Hero Engine: why?

[Arkerus]

/signed

 

People are of course for the most part overlooking anything that is not within 2 feet of their noses.

 

To all the /ranters.....a couple of things to take time to understand (if you can, or are willing):

 

1) The engine really is a custom engine at this point, given the huge amount of modifications BW has made to it through development (their own admission, not speculation). It's not revision compatible with new release levels from the license owner. They took a core engine available off the shelf a number of years back and licensed it and modified it from there. It's like buying base code for an application and then changing it and adding to it until it meets your requirements.

 

2) What is mostly overlooked by the forum "experts" on game engines is that there are several components to the engine. You see the client rendering side of the engine. BUT there is also a developer side of the engine which is really where the power is for BW. If you have ever seen a demonstration of the developer modules of this engine, you will see why the developers like it so much. It's what gives them the ability to create the world you see in game. Go back to some of the early podcasts and see what BW shared in this regard. The developer side of the engine allows them to run concurrent story boarding, design, and polish on content development, and then regression test and release to the client side at a scale that has probably not been done before.

 

If you want to /rant and make excuses for yourself as to why to hate the game or bugs in the game, fine. Do so. But you look silly trying to pin it all on the game engine and the fact that they did not completely scratch build all the code from the foundaion up.

 

 

I tried to make this same point 100 times. There was a giant list of CTQs (or requirements) when building this game.

 

They obviously chose the engine that met most or all of the most important requirements. That engine happened to be the Hero engine and they built a game around it.

 

No one in this thread, unless they work at Bioware, knows what that list was or what the developers needed. All we have are armchair quarterbacks who think they know why Bioware chose this engine.

 

The engine, is most likely, not the root cause of the issue. It most likely the application of custom development that is creating issues.

 

Anything buggy with the engine is probably being dealt with by the engine staff or the supplier.

[BluePlatypus]

2) What is mostly overlooked by the forum "experts" on game engines is that there are several components to the engine. You see the client rendering side of the engine. BUT there is also a developer side of the engine which is really where the power is for BW. If you have ever seen a demonstration of the developer modules of this engine, you will see why the developers like it so much.

I assume you're talking about HeroBlade, the dev environment? I think it seems pretty par for the course in regards to what else is out there. What are you talking about specifically?

[Andryah]

Will this engine handle a maxed zone of pvpers or crash like WH did?

 

That is my concern.

 

The engine is rarely the cause of this sort of thing. And based on the information that has trickeled in from users, this does not sound like a problem with the engine itself.

 

There are issues the engine (which BW has acknowledged they are working on), but zone crashing isn't the engine. When a zone crashes, it affects every player, and it's generally server side.

 

But clearly, you need a single bullseyed target to apply your dissatisfaction toward. It's just that the engine is the wrong target in this case.

[youwillburn]

you are continuing to look more s***d than your previous post

 

let me answer

 

A) see below

B) Subjective yes misspelled. You said "loads of bugs and problems" and yet you linked me the ONE major problem that SWTOR has and they said in public they working as top priority to that. Last time i checked one =/= loads.

C) Are we gonna count the developement cycle or the "live" beta testing? i am confused. You still didnt' answer me why the perfect wow engine still has charge bug and vanish bug that "destroy" 2 signature moves from 2 classes? (i do not count that the people have learned to live with that)

 

who is the Biodrone and who is the Pandalover ??

 

Why so defensive?

 

B)There a thread with hundreds of broken quests, skills in addition to the MAJOR issue of the animation problem. So funny you're trying to focus on the one thing I linked that breaks the game for every class in attempt to forward your argument. So you're basically saying aside from that one huge game breaking bug no other bugs exists in this game. Ok Mr Biodrone.

 

C)Hey genius, if I make a terrible homemade computer tomorrow for sale and my excuse was "Apple was just as bad when they started" I guess that will totally fly. But of course, logic don't apply to you.

[youwillburn]

I tried to make this same point 100 times. There was a giant list of CTQs (or requirements) when building this game.

 

They obviously chose the engine that met most or all of the most important requirements. That engine happened to be the Hero engine and they built a game around it.

 

No one in this thread, unless they work at Bioware, knows what that list was or what the developers needed. All we have are armchair quarterbacks who think they know why Bioware chose this engine.

 

The engine, is most likely, not the root cause of the issue. It most likely the application of custom development that is creating issues.

 

Anything buggy with the engine is probably being dealt with by the engine staff or the supplier.

 

Of course that doesn't apply to you. You know exactly why they chose this engine.

