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Bioware licenses MMO Technology
LordCaptain
Member Posts: 178
I think we all new it was coming, but It's official that Bioware is using Perpetual Entertainment's MMO platform to develop their upcoming MMO. According to Gordon Walton, co-studio director of BioWare Austin:
“We evaluated numerous technology solutions to serve as the service backbone of our first MMO title and feel Perpetual’s online platform is the best fit. The Perpetual team has years of experience building infrastructure and tools for online games and we are thrilled to be working with them.”
So there ya have it.
Comments
That's their... 3rd...chosen...platform???
Linkage? Otherwise it's not true as far as I'm concerned.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Well I'll be damned. It IS their 3rd liscensing engine:
http://kotaku.com/gaming/what.s-in-the-box%3F!/bioware-taps-perpetual-mmo-engine-280217.php
http://biz.gamedaily.com/industry/news/?id=16856
edits for links
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
sweeeeet
too bad it'll take like 3+ years for this to come out ='(
sorry i didn't link. But yeah. It is :P
out of curiosity, what are they doing themselves?
they liscensed Hero, that server layer thingy, and now Perpetual... I'm getting even MORE confused now then before. I'm not sure why you need 2 seperate platforms and toolsets. What are they using from each...
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
I agree. This is kind of strange. Licensing this many different engines from this many different sources... now they're going to have to find a way to make them all talk to each other... this could become very ugly for them.
I guess they know what they are doing but... it is a bid odd.
C
As I understand it at the moment, the Hero engine is basically the engine of the game, the client software, graphics, sound, network, etc...
Then they licensed some Stream SQL solution which i don't remember exactly, which is the server side database solution (plus client access etc ofc), it is the means to store all the data, the everchanging database is basically the image of current state of things on the server... i guess you know what i want to say.
This third thingy they licensed... well theres the magic word service backbone, so its probably the solution for the less apparent things about running mmo, my guess would be stuff like anything from authentication, through GM ticket handling to patch deployment, etc etc
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Answer:
Bioware has tapped into Doomsday technology for computers that could end the world as we know it or make it good. Good thing it's Bioware.
It's not odd at all. There is plenty of good technology out there that already does that you want. What would be odd is for a group of developers with this level of experience to do everything from scratch.
This "news" is many months old now...and completely underwhelming.
The news about Prepetual isn't that old at all...
I think they're shopping around for solutions which are established rather then developing everything themselves, allowing them the ability and time needed to focus on the GAME itself. Smart moves, BioWare. Smart moves. They're using GREAT technological solutions to hopefully develop a truly next gen MMO. Can't wait! Star Wars or not...Whatever it is, it's BioWare.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Yeah I believe this news came out in 2006. They've had this project going in some form or another for at least a year (possibly more).
This is not a game engine though. It is for managing customer service and billing. They are using the Hero Engine for graphics and gameplay, which also consists of many licenses like AGEA PhysX for physics, SpeedTree for foliage, Facegen for character customization, etc.
World Builder GM
Hero's Journey
In a nutshell : Letting already developed software handle some load so they can focus more on the game rather than engines. I haven't researched it myself but I hear the HeroEngine is quite awesome and very capable with loads of flexability and features... I'll have to look into it - Not like I could afford it hehe
I've seen a demo of FaceGen modeller and it's pretty damn impressive
You can download the overview video here: www.facegen.com/
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Yeah, Middleware is becoming big business in game development. It let's studios focus on design and art, not technical issues. For gamers it generally means a more stable platform with less bugs.
Here is a link to the two Hero Engine PDFs I know of:
http://www.play.net/playdotnet/platform/
With Facegen I have read they can have character customization on par or surpassing even CoH/CoV. Plus the engine has physics, real-time shadows and a day/night cycle, and even VoIP with customizable voice "colorization" so each of your characters can sound different.
World Builder GM
Hero's Journey
How awesome is that... thanks for the link!
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
Yeah I believe this news came out in 2006. They've had this project going in some form or another for at least a year (possibly more).
The new about PE is new. They have licenced out 2 other engines, but this is a new one.
For all we know, they are doing many different MMOs, rather than just 1 as we suspected.
Well they ARE doing at least two... this mystery one and a Sonic MMO. *shrug*
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
I think I remember reading somewhere that one of the engines was for graphics (the heroes one) as others' have mentioned, and another one will include quick data processing, thus enabling Bioware to change landscapes on the fly, and create quests/story if they so please. Don't quote me on that, but I think I read it somewhere.
EDIT: Ahh nevermind on that, I read it again, apparently it's just new technology they are using, not sure if it's an actual "engine" persay.
Link: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160238 (from June 2007)