Originally posted by DSWBeef As many have said before. The Hero Engine BW used on swtor was an unfinished alpha version that shouldnt have been used at all. The Hero engine has matured and is now ready for real use.
Not sure if it was alpha or beta, but it wasn't done, that's for sure. As a 20 year IT Pro and hobbyist programmer, it amazes me how little people really understand technology and software development. As if Hero engine is doomed to eternal failure simply because it was purchased in an unfinished state, and likely mismanaged on the TOR project so long ago. As if there are no new versions, improvements, or additional features added over time since Bioware purchased it.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Originally posted by DSWBeef As many have said before. The Hero Engine BW used on swtor was an unfinished alpha version that shouldnt have been used at all. The Hero engine has matured and is now ready for real use.
Not sure if it was alpha or beta, but it wasn't done, that's for sure. As a 20 year IT Pro and hobbyist programmer, it amazes me how little people really understand technology and software development. As if Hero engine is doomed to eternal failure simply because it was purchased in an unfinished state, and likely mismanaged on the TOR project so long ago. As if there are no new versions, improvements, or additional features added over time since Bioware purchased it.
I didn't just say SWTOR. Every game to use it to date has failed.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
Originally posted by DSWBeef As many have said before. The Hero Engine BW used on swtor was an unfinished alpha version that shouldnt have been used at all. The Hero engine has matured and is now ready for real use.
Not sure if it was alpha or beta, but it wasn't done, that's for sure. As a 20 year IT Pro and hobbyist programmer, it amazes me how little people really understand technology and software development. As if Hero engine is doomed to eternal failure simply because it was purchased in an unfinished state, and likely mismanaged on the TOR project so long ago. As if there are no new versions, improvements, or additional features added over time since Bioware purchased it.
I didn't just say SWTOR. Every game to use it to date has failed.
And it would seem many of them failed for reasons other than the engine itself. As was skillfully explained by developer JC-Smith, the engine is a shell. Most of the game play code and everything else you experience in an MMO still has to be written into the engine. I'm not trying to say Hero is perfect, but what I do like about it is that indy developers have a real shot at building a great game using it, since they don't have to spend years and untold millions of dollars writing their own from scratch. By the way, I've seen awful games that licensed other well known engines too.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I hated SWTOR as much as anyone, and I went into it super stoked and excited. I understand the concern, but don't fret the engine, they used a really old and primitive version that they kind of made their own. You should watch videos of what the newer versions of the engine can do, it's actually VERY impressive.
I recall one of the SWTOR Devs bragging about how they had customized Hero Engine to their liking...this was to deflect someone posting concerns on their forums about the hero engine...So yeah...they heavily modded the engine on their end if they are to be believed.
I really am starting to hate the scare mongering threads that OP's seem to like posting these days so much easier than promoting the positives and overall benefits of games being developed.
This game which is "In Development" , still has a lot of potential and positives. Normally when people just look for the shock factor posts it means that a game has something going for it.
I prefer to give games a chance and this one in particular as it has a number of systems that are in depth enough that , so decent gameplay can be had and that not just being combat.
Not sure this thread adds a lot to any discussion here.
________________________________________________________ Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Originally posted by Ramanadjinn It is a poor workman that blames his tools.
Truth
Yes.
It just does not apply to this case. HeroEngine is not a tool, it is a material. Tools is something you use to create a product, but is not a part of it, a material is something you add to a product that then becomes a part of it.
HeroEngine code is a part of the product, not just a tool to create it, and thus it is not a tool.
Originally posted by Ramanadjinn It is a poor workman that blames his tools.
Truth
Yes.
It just does not apply to this case. HeroEngine is not a tool, it is a material. Tools is something you use to create a product, but is not a part of it, a material is something you add to a product that then becomes a part of it.
HeroEngine code is a part of the product, not just a tool to create it, and thus it is not a tool.
