legal battle with Valve following the H-L 2 leak but today the company confirmed that they have reached deals with two of the biggest game's publishers on two new titles. This shows that Havok not only has not been affected by the H-L 2 fiasco but seems to be gaining momentum in the industry. It is, of course, strange that the new deals have been finalized just as word was coming from Valve that some legal hangups had been resolved, suggesting that Valve and Havok may have reached some form of settlement.
That however, is not that important since most gamers wanted to see Havok 2 in as many games as possible. That is exactly what is about to happen as Havok announced today it has signed license agreements with Vivendi Universal Games for Tribes Vengeance and with Atari's Shiny Entertainment for an undisclosed title. Both Shiny Entertainment and Vivendi Universal Games made the choice of the Havok 2 dynamics solution after lengthy technical review for functionality and after assessing its ease of implementation into their existing game engines. With these two titles, Havok now adds the 100th and 101st names to their list of successful games using its award winning physics.
We are extremely pleased to be working with Havok on Tribes: Vengeance. The added speed, flexibility, and power provided by the Havok physics engine will allow us to do more interesting things, better, and with less processor usage than ever before, said Chris Mahnken, producer Vivendi Universal Games.
Shiny Entertainment has a reputation for delivering high-quality blockbuster titles and we knew that we would need a dynamics solution that met both the expectations of gamers and the development team for our next project. After evaluating our options, selecting Havok 2 was easy, said Stuart Roch, Executive Producer, Shiny Entertainment, Inc.
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