Hero Engine: why?

[Skuggan]

Wow... we sure have alot of professional programmers here. You really are programmers yes? Because otherwise theres no way you can tell what can and cant be done with this engine.

 

From the year i studied programming i learned that everything is possible and theres always a way to make your code more eficient. Maybe its the engine, or maybe its just a design choice they chose to rectify? We cant really tell until bioware tells us.

 

Is that why Warhammer Online never got any faster loading times?

Major changes to the engine wont happen without major changes in the games code.

But they could have let the game read faster than 80mb/sec on a SSD raid that can handle 1gb/sec sequential.

 

And everytime I've asked BW/EA for a reason I got some random copy/paste reply from their support asking me to send in various files. I guess I must be the only one having slow loading times...

[lordgracy]

The Hero Engine used is a highly modified version Bioware developed. It is not the "off the shelf" Hero Engine software. You guys should also stop trashing Hero Engine when you have absolutely no reason to. There's nothing bad about the basic design. It's no more buggy than any other gaming engine.

 

If any of you ever worked in software you'd know this is quit common. Get over it. It's not the excuse for bugs you think it is. Bugs happen in the most robust software.

 

I am in my 16th year as a Web Application Developer for a large Aerospace company. I do know what I am talking about.

 

Im sure web application developement is much different from game development my friend. This coming from web developer of 14 years. I am willing to bet this ability lag issue is embedded deep into the core of the net code of hero engine and I doubt they will be able to truly fix it unless they have the abililty to rewrite the core of the engine.

[thasaint]

Well since my thread was closed and linked to this one by the forum gestapo... buried god knows where on the forums. Here's my addition to the Hero Engine:

 

I've waited years for THIS? | Today , 09:18 PM

 

I can't believe I've waited years for this game, since it was a rumor that bioware was making an MMO, and everyone was guessing it was a Star Wars MMO.

 

This is a hollow shell of an MMO. It's NOT massive. It's overly instanced. Why? Here's your answer:

 

http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/he...eets-starwars/

 

"I NEED THIS"

 

That's why... they were too inexperienced to make their own engine, and EA was too cheap to use an established engine, so they went with this garbage we're using now. The person who made that decision is now banished to facebook games.

 

http://www.darthhater.com/articles/s...leaves-bioware

 

I'll still be subbing this game to play through the stories... but as an MMO I'm seriously doubting the future. Every single person I've played with, over 10 guys, are gone already, didn't even sub the first month. Almost every step Bioware has taken since I started in beta midway through last year has been a step backwards. Dual or multi spec? Nope. Easy way to respec? Nope. Dungeon finder or ANY KIND OF ALTERNATIVE? Nope. Being able to queue for specific warzones? Nope. Fair and balanced pvp reward system? Nope. Moddable UI? Nope. I'm sure I've forgotten more problems than other games have in total. Has anyone from this dev team played an MMO that hasn't come out 10+ years ago?

 

I honestly don't know what can be done. I feel the dev responses are at an all time low in the passed 2 weeks, there are 110+ page threads in the pvp forums asking valid questions with no dev response from before this patch, nevermind this disaster of 1.1.

 

Cue the fanboi rage.

[Taurusaud]

mmm... yes.. come post here on the 51st page of a post nobody will ever read through..

[thasaint]

mmm... yes.. come post here on the 51st page of a post nobody will ever read through..

 

Just listening to what the forum Gestapo agent told me to do

[Ellisande]

You know that developing your own engine could take years... right? It was a smart thing to use another engine. Most games use UT3.

 

Please learn game development before you spout useless garbage like this.

 

Thank you.

 

Exactly.

 

Instead of 5 years to bring to market SWTOR would have taken 10 years.