You do realize you just argued some weird form of reverse semantics to an old saying as it was being applied to a game engine by taking one particular usage of the word "Tool" ignoring all the other more relevant contexts and as a result you have made yourself look like yet another urban usage of that same word.
The engine has fundamental lag issues. It's why SWTOR had content cut, and why all those other games got canned because it lagged like hell. I'm not sure if it still has no muticore support whatsoever, but it did not at SWTOR release it had to be chopped in, and even then it still lagged like crap.
In a nutshell, its akin to what beats by dre are to the headphone world. Shiny package, pure shit inside.
Originally posted by DSWBeef As many have said before. The Hero Engine BW used on swtor was an unfinished alpha version that shouldnt have been used at all. The Hero engine has matured and is now ready for real use.
Not sure if it was alpha or beta, but it wasn't done, that's for sure. As a 20 year IT Pro and hobbyist programmer, it amazes me how little people really understand technology and software development. As if Hero engine is doomed to eternal failure simply because it was purchased in an unfinished state, and likely mismanaged on the TOR project so long ago. As if there are no new versions, improvements, or additional features added over time since Bioware purchased it.
My problem with this is that it just doesn't seem to pass the smell test. EA sunk how many 10s of millions into turning that "alpha" version of the Hero Engine into something that would work well for them and they failed and you expect me to believe that the developer managed to magically overcome all the major issues with likely far less resources? I suppose it's possible that the people EA had working on SWTOR were just unbelievably inept and the people the developer got to upgrade the Hero Engine are amazing... but I'm skeptical.
Originally posted by DSWBeef As many have said before. The Hero Engine BW used on swtor was an unfinished alpha version that shouldnt have been used at all. The Hero engine has matured and is now ready for real use.
Not sure if it was alpha or beta, but it wasn't done, that's for sure. As a 20 year IT Pro and hobbyist programmer, it amazes me how little people really understand technology and software development. As if Hero engine is doomed to eternal failure simply because it was purchased in an unfinished state, and likely mismanaged on the TOR project so long ago. As if there are no new versions, improvements, or additional features added over time since Bioware purchased it.
My problem with this is that it just doesn't seem to pass the smell test. EA sunk how many 10s of millions into turning that "alpha" version of the Hero Engine into something that would work well for them and they failed and you expect me to believe that the developer managed to magically overcome all the major issues with likely far less resources? I suppose it's possible that the people EA had working on SWTOR were just unbelievably inept and the people the developer got to upgrade the Hero Engine are amazing... but I'm skeptical.
SWTOR was built from the ground up to be a co-op RPG. The hero engine wasn't what made the game suck, it was the design philosophy.
SWTOR was built from the ground up to be a co-op RPG. The hero engine wasn't what made the game suck, it was the design philosophy.
Exactly.
What amazes me is how many people make negative posts about an engine, when they have no clue what an engine even does. It's all because they read some posts on some forums by some other ignorant posters stating how it's all the hero engines fault.
SWTOR lagged because they didn't design the game to function well with multiple people on the screen at the same time. The polygon count for the characters were way to high to have anything but lag when you got a bunch of characters on the screen at the same time. I know the Hero engine was a great scapegoat for the SWTOR devs.. but it wasn't the issue... their design decisions were.
It's not the engine you use. It's what you do with it that matters.
If you have the full source code and can change things however you want, then the precise details of the engine you launch with is on you. And if you don't have the source code and are trying to launch a major commercial game that you don't have the source code for, then the problem is that you don't have the source code to your own game. That's a problem of idiot developers, not of a bad game engine.
Yes, some engines are much better than others for particular purposes--and which engine is better for you depends very strongly on what you want to do with it. But that gets filtered through so many layers of what the developers of a particular game do to customize the engine for their particular game that people who only play the game can't really judge much about the commercial version of the engine.