[Andryah]

I assume you're talking about HeroBlade, the dev environment? I think it seems pretty par for the course in regards to what else is out there. What are you talking about specifically?

 

I'm talking specifically about the fact that it enables a high degree of concurrent design, from story board through animation and texturing (without design siloing, which is where a lot gotcha bugs are created, and wasted rework cycles drain resources) AND that they did not have to scratch build the design environment since they licensed and leveraged existing code.

[BluePlatypus]

The engine, is most likely, not the root cause of the issue. It most likely the application of custom development that is creating issues.

 

Anything buggy with the engine is probably being dealt with by the engine staff or the supplier.

Those are two staggering speculations coming from someone who is derisively accusing people of "armchair quarterbacking".

 

Ultimately, you can't have it both ways. You cant claim that no one in this thread knows about, or as worked with, HSL (two invalid points by the way) on one hand, and then on the other hand claim to know what's creating issues and how those issues are being dealt with.

 

The vendor is probably going to be of limited help, but future revisions to the engine can be backported by BW. This is not at all unusual with modified software.

[iain_b]

BTW- as for why BioWare chose the HeroEngine...

 

What elements of the backend design-- of the production process; which ones are they using HeroEngine for and which ones had they done more in-house?

 

Neil: My understanding is that the production process is largely intact from HeroEngine. There's some upgraded features that we've added and some upgraded features that they've added but by-and-large it's the same thing. The whole concept of doing your development online in real time with your entire team logged in to the same development server remains intact.

 

That is really why they licensed it. That's the thing that makes this so special.

 

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/12/11/massivelys-interviews-the-makers-of-the-old-republics-game-eng/

Edited January 5, 2012 by iain_b

[Andryah]

Of course that doesn't apply to you. You know exactly why they chose this engine.

 

lmao.

 

I'm guessing that his statement "No one in this thread, unless they work at Bioware, knows what that list was or what the developers needed." was completely lost on you.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Andryah

[elvinu]

you failed .............. hell even now WoW has some horrible bugs (vanish bug,charge-Jump bug etc)

 

you are clueless seriously

 

i play assassin and a rogue. the vanish in this game is... so buggy..it's...non existent in combat. the pet goes wild, the mobs brake it, etc. in wow at least i can vanish. and the vanish spell itself it's op. but that is another discussion.

 

as for hero engine, single thread tells the story. seriously in multi-thread era, this is a disappointment. even a game like wow (7years old) added this.

 

and, why not other engines like HAVOK? (GW2 is using it)

[beetz]

You can modify an engine... For a game this large I am sure they can bend it to do whatever they so wish.

 

 

I hope they bend it to make my character move smoother.

 

And use his abilities when I press a button.

 

That would be sweet.

[BluePlatypus]

I'm talking specifically about the fact that it enables a high degree of concurrent design, from story board through animation and texturing (without design siloing, which is where a lot gotcha bugs are created, and wasted rework cycles drain resources) AND that they did not have to scratch build the design environment since they licensed and leveraged existing code.

Sounds real agile

 

I think many of the points you've touched on revolve around the way changes are committed to a given branch. I think similar affects be achieved through.. git.

Edited January 5, 2012 by BluePlatypus

[Andryah]

as for hero engine, single thread tells the story. seriously in multi-thread era, this is a disappointment. even a game like wow (7years old) added this.

 

My processor has an occaisonal spike to ~70% utilized, but for the most parts sits consistently at 25-30%. Threading is really not an issue with this game (at least so far).

 

Rift on the other hand, that is a processor hungry beast.

[BluePlatypus]

My processor has an occaisonal spike to ~70% utilized, but for the most parts sits consistently at 25-30%. Threading is really not an issue with this game (at least so far).

 

Rift on the other hand, that is a processor hungry beast.

Threading helps software utilize more of your processing, not less.

[youwillburn]

lmao.

 

I'm guessing that his statement "No one in this thread, unless they work at Bioware, knows what that list was or what the developers needed." was completely lost on you.

 

No, he assumes that Bioware lives in magic land and has unlimited money to find any engine they like that matches their requirements. I say cost was a huge factor when picking the new untested engine.

[kineticdamage]

Instead, you chose the lazy way and are trying to make a game fit an engine. Not only that, you picked a terrible single-threaded engine that can't even process commands before animations finish, hence all of the ability delay rage you're seeing.

 

Are you serious ?

Because if it's true, that would turn this Georg Zeller quote into pure crap :

 

Bioware, why 1.5 seconds GlobalCooldown? anyone familiar with the term "GCD locked"?

 

The GCD is set, so you can see all the "pretty" animations BW made for the game.

