Quite a number of announcements were made by Sony in this year's Game Developers Conference. While most are probably talking about the fact that there are 2.8 million PSN gamers, developers have been going crazy at the new PhyreEngine from Sony Computer Entertainment. For more on this, be sure to check out the full article.

During the Game Developers Conference 08 in San Francisco, the company Havok has released version 5.5 of its renowned game engine of the same name. The announcement was done by no less than Managing Director David O'Meara.

There have been many changes to the engine that promise to make gameplay experience more immersive. Know all about these changes after the jump!

Eden Games haven't said much about its upcoming Alone in the Dark: Near Death Investigation (Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360, PC), but German magazine PC Games was able to visit the developer's studio and learn more. Check out what they found out at the full article.

About a few months ago, Saber Interactive is a video game developer based in Saint Petersburg, Russia. They focus on first person shooter games. It released the game Will Rock in 2003, and is currently developing another game called TimeShift.">Saber Interactive's TimeShift for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC got pulled into the proverbial wormhole for some major design revamps. Aside from several tweaks to the game's mechanics and graphics, the team was also going to integrate the Havok 4.5 physics engine, which was hoped to bring out even more of the game's potential.

Now, in case you're wondering how the title's looking in light of its overhaul (and previous trailers), we've pick up a new gameplay trailer for your viewing pleasure - and it's just in time for E3 2007.

Currently published by Sierra Entertainment, TimeShift is expected to launch this Fall. Keep an eye out in case we hear more details.

Now when LucasArts thought they had one fixer-upper to leverage their terra-forming shooter, Fracture, they probably didn't see this one coming. Midway's take on John Woo's classic "Hard Boiled", Stranglehold, features Massive D (D for Destruction) that allows the player to not only wear away the enemy's cover with bullets, but also take them out with falling objects from above.

 

In the IGN blogs for Stranglehold, senior game designer Patrick Curry described their attempts to litter levels with so many of these "gags," so players will be able to experience total Woo-esque action that only a game sporting a Havok physics engine could deliver. Since the game's revelation at E3, they've started work on the Hong Kong Marketplace, and their ideas started from their design of that map. Curry explains in general detail:

The first thing we did was make all of the neon store signs hanging in the Market destructible, so when you shoot them they’ll crush anyone below. Then we did the same to air conditioners, precariously hanging out of windows. And then we got crazy and using our Havok goodness, made signs that swing and take out multiple enemies at once. It was a really fun time in our project, getting to try out all the new tech toys we’d made, and see the fruits of our labor in the form of crazy enemy deaths.

Now they've gone all out, taking turns in designing their own nifty traps within levels to give any player enough options for solving the enemy swarm problem - not that they're much of a problem anyway. Some of the designers, in fact, have become quite adept at designing hidden "gags" that they've become masters at it.

"A couple of our designers have become masters of gags, and when we need something totally over the top and Woo-esque, we bring them in and let them go nuts. It’s totally amazing what they’ve come up with!" blogged Curry. When you do pick up this game for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, expect to send baddies flying from gas leak explosions, bowling down pachinko machines and squished flat like the critters they are.

As director of product management at Havok, Jeff Yates explained the intricate details of the Havok physics simulation tool that they delivered to titles such as Half-Life 2, Dead Rising, and MotorStorm, including the insight of how the gears turn for the technical side of the game industry.

 

For two and a half years, Havok has been developing software development kits for use in physics engine and animation development in games. With the official launching of the SDK back in mid-2004, they've had seen a lot of progress with their animation and physics features as the years rolled by.

So it wouldn't be surprising that in an exclusive interview with game dev's haven Gamasutra, Yates got a little bit technical about next-gen console technology and competition against PhysX">AGEIA's PhysX hardware physics accelerator for the titan PC.

Havok, as you must know, delivers software solutions to physics simulation, which is something that next-gen consoles require as of this moment. Many other game developers license the use of the physics SDK to simulate real in-game physics in the most complex and hardware hungry of titles (Half-Life 2 for example).