SWtoR failed because it was a blatant WoW clone that offered no innovation to gameplay, lacked balance of any kind, and was essentially a single player RPG forced into an MMORPG's pajamas. If SWtoR had simply been KotoR 3 with limited multiplayer, it could have been an entirely different game with entirely different results. But it wasn't. It was the same monotonous formulaic MMO we've seen released for the past 5 years. The difference was that they had the budget, the personnel, and the time-table to make something that other studios can't, and they didn't. That was what I always attributed nearly all of the SWtoR hate to.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
The same Engine as SWTOR, the same Engine that BioWares lead director said was the cause of the massive cost in SWTOR, and the reason for so many of their issues?
The only other(released) MMORPG to use this engine, was shut down within a year of release. The Engine itself also has dubious origins, with being created in the early 90's for a MMO that was pushed back to 2009, then eventually cancelled and the assets sold off, including the Engine.
Originally posted by bubaluba TESO use the same engine
TESO does NOT use the Hero Engine. ZOS used Hero Engine to develop conceptual ideas while creating their own engine for TESO. Common misconception.
Personally, I have vowed to never play another MMO that uses Hero Engine. It is a piece of shit.
The funny thing is that TESO plays just like a Hero engine game. Also, their relative short development time seems to indicate they didn't need to do much work on an engine. I believe their comments about it not being the Hero Engine are just PR.
The user and all related content has been deleted.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Those two games you listed had two issues in common..
Both had never made a MMORPG before..
as for heroes journey and Dominus..
I guess they stopped developing Heroes Journey because they thought they could make more money selling the engine.. they where probably right.
Dominus.. well i alpha tested this one weekend and it was pretty solid then.. 100s of people in the same area just running around with some PVP and missions.. I guess they must have run out of cash,
Now the guys behind The Repopulation have never made one either but.. they are taking their time, talking to people, getting lots of info out there about the game, publishing alpha patch notes and so on.. From what I have seen from videos and interviews The Repopulation is the only game im looking forward to this year.
At the end of the day a lot of people jumped onto the Hero engine back when you could get a server for free and thought it would be easy to make an MMO.. they then realized that was not the case and quit or put he project on hold.. Take a look at the unity engine and the amount of projects that have been started and put on hold with that.. it does not mean its a bad engine.
Also yes hero engine is $99 a year but that does not get you access to the source code plus when you do release the game they take 30% of your profits as well... so its not that cheap.. Unity is cheaper as its 100% free if you want the basic version.
Maybe the real problem with swtor was the 30% royalties and them intentionally changing their engine code with the intent of making it different enough rather than more efficient.
As if hero engine creators would have the audacity to sue a developer of a sw game from a very beloved Group of devs at the time BW. They could have gotten away with copying the hero engine and avoiding the royalties, because they were too big to be brought down by some no name engine makers.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
I just had a few comments here with regards to Hero Engine. The $99 and 30% royalties deal is a relatively new thing. At the time when Bioware licensed Hero Engine it wasn't really an engine that was being built as a licensed engine, it was being built for Heroes' Journey and in an unfinished state. When we licensed hero engine the price was $5000 + 15% royalties. I can't tell you what the full license price is because I don't know, but I'd guess it was in the $750k range for no royalties. I believe what happened is that they realized that many indie developers wanted to work with the engine but $5k was a lot of money for more casual people to scrape together. So they instituted the $99 + 30% plan. There is also currently a $75k + 7.5% royalties plan, and a buy out option for $100k if you start on a 30% plan and then want to move to a full source license before shipping.
In my opinion Hero Engine has been a great thing for the scene. It is a good engine for what it does: make MMOs. The problem is, it's hard work to make an MMO. It's easy to underestimate the amount of work that goes into it and that's why so many projects start and then never reach significant development. It's really no different than what we saw with Torque, Unity, and more recently UDK and Bigworld. Something like 90% of indie products will never get close to complete as a result of this, even small scale single player games have this same issue. It's magnified with MMOs because they are so much larger projects. The tools are out there though now to give indies a fighting chance, and that's all they can ask for. The rest is up to them.