[iamzombie]

I did actually did spend the last 45 mins or so reading most (not all, some were just too much garbage to stomach) and while I quit doing software development professionally years ago, I can provide this info. (this is on my system, and your mileage may vary)

 

a) SWTOR is multi-threaded

b) SWTOR uses (at least) 4 cores

 

SWTOR's version of the HeroEngine uses all 4 cores in my Q9450, and creates multiple threads (the renderer itself may only be single threaded, however, I don't know)

 

http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/5857/resmonswtor.jpg

[Tyr-Axian]

The Hero Engine used is a highly modified version Bioware developed. It is not the "off the shelf" Hero Engine software. You guys should also stop trashing Hero Engine when you have absolutely no reason to. There's nothing bad about the basic design. It's no more buggy than any other gaming engine.

 

If any of you ever worked in software you'd know this is quit common. Get over it. It's not the excuse for bugs you think it is. Bugs happen in the most robust software.

 

I am in my 16th year as a Web Application Developer for a large Aerospace company. I do know what I am talking about.

QFT.

 

I'm so tired of armchair programmers.

 

Me... fifteen years of web development, twelve years of graphic design, and presently training in 3D modelling/game art. I'm with you on this completely.

[Tyr-Axian]

How can BW legally modify the game engine if the engine does not belong to them?

 

And where are you getting all your inside info from?

Ummm...

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...

 

That's what an engine is for. You license the core of it, and you modify it to fit your needs. Licensing an engine would be pretty pointless if you couldn't modify it to your own purposes.

 

That's the whole idea behind licensed engines.

[Sol_Taril]

It's not only an engine.

First. Textures are made, it seems, by a non skill artist. Event at highest possible AA+filtering I can still see artifacts at texture edges at the distance. If I come closer artifacts disappear, but U know they are still there.

The second point is that this engine uses a lot (I mean A LOT) of objects, and all of them are texturized. Compare to something like wow/aoc/etc. you can see, that object in those games are simpler, and their shapes are "carved" with texture tricks (for example: the column is just a cylinder, but its texture makes it look like 3d column). That is why our GPU/CPU is so frustrated with the amount of data they need to process.

And the third point is about lights and textures. Why, JUST WHY did BW need to make textures with mirroring? For more beauty or more lags? With such heavily lighted areas with lots of different light sources and with mirroring textures you do nothing but a performance decrease.

 

P.S.

not everyone has latest intell/amd processor, latest nvidia/ati card. Most of our (community, players - you name it) hardware is about a year (1 year) old, and if you, BW, do your game only for hi ends - you suck. That's the truth.

[Zezel]

Why did you choose an Engine that wasn't developed to your exact specifications? I mean, EA and BW make enough, you could have outsourced your Engine development and made the engine fit your game.

 

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.

 

 

Seriously. Blizzard built an engine to fit their game, they're billions (trillions yet?) richer. You didn't, and you're missing out on Billions in part due to this decision.

Why?

 

I believe it was the good ole buddy club that landed them Hero(cough) Engine.

 

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

[BurningChick]

Champions Online uses the engine, I dont see anything wrong with it.

 

Champions / STO / Neverwinter all use Cryptic's internally-developed engine.

 

FWIW, Cryptic decided to develop its own engine after futzing with the one for CoH -- they figured that, if they had their own engine, they could control its specs and, importantly for them at the time, re-use it internally for their grand plan of releasing a new MMO every 18 months without having to pay licensing fees.

 

Uhhhh ...

 

It didn't work out all that great for 'em. They burnt through so much money on the engine, they skimped on content, spit, and polish leading to Champions' current lulzy state. So few people re-upped after the first month development of the game slowed to a trickle (many of the fixes are trickled down from STO).

 

As for BioWare? They made the decision to go for solid PvE content and (comparatively) skimp on the engine by going pre-fab.

 

There's no clear-cut answer for whether or not it's better to go inernal or external -- each case is different, each has potential pitfalls.

[Vampyress]

Firstly, as a software developer, we use tried and tested frameworks, because our CUSTOMERS (in this case, the customer is the players) want robust and stable software produced in a timely and attractive manner (Something Bioware is failing to do based on their risky choice of game engine). Choosing a game engine is no different to choosing a framework, and anyone who has used a framework can attest to how much of a nightmare facing issues and bugs with them can be. Secondly, software developers are expected to understand the software testing cycle, something that Bioware clearly fails at as many of the bugs in this game could be noticed in less than 2 minutes of testing.

