OK, the havok engine is coming to Mac gamers (Yes, Virginia, there are Mac gamers). According to the story,
For those of you unfamiliar with Havok, it is a physics engine that has been used in the past by games such as Half-Life 2 on the PC, Halo 2 on the XBOX, and many others. Up until now companies such as Aspyr and MacSoft have refused to license Havok because the licensing fees are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So games such as Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault and a host of others never made it to the Mac platform because of the high licensing fees Havok demanded.
Will this mean that Halo 2 might finally come to the Mac? I can only hope. But I wonder what makes that engine preferable. As far as I’m concerned the physics of the Halo 1 are a selling point. Anyone know why the people at Bungie decided to change engines?
I’m a PC gamer (formerly a Mac gamer, but those days are over), and nearly every game I buy these days includes Havok Physics. The main advantage is that it’s extremely flexible and powerful, and comes ready-made. It saves developers a lot of time and trouble, especially when it comes to testing compatability on various systems. Even RTS games are starting to use Havoc Physics (like the recently-released ‘Company of Heroes’).
I still have a hard time imagining playing Halo 2 on anything other than an Xbox.