I don't think a reduced number of players is really an issue. In TOR's case where you ran into problems was Ilum and that was rendering related and not network related.
Comments
Not sure if it was alpha or beta, but it wasn't done, that's for sure. As a 20 year IT Pro and hobbyist programmer, it amazes me how little people really understand technology and software development. As if Hero engine is doomed to eternal failure simply because it was purchased in an unfinished state, and likely mismanaged on the TOR project so long ago. As if there are no new versions, improvements, or additional features added over time since Bioware purchased it.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
Truth
I didn't just say SWTOR. Every game to use it to date has failed.
Help get Camelot Unchained made, a old-school MMORPG, with no hand holding!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/13861848/camelot-unchained
And it would seem many of them failed for reasons other than the engine itself. As was skillfully explained by developer JC-Smith, the engine is a shell. Most of the game play code and everything else you experience in an MMO still has to be written into the engine. I'm not trying to say Hero is perfect, but what I do like about it is that indy developers have a real shot at building a great game using it, since they don't have to spend years and untold millions of dollars writing their own from scratch. By the way, I've seen awful games that licensed other well known engines too.
A sure sign that you are in an old, dying paradigm/mindset, is when you are scared of new ideas and new technology. Don't feel bad. The world is moving on without you, and you are welcome to yell "Get Off My Lawn!" all you want while it happens. You cannot, however, stop an idea whose time has come.
I really am starting to hate the scare mongering threads that OP's seem to like posting these days so much easier than promoting the positives and overall benefits of games being developed.
This game which is "In Development" , still has a lot of potential and positives. Normally when people just look for the shock factor posts it means that a game has something going for it.
I prefer to give games a chance and this one in particular as it has a number of systems that are in depth enough that , so decent gameplay can be had and that not just being combat.
Not sure this thread adds a lot to any discussion here.
________________________________________________________
Sorcery must persist, the future is the Citadel
Yes.
It just does not apply to this case. HeroEngine is not a tool, it is a material. Tools is something you use to create a product, but is not a part of it, a material is something you add to a product that then becomes a part of it.
HeroEngine code is a part of the product, not just a tool to create it, and thus it is not a tool.
You do realize you just argued some weird form of reverse semantics to an old saying as it was being applied to a game engine by taking one particular usage of the word "Tool" ignoring all the other more relevant contexts and as a result you have made yourself look like yet another urban usage of that same word.
Bravo!
The engine has fundamental lag issues. It's why SWTOR had content cut, and why all those other games got canned because it lagged like hell. I'm not sure if it still has no muticore support whatsoever, but it did not at SWTOR release it had to be chopped in, and even then it still lagged like crap.
In a nutshell, its akin to what beats by dre are to the headphone world. Shiny package, pure shit inside.
My problem with this is that it just doesn't seem to pass the smell test. EA sunk how many 10s of millions into turning that "alpha" version of the Hero Engine into something that would work well for them and they failed and you expect me to believe that the developer managed to magically overcome all the major issues with likely far less resources? I suppose it's possible that the people EA had working on SWTOR were just unbelievably inept and the people the developer got to upgrade the Hero Engine are amazing... but I'm skeptical.
SWTOR was built from the ground up to be a co-op RPG. The hero engine wasn't what made the game suck, it was the design philosophy.
Games:
Currently playing:Nothing
Will play: Darkfall: Unholy Wars
Past games:
Guild Wars 2 - Xpiher Duminous
Xpiher's GW2
GW 1 - Xpiher Duminous
Darkfall - Xpiher Duminous (NA) retired
AoC - Xpiher (Tyranny) retired
Warhammer - Xpiher
Exactly.
What amazes me is how many people make negative posts about an engine, when they have no clue what an engine even does. It's all because they read some posts on some forums by some other ignorant posters stating how it's all the hero engines fault.
SWTOR lagged because they didn't design the game to function well with multiple people on the screen at the same time. The polygon count for the characters were way to high to have anything but lag when you got a bunch of characters on the screen at the same time. I know the Hero engine was a great scapegoat for the SWTOR devs.. but it wasn't the issue... their design decisions were.