 

I love Bioware, and most of their games have always felt polished, nourished and loved. As a result, I put the same amount of tenderness into my gameplay. The problem here is I don't see the same amount of tenderness from Bioware, it's as if some new, hybrid team that has nothing to do with their typical older games has made this game and as a result the love and cosy feelings are absent.

[Propanelgen]

Wait, there was a Beta, right, so how comes that there are still that many quirks to be worked out?

 

BioWare disregarded most the feedback they got from beta testers, thats why.

[TonyACT]

Just curious why they didn't use the engine from Mass Effect or Dragon Age: origins?

 

Asked in another thread but forum police moved me here.

[Crowleyz]

not everyone has latest intell/amd processor, latest nvidia/ati card. Most of our (community, players - you name it) hardware is about a year (1 year) old, and if you, BW, do your game only for hi ends - you suck. That's the truth.

 

I have XFX Radeon 6950 and AMD X4 980 BE(3,7 ghz quad), and I get < 20 FPS in Imperial Fleet. I know this isn't state of the art but still... it's not low end.

[DurdensWrath]

For me, it's not about the bugs that make this engine disappointing. I can't really pinpoint what bugs are engine related, and I'm not going to try and blame any bugs on the engine.

 

From a hardware support standpoint however, the engine is quite embarrassing though. We're in 2011. Simultaneous multi-threading debuted in consumer processors in 2002. Dual cores have been around in consumer products since 2005. Either way you look at it, 9 years or 6, it's just plain bad. That's a terribly long time in the tech world. Unfortunately, it's a giant plague in the software industry, and gaming industry in particular.

 

DirectX 10 has been around since 2006. There's no support for taking advantage of the aforementioned API, which happens to be more efficient. DirectX 11, which offers around a 50% performance improvement over DX9 at the same graphical settings, has been around 2009. Now, I believe Bioware has talked about potentially adding support for these in the future, and I very, very much would like it if they did. But right now, it's not here. There are performance issues abound, and a lot of these would be alleviated if the HeroEngine was remotely compliant with industry standards that have been around for years.

 

Now, I'm not blaming Bioware for this. I'm simply saying from a technical standpoint, this engine sucks. When the HeroEngine gets multithreading support in the future, I hope it makes its way to TOR in a timely manner.

 

Wait. Are you serious? They're not using DX10 or DX11?

 

 

I have XFX Radeon 6950 and AMD X4 980 BE(3,7 ghz quad), and I get < 20 FPS in Imperial Fleet. I know this isn't state of the art but still... it's not low end.

Same here. I've got a GeForce 560TI and a Core Quad, and ~20FPS. Everywhere else in the universe is fine, even pvp, except that damn fleet.

 

did actually did spend the last 45 mins or so reading most (not all, some were just too much garbage to stomach) and while I quit doing software development professionally years ago, I can provide this info. (this is on my system, and your mileage may vary)

 

a) SWTOR is multi-threaded

b) SWTOR uses (at least) 4 cores

 

SWTOR's version of the HeroEngine uses all 4 cores in my Q9450, and creates multiple threads (the renderer itself may only be single threaded, however, I don't know)

Good god buddy. It looks like it's eating about 60% of every core. That's... a bit of overuse.

 

Game looks fine to me and plays quite well for a launch MMO. Yeah, there are some bugs, but I have yet to see a "game breaking" bug, I don't have performance issues of any kind (I play on a one year old Asus G53 laptop and it runs at high settings consistenly above 50 fps).

I highly doubt you get those kinds of fps on the Imperial Fleet. I get 50 fps easy, everywhere BUT there. Edited January 21, 2012 by DurdensWrath

[lethal_ghost]

http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/#comment-10577

 

just by reading this blog and comments on it you can see when BW got the engine it was a prototype and they obviously never optimized performance very well. Alot of big problems can be traced back to the engine !

