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With the financial world in somewhat of a free-fall, I figured it would be a good time to give up the security of my day job and start a business again!  I get asked a lot lately as to whether the current situation with the global credit crunch has had an impact on that process of setting up a business and it's hard to say.  This time around I hope that, as a team, we are more prepared and focused and at least somewhat more experienced so I can't look at our current progress in the context of purely the world's financial markets.  It seems to me that it is tougher to start a business than it was back in 98/99, and I'd imagine very tough for a new team with no prior history.  Companies are certainly finding it harder to raise cash and battening down the hatches internally, reducing costs etc., but so far our progress is positive and we'll hopefully be operational in the not too distant future.  As of 1st October this year, I've stepped back from my position at TCD to become CTO of this new startup.  I plan to continue in a part time capacity with Trinity, spending one day per week, continuing to teach at postgraduate level and also helping to run the new MSc programme in Interactive Entertainment Technology.  I believe this can be a great way to stay in close contact with the top students and helps to stengthen the connections between TCD and industry, something I think is very important for both sides.  We're not talking about the new company yet - it would be jumping the gun to do so and our energies are best spent on getting out into the market and getting the product in shape.

Myself and Hugh Reynolds (the other co-founder of Havok and ex. TCD) received the TCD Innovation Award for 2007 .  At a nice ceremony in December we were presented with some very fine silver pieces made by Silversmith Seamus Gill who is based in the TCD Innovation Centre on Pearse Street. 

I gave a short presentation (while heckled by Hugh's young son Tadhg) on the early days of Havok, how we spun the company out and the decisions we made in the formative years.  It gave me the opportunity to dig back through some old materials and find some scary photos (for example, this).  Some of the stuff unearthed was the original application made to Enterprise Ireland in 1996 which proposed to do research into "Real-time Physically Based Animation for Educational Multimedia" (at the time "games" was not a valid academic term!).  Here are some hokey shots which I knocked up in 3dsmax back in the day to illustrate how physics could be used in educational multimedia; I'm pretty sure we were all about game physics from the start, but to satisfy the project we had to at least demonstrate some capability in educational software.  Shot1 shows a shape matching puzzle and shot2 illustrates a virtual physics workbench with real-time graphing.  Finally, this shot shows the PhyBaMod prototype, which was a linux based Tcl/Tk application developed by Chris Keogh (still one of Havok's senior engineers) used to create and edit physics scenes and which used the developing real-time physics engine.  For its time it was pretty cool and it was a version of this system that we used in 1999 when talking with the earliest clients of Havok.

I'll tell you, there's a lot of stress, heart-ache, frustration and a whole cocktail of other emotions that go along with setting up a company like Havok, but a bit like parenting, it can be incredibly rewarding and fun at times, and you tend to remember those more (otherwise who'd ever have a second child!) 

Some days turn out very differently to how you expected.  I heard on Friday evening that Havok, the company I co-founded with Hugh Reynolds in 1998, had been acquired by Intel.  The details have not been disclosed, but the acquisition has been announced by Intel here.  The acquisition by Intel gives Havok the opportunity to take game physics and animation to the next level, leveraging Intel's scale and ambitions and Havok's market position and technology, and is a great move by both companies (but I guess I would say that!).  Certainly in talking to current Havok employees there is tremendous support and excitement about the move and great optimism for what can be achieved…  Well done to everyone involved.

BTW - the logo frankensteinization is my own efforts and is not endorsed by Havok or Intel! 

Trinity College Dublin has recently approved a new MSc in Computer Science - Interactive Entertainment Technology .  I'm the course director and this is a course I've wanted to put together for some time, since having returned to TCD from Havok.  The course is very technology focussed, will require a degree in computing (or related subject) and is aimed at educating students about the core technologies driving primarily the game industry but these technologies are also hugely relevant in other industries including the wider entertainment space, media, simulation and communications.  The course has been designed to take advantage of the great research work going on in the School of Computer Science and Statistics and in particular in the GV2 Research Group .  We've been lucky to get great industry support with advisors from Microsoft, Intel, Radical Entertainment, Demonware and S3.  We're also going to be making a formal announcement involving Microsoft soon regarding their sponsorship of the programme.  Ireland has had a disproportionate contribution to the game industry through successful middleware companies like Havok and Demonware.  The idea is to build on this, with this technology focus, and hopefully educate the people who will shape the future key game technologies.