Hooray for bumping really old threads?
It's not the engine you use. It's what you do with it that matters.
If you have the full source code and can change things however you want, then the precise details of the engine you launch with is on you. And if you don't have the source code and are trying to launch a major commercial game that you don't have the source code for, then the problem is that you don't have the source code to your own game. That's a problem of idiot developers, not of a bad game engine.
Yes, some engines are much better than others for particular purposes--and which engine is better for you depends very strongly on what you want to do with it. But that gets filtered through so many layers of what the developers of a particular game do to customize the engine for their particular game that people who only play the game can't really judge much about the commercial version of the engine.
TESO does NOT use the Hero Engine. ZOS used Hero Engine to develop conceptual ideas while creating their own engine for TESO. Common misconception.
Personally, I have vowed to never play another MMO that uses Hero Engine. It is a piece of shit.
SWtoR didn't fail because of performance.
SWtoR failed because it was a blatant WoW clone that offered no innovation to gameplay, lacked balance of any kind, and was essentially a single player RPG forced into an MMORPG's pajamas. If SWtoR had simply been KotoR 3 with limited multiplayer, it could have been an entirely different game with entirely different results. But it wasn't. It was the same monotonous formulaic MMO we've seen released for the past 5 years. The difference was that they had the budget, the personnel, and the time-table to make something that other studios can't, and they didn't. That was what I always attributed nearly all of the SWtoR hate to.
Waiting for something fresh to arrive on the MMO scene...
SWTOR is not even a hero engine, they stripped it down and had it reworked so much you can't even call it a hero engine any longer.
The funny thing is that TESO plays just like a Hero engine game. Also, their relative short development time seems to indicate they didn't need to do much work on an engine. I believe their comments about it not being the Hero Engine are just PR.
Somebody, somewhere has better skills as you have, more experience as you have, is smarter than you, has more friends as you do and can stay online longer. Just pray he's not out to get you.
Maybe the real problem with swtor was the 30% royalties and them intentionally changing their engine code with the intent of making it different enough rather than more efficient.
As if hero engine creators would have the audacity to sue a developer of a sw game from a very beloved Group of devs at the time BW. They could have gotten away with copying the hero engine and avoiding the royalties, because they were too big to be brought down by some no name engine makers.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
I just had a few comments here with regards to Hero Engine. The $99 and 30% royalties deal is a relatively new thing. At the time when Bioware licensed Hero Engine it wasn't really an engine that was being built as a licensed engine, it was being built for Heroes' Journey and in an unfinished state. When we licensed hero engine the price was $5000 + 15% royalties. I can't tell you what the full license price is because I don't know, but I'd guess it was in the $750k range for no royalties. I believe what happened is that they realized that many indie developers wanted to work with the engine but $5k was a lot of money for more casual people to scrape together. So they instituted the $99 + 30% plan. There is also currently a $75k + 7.5% royalties plan, and a buy out option for $100k if you start on a 30% plan and then want to move to a full source license before shipping.
In my opinion Hero Engine has been a great thing for the scene. It is a good engine for what it does: make MMOs. The problem is, it's hard work to make an MMO. It's easy to underestimate the amount of work that goes into it and that's why so many projects start and then never reach significant development. It's really no different than what we saw with Torque, Unity, and more recently UDK and Bigworld. Something like 90% of indie products will never get close to complete as a result of this, even small scale single player games have this same issue. It's magnified with MMOs because they are so much larger projects. The tools are out there though now to give indies a fighting chance, and that's all they can ask for. The rest is up to them.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
The problem i see with the Hero engine, is the reduced number of players it can serve in one instance.
https://www.therepopulation.com - Sci Fi Sandbox.
ESO does use the Hero Engine.
Which is why when you fire the game up one of the splash screens you see says "Powered by Hero Engine".