Wait. Hero Engine?

Mkilbride · May 2013

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?

http://raidwarning.com/bioware-creative-director-details-swtor-development-issues/

That is scary, and off-putting.

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.

Hmm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faxion_Online

Other MMO's that announced to be using the Engine have either halted production or have extended their release dates indefinitely.

Seems like the Engine has a bad history. Also, 99$ a year license fee...rather cheap.

Released

Faxion Online (2011) - UTV Ignition Entertainment (Closed within months)
Star Wars: The Old Republic (2011) - BioWare^{[11} (Very Costly, now F2P, buggy)}

Unreleased

Hero's Journey - company's game the engine was developed for (Game never released)
^{Dominus - (On hold)}
<a rel="nofollow" text"="" data-cke-saved-href="http://www.dominusthegame.com/"; href="http://www.dominusthegame.com/">; Trials of Ascension - Forged Chaos (On hold)

Not a promising history. Concerns me greatly.

Caldrin · May 2013

The hero engine is a perfectly good engine..

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.

JC-Smith · May 2013

Hero Engine is a quality engine. The problem is it takes a long time to build an MMO (5 years typically). Star Wars: The Old Republic was their first license. They were building it for their own game, Hero's Journey. Bioware wanted an early copy so they licensed it and eventually they wound up cancelling Hero's Journey and focusing on Hero Engine. The engine has been licensed by many other companies (Zenimax for example). But MMOs typically have a much longer development cycle than single/small multiplayer games, and some of the people who license Hero have chosen to bind it with a high quality rendering engine and use the other features of Hero Engine.

The important things to note on TOR are that:

They used an early version of the engine. I can tell you in the 2 1/2 years we've been using Hero Engine it's improved by leaps and bounds, and that version of the engine was already much improved over the last version Bioware took updates on. That having been said some of the things Bioware said have been taken by players as negatives towards Hero Engine, where they really shouldn't be. For example, one of their employees complained that they couldn't get some things done because the engine didn't have Timer support. I know it's had that support since we've licensed it, but it is very possible the early version didn't yet have it. It also didn't have Seamless 2.0 support at that point, and many other things. But assuming it did lack Timer support at the time, that's a feature their techs could have built in less than a week. Engines are shells to build upon. Hero Engine provides rendering, physics, networking, etc. All the basics that an MMO needs, but it doesn't provide a game. It's just a shell that you build your game upon. I think that's a common misconception by players. They think that because Hero Engine was used by TOR that it's an engine to build theme park MMOs, for example. That's not the case, it could build a racing simulator, a first person shooter, etc.
TOR's graphics performance issues are largely in part to their own design decisions. The game runs well with a moderate number of players doesn't run well on Ilum when you have 50+. Players see that and are quick to blame the engine. But the truth of the matter is TOR's character models are much higher polygon than most MMOs before it (may not look like it due to the cartoony shaders, but they are), and their models used specular and normal maps which many of the older MMOs did not. That combined with higher resolution textures and your pushing cards far more than WoW for example. They also had a huge amount of customization. All that customization comes at a price. You can't easily batch render characters in MMOs due to the many parts used. So that already is slower than a single player game's rendering significantly. But then you add to that the fact that each character has 5-7 different parts, facegen morphs and textures and you have a lot of state changes, a very slow graphics operation. Players love customization they want a zillion different textures. But the more textures that are in a scene the slower it's going to run. TOR had a ton of customization. It worked great for their small group target.It doesn't work as well when you have 50 players all in different gear. Developer's need to make the choice. What's my target audience. If it's PvP you go with lower polys and less textures. If it's small group PvE you can get away with more texture choices and higher polygon counts. Ilum was something they stressed post-launch (the launch version was very different and looked partially complete to me). It is not within the framework of the rest of the game. I think for their game, they made the right choice. If they were say making Camelot Unchained, I'm sure they would have made very different decisions.

Now I can't speak too much about the games you mentioned, as I am not completely in the know about everything that went on behind the scenes with them. Faxion appeared to be built on the Hero's Journey core. They basically took an in-development version of Hero's Journey, themed it to their game, and gave it stylized graphics. It was stable and solid, but it had a few marks against it. The art was very stylized and I think that and the setting turned off a lot of players.But it was also very much a Pay to Win title, which I think also hurt their chances of retaining the players they had. I don't think their failures had anything to do with the engine though.

Dominus was a promising title that was built in short time using the Hero Engine. It was a PvP focused game, and had a pretty large sized beta. They ran into publisher issues, there are things discussing it. Had they been created in the post-Kickstarter era they probably would have shipped. It's unfortunate that they didn't. But again this had nothing to do with the engine.

hfztt · May 2013

Originally posted by Caldrin

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,

I was in the same alpha test, and it crashed hard most of the days due to overload of the servers. It did NOT handle many players well.

