Havok

Havok is a middleware software suite developed by the Irish company Havok. Havok provides a physics engine component and related functions to video games.

On September 14, 2007, Intel announced it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Havok Inc. In 2008, Havok was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the development of physics engines in electronic entertainment. On October 2, 2015, Microsoft announced it had acquired Havok.

Products

The Havok middleware suite consists of the following modules:

• Havok Physics: It is designed primarily for video games, and allows for real-time collision and dynamics of rigid bodies in three dimensions. It provides multiple types of dynamic constraints between rigid bodies (e.g. for ragdoll physics), and has a highly optimized collision detection library. By using dynamical simulation, Havok Physics allows for more realistic virtual worlds in games. The company was developing a specialized version of Havok Physics called Havok FX that made use of ATI and NVIDIA GPUs for physics simulations; however, the goal of GPU acceleration did not materialize until several years later.
• Havok AI: In 2009, Havok released Havok AI, which provides advanced pathfinding capabilities for games. Havok AI provides navigation mesh generation, pathfinding and path following for video game environments.
• Havok Cloth: Released in 2008, Havok Cloth deals with efficient simulation of character garments and soft body dynamics.
• Havok Destruction: Also released in 2008, Havok Destruction provides tools for creation of destructible and deformable rigid body environments.
• Havok Animation Studio (discontinued): Havok Animation Studio is formally known as Havok Behavior and Havok Animation. Havok Behavior is a runtime SDK for controlling game character animation at a high level using finite state machines. Havok Animation provides efficient playback and compression of character animations in games, and features such as inverse kinematics.
• Havok Script (discontinued): Havok Script is a Lua-compatible virtual machine designed for video game development. It is shipped as part of the Havok Script Studio.
• Havok Vision Engine (discontinued): On August 8, 2011, Havok announced their acquisition of German game engine development company Trinigy and their Vision Engine and toolset.

Usage

Breath of the Wild uses the Havok Physics, Havok AI and Havok Cloth.

File Extensions

Extension	Product	Description	Locations
hknm2	Havok AI	Navigation meshes (used by AI for path finding)	NavMesh/
hkrb	Havok Physics	Rigid body physics	Physics/RigidBody/
hkcl	Havok Cloth	Cloth physics	Physics/Cloth/
hkrg	Havok Physics	Rag doll physics	Physics/Ragdoll/
hksc	Havok Physics	Static compound physics	Physics/StaticCompound/
hktmrb	Havok Physics	Terrain mesh rigid body physics	Physics/TeraMeshRigidBody/

Havok File Specification

Havok files serve as a data container for multiple Havok classes per file and sometimes multiple Havok files per file. The class names are defined in each file.

Note that this specification only applies to version 2014.2.0-r1

File Structure

File structure

Each file contains a header and three sections: classnames, types and data

classnames

The classnames section (__classnames__ internally) contains a list of Havok classes used by the file to correctly decompile the binary data into a usable data structure.

types

The types section (__types__ internally) does not appear to be used by Breath of the Wild.

data

the data section (__data__ internally) contains binary data to be serialized into Havok data structures for use by the Havok engine.

Header

The header seems to have a 16-byte alignment and can be 64-bytes (short header) or 80-bytes (long header) in length, depending on if Unknown 13 equals 0 (short header) or 16 (long header).

Header Specification

Offset (h)	Size	Data Type	Description
0x00	8	Bytes	Havok file signature (magic) 57 E0 E0 57 10 C0 C0 10
0x08	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 00 (always 0; possibly padding)
0x0c	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 01 (always 11)
0x10	1	Byte	Unknown 02 (always 4)
0x11	1	Byte	Unknown 03 (always 0)
0x12	1	Byte	Unknown 04 (always 0)
0x13	1	Byte	Unknown 05 (always 1)
0x14	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 06 (always 3)
0x18	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 07 (always 2)
0x1c	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 08 (always 0)
0x20	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 09 (always 0)
0x24	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 10 (always 75)
0x28	16	String	Havok version hk_2014.2.0-r1 for BotW files
0x38	4	Unsigned Int	Unknown 11 (always 0; possibly padding)
0x3c	2	Short	Unknown 12 (always 21)
0x3e	2	Short	Unknown 13 (0 or 16; if 16, the header is 16 bytes longer)

Optional Header Bytes

There are optional header bytes for a long header. If Unknown 13 equals 16, an additional 16 bytes are added to the header for a total of 80 bytes.

Optional Header Bytes

Offset (h)	Size	Data Type	Description
0x40	2	Short	Unknown 14 (always 20)
0x42	2	Short	Unknown 15 (always 0; possibly padding)
0x44	4	Int	Unknown 16 (always 0; probably padding for alignment)
0x48	4	Int	Unknown 17 (always 0; probably padding for alignment)
0x4c	4	Int	Unknown 18 (always 0; probably padding for alignment)

Section Headers

FF bytes indicate section header boundaries

Each section has a 64-byte header which includes the section name, absolute offset to the section start and six relative offsets to segments within the section. All three section headers follow the file header and are delimited by 16 delimiter bytes (0xFF).

Section Header Specification

Offset (h)	Size	Data Type	Description
0x00	20	String	Section name
0x14	4	Unsigned Int	Absolute offset
0x18	4	Unsigned Int	Relative offset 1
0x1c	4	Unsigned Int	Relative offset 2
0x20	4	Unsigned Int	Relative offset 3
0x24	4	Unsigned Int	Relative offset 4
0x28	4	Unsigned Int	Relative offset 5
0x2c	4	Unsigned Int	Relative offset 6

Section Name

There are only three section names: __classnames__, __types__ and __data__. The section name is a null-terminated string with a delimiter byte (0xFF) in byte 20.

Absolute Offset

The absolute offset to the section.

Relative Offsets

The relative offsets point to different large structures within the section. There are usually a few unique offsets and then multiple duplicated offsets. It is unknown if only unique offsets are significant at this time.

For example, given the following section header:

5F 5F 64 61 74 61 5F 5F 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 | __data__........
00 00 00 FF 00 00 01 60 00 00 3C 00 00 00 3C 10 | .......`..<...<.
00 00 3C 10 00 00 3C 20 00 00 3C 20 00 00 3C 20 | ..<...< ..< ..< 
FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF FF | ................

The section name is __data__. The absolute offset is 0x160 with the relative offsets

• 0x3c00
• 0x3c10
• 0x3c10
• 0x3c20
• 0x3c20
• 0x3c20

Class Names Section

Class names binary data

The classnames section header includes the absolute offset to the class names data and a single unique relative offset to the end of the section. The section is made up of an array of hash ids and a null-terminated string class name.

Class Name

Class names are read until the end of the section or a delimiter byte (0xFF) is is reached.

Class Name Specification

Offset (h)	Size	Type	Description
0x00	4	Unsigned Int	An integer associated with the class type
0x05	1	Byte	Unknown (always 0x09)
0x06	n	String	Class name (null-terminated string)

Types Section

The types section is unused in Breath of the Wild. The absolute offset points to the beginning of the data section with all null (0x00) relative offsets.

Data Section

The bulk of the file is devoted to the data section which is divided into smaller segments dependent on the file type.