 

We pride ourselves with a very polished and good looking combat system, and that means you get to see actual combat animations along with the floating numbers that indicate damage.

 

If you're going to do something for many many hours over the course of the game, and combat is likely the thing many players might do the most, it'd better be more interesting than a single whack animation and a floating number.

 

For example, your attack animation might consist of shooting a stream of blaster bolts that do damage on impact rather than a single bolt or single sword swing.

 

Or how to turn a game engine huge constraint into a selling argument ...........

(animations are fantastic I admit, but even though, this engine detail turns that quote into some fishy stuff...)

Edited January 5, 2012 by kineticdamage

[Drayzen]

And right they were to say so, SWTOR does support up to 4 cores.

 

Supports, but is not optimized. Hero Engine is SINGLE THREADED by design.

[iain_b]

Or how to turn a game engine huge constraint into a selling argument ...........

(animations are fantastic I admit, but even though, this engine detail turns that quote into some fishy stuff...)

 

Personally I think it's pretty cool when I activate an ability on my Juggernaut that is three saber swings that each individual swing of the animation is applying its own damage.

[BluePlatypus]

Are you serious ?

Because if it's true, that would turn this Georg Zeller quote into pure crap :

 

 

 

 

 

Or how to turn a game engine huge constraint into a selling argument ...........

(animations are fantastic I admit, but even though, this engine detail turns that quote into some fishy stuff...)

I'm not sure what you think the ability delay stuff has to do with the GCD or animations?

[iain_b]

i play assassin and a rogue. the vanish in this game is... so buggy..it's...non existent in combat. the pet goes wild, the mobs brake it, etc. in wow at least i can vanish. and the vanish spell itself it's op. but that is another discussion.

 

Stealth/vanish has been broken in WoW for ages...

[demoncrat]

Stealth/vanish has been broken in WoW for ages...

 

What version of WoW did you play?

 

I played a rogue at WoW launch and it worked flawlessly.

[Dalak]

A lot of people are ragging on TORs engine without actually paying attention to the reason WHY BioWare picked it.

 

They picked it because it was exactly what they needed but also because they could change it. They admitted years ago that they have extensively rewrote parts of the engine so to call it the Hero Engine now would actually be a fallacy.

 

They can do whatever they want to it and fix anything that requires it.

Edited January 5, 2012 by Dalak

[Andryah]

Personally I think it's pretty cool when I activate an ability on my Juggernaut that is three saber swings that each individual swing of the animation is applying its own damage.

 

I agree.

 

I think the real issue some people are having is they want to mash keys like a hyperactive gerbil on speed. No finesse, just lots and lots of mash and smash. The excellent combat animations in this game are lost on a lot of people I think.

[Perfik]

There are a couple threads floating around that list over 200 bugs, some of them major and gamebreaking, some of them core engine problem (ability delay thread which has over 25,000 posts throughout the iterations now, I think).

 

Look, Trion modified an entire engine to their liking over 6 years and they came out with an amazing solid game, with very few engine problems (optimization mostly)

 

Bioware has licensed and slightly modified an engine as well, over the same timeframe, and has shown that they know next to nothing about the engine itself considering gamebreaking bugs are running rampant and they are fixing only small time stuff that is easy and changing a few lines of code (quest bugs, adding baby names to credits, etc).

 

Who cares if WoW still has bugs. Everytime you add onto the base code you're going to get some problems. I don't think I've seen anyone complain about a truly "gamebreaking" bug in WoW for years now.

 

if there are sooo many gamebreaking bugs why i havent' encountered any ? and i already said EXCLUDE ability delay they admitted and they work top priority for that.

 

can you define gamebreaking ? why you do not tell us how many bugs YOU encountered?

 

as for the gamebreaking bugs of wow i said 2 that kill signatures moves from warriors (charge) and vanish (rogues). Try the wow class forums if you havent' seen any

 

now for the "BW is crap and knows nothing about engine programming" well this is your opinion and we take is as that. i respect that opinion but i completely disagree.

1st if you know about companies-gaming studios you know that different departements work in different aspects of the game, they do not put the animators to write the coding neither the story writers to fix netcoding.

That the small bugs fixed 1st isnt' something strange in fact it is completely understandable (i wont' explain it again search the internet how a company is functioning).

2nd THe history of BW is already written ( 7 AAA games in their arsenal), i do not think that you can really tell that this is a crap studio.

[iain_b]

What version of WoW did you play?

 

I played a rogue at WoW launch and it worked flawlessly.

 

If you're going to be a smart alek please have some clue about that which you speak.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/search?q=stealth%20broken&f=post