I find it worrying that The Repopulation have not even let all of the 700 kickstarter backers onto the game yet. Suggests to me that they have serious issues with handling load as well.

timtrack · May 2013

So you're an elite member with 345 posts that missed every single topic about Hero Engine since SWTOR released?

bubaluba · May 2013

TESO use the same engine

Loktofeit · May 2013

Originally posted by timtrack
So you're an elite member with 345 posts that missed every single topic about Hero Engine since SWTOR released?

Personally, I don't expect anyone under the age of 25 to know what research is, let alone do it, so posts like the OP seem rather normal these days.

Ramanadjinn · May 2013

It is a poor workman that blames his tools.

CrazKanuk · May 2013

Also, if I remember correctly, TOR used a heavily modified version of Hero Engine. So it's basically like taking a VW Bug, turning it into a street racer and then complaining that it doesn't handle well.

Hero Engine is good. I don't think this is really a concern.

Mothanos · May 2013

It mostly depends how good the developers are....
Some studio's can do great things with codes, they are like wizards and can turn shit into gold.
But not all studio's have these wizards...
SWTOR also used that engine but they coulnt make it work....they modded it and i think it went from bad to worse, in the hotspots one could not even walk as rubber banding kicked in in each major spot.

Not to mention their (epic) world pvp zone, i have never witnessed such pathetic coding in my gaming history.

In the end its the developers who can make it work or fail hard with it.

Mkilbride · May 2013

Originally posted by Loktofeit
Originally posted by timtrack
So you're an elite member with 345 posts that missed every single topic about Hero Engine since SWTOR released?

Personally, I don't expect anyone under the age of 25 to know what research is, let alone do it, so posts like the OP seem rather normal these days.

Besides that, It's not like I follow SWTOR. And "Elite Member" is a random title that MMORPG.com gave me, doesn't mean much.

What more was there to research? I did more than most. I am 23 going on 24, I am sorry I don't meet your magical cutoff point and am therefore totally useless.

-----

For those saying the Hero Engine is good - care to give an example? As shown, of the two games released using it, one closed down, the other is buggy and costly.

Dominus seems to have done well, but reports conflict, and it's On Hold.

The other games using it, besides Repopulation, were all On hold / Shut down.

So besides the Repopulation, where is solid proof that the Hero Engine is good? Granted the fact that the game is due out in November and Alpha hasn't even started...let alone beta. I was kinda shocked, I thought Alpha would've been our for a month or two by now for select backers, with beta coming in 3 or so months, open until release.

KaylettaJade · May 2013

Originally posted by hfztt
I find it worrying that The Repopulation have not even let all of the 700 kickstarter backers onto the game yet. Suggests to me that they have serious issues with handling load as well.

It could also mean that we haven't let many people into the game yet because we're still in alpha and nowhere in Kickstarter was alpha access promised to anyone. People will get their chance to beta test the game, but we need to get the game ready to beta test first.

JC-Smith · May 2013

Originally posted by hfztt

I find it worrying that The Repopulation have not even let all of the 700 kickstarter backers onto the game yet. Suggests to me that they have serious issues with handling load as well.

There's quite a few more than that with the Early Adopter program. But us not letting more people into testing has nothing to do with server stress or load. It has everything to do with keeping testing small until we are comfortable with the product being seen by the masses.

Alpha testers generally understand what an alpha test is. And in the early MMOs beta testers generally did too. They understand things like some animations or models being placeholder, or certain areas being under construction. But in this day and age beta is synonymous with open beta. Most games keep very small betas of experienced testers, and then when a game nears release they start giving away beta keys and letting in thousands of players. That is typically in the couple months just before launch. As a a result, that is the perception of beta testing to a modern MMO player. While many of those backers probably would completely understand a game being in a testing phase, many other players do not.

Repop is in alpha, it's not ready for a large number of eyes on it at this point. While almost every major gameplay feature is working (exceptions being sieges and vehicle upgrades) it still has a lot of animation, FX, and content work that needs to be done before it begins opening the door to larger numbers of players. Alpha phase 2 begins next week, but it will still be a small number of players. Each phase from this point on is aimed to double the number of players as the last. They'll be coming much more quickly and each will be focused on a specific area of content until we feel comfortable with the game moving on to beta.

This has nothing to do with server specs or Hero Engine though, and is entirely tied to how quickly we can finish the content necessary to move to each new phase.

Ramanadjinn · May 2013

Originally posted by Mkilbride

For those saying the Hero Engine is good - care to give an example? As shown, of the two games released using it, one closed down, the other is buggy and costly.

The hero engine being "good" or "bad" is irrelevant.

A game engine is a tool used by developers to create a game. The engine itself is coded like anything else. Any serious developer should have complete access to that code and should be able to modify the code any way they want. Any serious developer should not be buying any game engine and expecting it to just work as-is to give them a complete game.

If a developer has full control over creating their game, full access to the tools they are using to create the game, and still fail to create a good product it is the developer's fault 100% and not the fault of the engine, the C++ programming language, Microsoft, Comcast, Google, or any other related party.

It is only the developer's fault if they take a bit of source code and use it to spit out a crappy product! This is so simple it isn't worth debating really.