[Corpeus]

When you get 4 fps with around 75 people on the screen the engine sucks. When you get about 5-7 fps with 40-50 thats crap. When you get 11-15 fps with 30 people on your screen still crap. It's got nothing to do with individual systems but a horribly coded game engine. No wonder they took high res out of the game the game isn't even playable in low res because it doesn't change the fps at all with this many people o the screen .

 

Lets also mention the horrible draw distance when you come up on people. even with ini tweaks to max it out its far to short. Moving back before someone disappears is longer but its horrible in illum. ALl these things I'm sure they've done to try to hide the problems with this horrible engine.

[Faytte]

The Engine is archaic

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HeroEngine

 

#1: Made by a developer that makes text games

#2: The developer never even made a game to release that used it

#3: Almost no games to ever this this engine were ever release. In fact, only one did and it was an MMO that only was open for a half year before closing down. Main complaint of players? Bugs

#4: The game is OLD, was never updated to support new technologies. Why is it a surprise that BW is struggling to improve the engine?

 

The foundation of this game is flawed. They will be spending most of their time trying to fix it rather than create content.

 

 

F

That.

 

 

I'll let this month run out, then I'm back to rift until GW2 is out.

[Saiaku]

To all the expert web designers out there:

Web design, or web programming may share many of the same logical layouts as game programming (C++), but otherwise it's a farfetch from it.

 

What you know about web-programming is useless in aspects of C++.

 

 

 

Just saying.

[daftshadow]

Why did you choose an Engine that wasn't developed to your exact specifications? I mean, EA and BW make enough, you could have outsourced your Engine development and made the engine fit your game.

 

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.

 

 

Seriously. Blizzard built an engine to fit their game, they're billions (trillions yet?) richer. You didn't, and you're missing out on Billions in part due to this decision.

Why?

 

HeroEngine looked great when it was being developed for the company's own ambitious MMO Hero's Journey but that was shelved. No one else wanted to license this engine for their game, specifically MMO other than Bioware and UTV. This engine was limitations compared to other ones out there that could've been better to use for Swtor. Not exactly sure why Bioware chose this engine to begin with. May be the licensing fee was cheaper? Someone in the higher ups wanted to go this direction? May be Bioware was duped into it? Whatever the reason, the HeroEngine seems like a bad choice.

[cocun]

I have XFX Radeon 6950 and AMD X4 980 BE(3,7 ghz quad), and I get < 20 FPS in Imperial Fleet. I know this isn't state of the art but still... it's not low end.

 

Got an i7 920, Sli 460's and 24gb of ram (I run a lot of VM's) all running on 7200rpm drives and its fine for me except the loooooooooooong load times. I'm talking usually around a minute to get past the initial load screen. After that, its pretty much smooth sailing.

 

All these people posting with respectable rigs makes me wonder what they have done/are doing to their pc's when the game is running like they describe.

Edited January 27, 2012 by cocun

[nadokaoh]

Arise From Your Grave

[Thargrim]

HeroEngine looked great when it was being developed for the company's own ambitious MMO Hero's Journey but that was shelved. No one else wanted to license this engine for their game, specifically MMO other than Bioware and UTV. This engine was limitations compared to other ones out there that could've been better to use for Swtor. Not exactly sure why Bioware chose this engine to begin with. May be the licensing fee was cheaper? Someone in the higher ups wanted to go this direction? May be Bioware was duped into it? Whatever the reason, the HeroEngine seems like a bad choice.

 

They went the cheap route, they knew if they wanted full VO..to cut costs in other areas because the VO would be so expensive. They chose to hire junior developers and a cheesy prototype engine. I seriously am concerned this Hero Engine is going to hold this game back forever.

 

They straight up said that having creature/living mounts like Dewbacks/Tauntauns was a technical issue....I find that incredible, I mean...SWG had creature mounts and was released in what...2005? What in the world.. I have no words for this...

Edited January 27, 2012 by Thargrim