Software physics is handled by the CPU and its cores, although new solutions have GPUs taking the processing load off the CPU. Havok delivers their physics engine solutions as customers require of them, often catering to the different hardware slapped into the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. After all, they've built their solutions with cross-platform features and consoles in mind.

Click on Full Article to read more on Jeff Yates opinions on next-gen console tech and development, plus PhysX on PCs.

 

From the folks that will be bringing you the Develop Conference and Expo on July 2007, Tandem Events organizes a double event dedicated for the games graduates of UK. GamesGrads is slated to occur on April 24 and April 26, on Manchester and London respectively.

GamesGrads is a full-blown game career fair to be supported by numerous game industry names, including Havok, Microsoft Game Studios, Disney Interactive Studios, Rare, Lionhead, Juice, and Rebellion. They are many more other developer studios that have yet to confirm details on their attendance. Ali Wynn, an organizer at Tandem Events, was proud to say that the developer response to the event was "great." She also added:

We've got some high profile studios actively looking to recruit games graduates taking part and so far hundreds of graduates registered to come along and meet up with them, showcase their work and hopefully secure a career in the games industry.

Game industry students interested in attending GamesGrads should look up the official GamesGrads website and register there. All registrants will be entered into a draw to win an iPod Video and a Super Pass for the Develop Conference and Expo 2007 to take place once again in Brighton.

Word from site Develop is that Codemasters has already licensed the new Behavior tool included in Havok 4.5, which made its debut today at the GDC. Havok 4.5 is a modular suite of artist tools and run-time tech that includes Havok Physics and Havok Animation, as well as the new Behavior element.

"For the next generation of games platforms we really wanted to push the boundaries in terms of realism and characterisation, but we needed to do it without compromising our timescales," said Gavin Cheshire, vice president of Codemasters Studios. "Havok Behavior allows us to create a huge range of behaviors for our next generation characters and do it in a way that makes the most of both our creative and programming resources."

Codemasters plans to use Behavior in a number of upcoming next-gen titles, details of which have yet to be revealed.

 

The Havok engine has been used to make some of the big name titles on our market today. Crackdown, F.E.A.R, Dead Rising, Company of Heroes, Lost Planet, and Oblivion are among the games that have used this physics engine. The developers Havok.com must be really pleased with how their creation has grown since it's first release at the Game Development Conference (GDC) 2000.

Two weeks from now in San Francisco at the Game Development Conference (GDC), they will be showing their latest version of the engine: Havok 4.5. While it is optimized for the next-generation systems, that is not what the people at Havok.com want to show off. They are very proud of what they believe will be the key feature in this update, the behavioral engine.

The behavioural engine, in a nutshell, is basically WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). In terms of design, instead of having the artists and the programmers going back and forth over a creation, the rendition and movement will be WYSIWYG, allowing the artists to have an easier time in terms of design within the game engine.

A Havok spokesperson said, "I think that it's a competitor in the market, but we've been having an extremely good time from a commercial perspective." Check back for more news about the Havok engine and GDC.

   

What do pirates, vikings, and knights have in common? They were famous, infamous, and/or feared in their separate time periods. So what would happen if you take a scurvy pirate, a grizzly viking, and a valiant knight, and stick them all into one game? Blood and mayhem.

Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II is a mod for the Half-Life 2 Source Engine where the three legendary fighter factions fight for dominance. Created by the PVK II Team (Lead developers jRocket, HaVoK, and Crazytalk), the game features strategic combat based on attack, block, and parry system, special abilities for each class, unique weapons, detailed maps, and diverse game modes. The three factions have six classes to choose from and each faction has a Lord class. Pirates have a Captain, Vikings get a Jarl, while the Knights have a Lord.

Game modes include:

• Booty
• Booty Tag
• Territory
• Pillage
• Siege
• Slay the Dragon
• Defend
• Assassination
• Capture the Flag

The client installer is now available at the PVKII site (click the via link below), and anyone who would like to host a server can set one up.