Oziius · May 2013

I'm currently playing TOR and having one hell of a time. There are shit-tons of players around, way more then what was around when I was playing a year or so ago. The game runs great and I have zero issues. I would say that TOR is a success story of the engine. Just because you personally don't like the game and dreamed it "buggy" doesn't discount it. Their player base is up and people are spending money. That's not a failure.

darker70 · May 2013

OP

before spouting spurious crap do some research remember Google is your friend,Hero Engine is now Hero Engine 2 and is being developed and worked on constantly,and Idea Fabrik are adding new features all the time,there is way more to the engine than the bastardised alpha that SWTOR used as that does not even exist any more or bare any relation to Hero 2.

http://www.heroengine.com/

wowclones · May 2013

Originally posted by Mkilbride

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?

http://raidwarning.com/bioware-creative-director-details-swtor-development-issues/

Yeah and it's probably the same dumb ass director referred to in this article:

http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/

“It’s not productized yet,” we told Gordon. “There are whole sections of code that is only roughed in and not optimized for performance or security. And there are very few comments and very little documentation.”

He didn’t care. “We are going to have tons of engineers. We can finish it ourselves. We’re going to want to modify your source code for our special project anyway.”

Don't blame HeroEngine, blame Gordon Walton for being an amateur and trying to build an engine and an mmo at the same time. That is probably the dumbest thing you can attempt as each is a 4 year project alone. For them to try to blame it on the engine is just ridiculous. Those guys were pieces of shit as they retired making video games cause they couldn't' handle the fact their game wasn't well received.

wowclones · May 2013

Originally posted by Praetalus
I'm currently playing TOR and having one hell of a time. There are shit-tons of players around, way more then what was around when I was playing a year or so ago. The game runs great and I have zero issues. I would say that TOR is a success story of the engine. Just because you personally don't like the game and dreamed it "buggy" doesn't discount it. Their player base is up and people are spending money. That's not a failure.

Well said.

psiic · May 2013

IMO SWTOR was just a bad case of

" I didn't poopie my pants someone else did "

Basically they were so desperate to find someone else to blame they blamed everyone else they could.

Caldrin · May 2013

Originally posted by hfztt
Originally posted by Caldrin

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,

I was in the same alpha test, and it crashed hard most of the days due to overload of the servers. It did NOT handle many players well.

I find it worrying that The Repopulation have not even let all of the 700 kickstarter backers onto the game yet. Suggests to me that they have serious issues with handling load as well.

really? I don't think i crashed once during the times i tested and that was when it first opened and the load was probably the highest.. For the first stress test i thought it did very well.

The Repopulation is letting people in slowly and that's always the plan.. they will do proper stress tests later in development.

BadOrb · May 2013

The engine wasn't costly for SWTOR , the Q & A for all the options within SWTOR's different paths was very costly. Even the VO's themselves where not costly either. Not sure how or where you got your false information from.

Cheers,

BadOrb.

JC-Smith · May 2013

One other thing I'd like to add along the lines of the original post. I just wanted to mention that we are pretty happy with Hero Engine in general. Every engine has its strengths and weaknesses but overall, even if we had an unlimited budget I think our choice would be to stick with Hero Engine. The only thing we might change if we did would be to use a deferred rendering engine with Hero's core.

Hero Engine isn't a cutting edge graphics engine, but it can produce graphics competitive with other MMOs. But the other areas of Hero Engine really shine. Productivity wise, it's fantastic. Being able to make script changes and have them working in game immediately is a huge productivity boost, as is the collaberative editing tools. Some of our alpha testers can attest to how easy it is to change things on the fly while people are playing. Where in an engine not designed for this sort of thing your looking at restarts and patches and losing a ton of productivity in the process.

While many players might look at things like Unreal Engine, Crytek, Unigine, and wonder why we didn't go those routes instead. They are after all better graphics engines. But they don't tackle the MMO specific issues that Hero Engine does. Seamless world design and on-seam proxies is a complex feature that most single player or small group games don't need and do not invest time in. As is spatial awareness (which allows things like phasing), and being able to introduce data easily on the fly without causing issues to players. Parts systems and character customization. Client side caching, communication between many types of servers where most single player engines are really designed with a one server (the game or zone server) in mind. Those are all things that take time to develop and test properly. So using an MMO specific engine such Hero Engine is a huge time saver for developers.

Loregaba · June 2013

JC-Smith, I find your post very informative, quite useful indeed. You're doing teacher work here, thanks. Always using the right tone and attitude. You show knowledge and wisdom, your game will rock for a long time. Keep posting, it`s always interesting to read.

Steven

TheJoda · June 2013

looks like a odd setup

DSWBeef · June 2013

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.

VincerKaden · June 2013

As a backer I'm obviously following this game as close as my free and available time permits me.

So far, I'm very pleased with what I've seen and read, and hope to get an invite to test. But I'm very patient, and am very comfortable with the pace that the developers have taken. I hope they take as long as they need to make this game as strong as possible.

I'm further encouraged by the communication by the project team, including Kayletta who posts here also. I get the sense that the game and its direction is in good hands.

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