I'm organising (with Ladislav Kavan of Czech Technical University in Prague) the Game Track of the forthcoming Eurographics 2007 conference, to be held in Prague in September. One of the activities will be a physics game competition, which is targetting innovative use of physics in games or game demos. We are invited individuals and teams to submit work which demonstrates some new and innovative use of physics (e.g. a new simulation method, a new gameplay element or perhaps a new way to use physics to control a game character). The competition is sponsored by Sony Computer Entertainment US R&D, and there are 2 prizes totalling 2,000. In addition, Intel has agreed to provide 8 quad-core systems for use as a physics game lobby on which we will demonstrate the best entries and allow attendees of the conference to experiences the games / demos first hand. For more information see the competition webpage here.

OK, this has to be the most hilarious use of ragdoll technology I’ve seen yet. This is not so much a game as a ragdoll hidden-camera prank show. Sumotori Dreams combines the excellent Toribash with the classic ragdoll bug videos you may have seen to create a nearly-playable spoof. I’d strongly recommend a download and checking in out.

There’s some pretty good physics (not sure if it’s homemade or one of the many freely available ones) but the author claims that all animation is AI driven. I can believe it too. It’s smartish (has some balancing and getting up) but also appears to have some fake stabilising forces etc., to keep the guys upright, but effectively it looks like its using much the same ideas that the guys at NaturalMotion can make look so good. I’m feeling inspired to create a talk on the history of ragdolls…

The Imagine Cup is a worldwide event designed to test the creativity and ingenuity of individuals in a number of categories including Art, Programming and System Design. Of particular relevance to students in TCD (and CS students in Ireland generally) is the Irish leg of the Imagine Cup being organised by Microsoft. There are 2 categories within the overall competition that look very interesting, names the Hoshimi challenge (design an AI to complete a set of tasks in a virtual 3D environment) and Software Design (design a web service built on .NET to enable future education experiences). Both challenges support team entries and winners in the local Ireland event win prizes and go forward to the global event which takes place in Korea. For details of the Irish event go here.

IBM have announced an interesting programming competition targetting the CELL BE processor. Top prize is $10k, and the competition is open to all registered students of 3rd level institutions.Text from IBM:

On February 5, 2007, IBM announced the “Cell/B.E. University Challenge 07” a programming contest specifically created for university students and offering cash prizes to the winners. While the Cell Broadband Engine (“Cell/B.E.”) processor is already recognized as a workhorse of the gaming industry (e.g., Cell/B.E. processor is the digital heart of Sony’s PlayStation 3,) the “Cell/B.E. University Challenge 07” is designed to spur the creative use of the Cell/B.E. processor in additional areas. From seismic simulators to financial models, creating development tools to creating business models, submissions are limited only by the imagination and innovation of the students.

Winners of the “Cell/B.E. University Challenge 07,” chosen by a panel comprising academic and IBM technical experts, will receive prizes with cash value ranging from $10,000 USD for the first place winner to $2,500 USD for the fourth place winner. I have enclosed in this package the contest brochure and poster suitable for reproduction for on campus events, flyers, or however you see best creating awareness on campus. Additional information on eligibility, rules and requirements can be found on the web here.

As part of this event, William Latham, founder and CEO of Computer Artworks, an independent UK game company, and now founder and CEO of Game Audit, a game development consulting company, will give a talk on Thursday evening at 7pm in the Digital Hub. For more information on this event go here. William Latham will give a retrospective talk of his work from 1985 to 2007. Covering his early work as an artist through his Genetic Mutation Art work at IBM through his work as a CEO of a computer games developer Computer Artworks Ltd for 10 years producing hit titles such as The THING through to his work as CEO of Games Audit working for
Investment companies investing in the games industry including the area of completion bonding. Now Latham has finally returned to his early evolution work (frozen since 1993) with the Mutator2 code connecting the old Mutation & Form Grow systems into modern genetics research, with very surprising results.

On Tuesday 7th Novemeber I gave a talk to Dublin’s SEED group on “Game Design and Physics”. SEED is a very interesting group of technologists, designers, artists and scientists exploring the relationship between art and science. In their own words: “SEED is a Dublin-based group devoted to developing creative projects connecting art and science, including informal salons, exhibitions, workshops and performances.” The talk took place in the comfortable surrounding of the Odessa Lounge and was quite a departure from the usual conference style presentations I’m used to. This was very much more a relaxed atmosphere, drinks in hand, leather sofas and generally kicking backing and discussing interesting topics. I think the talk was well received, with lots of questions afterwards - but the really interesting thing for me was the nature of the questions. While I’m pretty used to dealing with “what’s the future of game physics” and “what is game physics”, the questions posed this night were in some cases quite different. I loved a question from one member of the group which challenged the validity of physics when we’re still in the dark ages of emotional content in games, and a folllow-on question asking whether a physics engine could model the relationship between a mother and a child holding hands in a game environment. Now those are challenging questions, and it’s great to remove the usual techno-blinkers and get fresh perspective like this. I’m looking forward to attending future SEED events…