Why did Bioware choose the hero engine?

[Malice_Nihilim]

How the hell do you know how the game is developed or how the company works? Do you have sources? Oh never mind, typical internet bull******* making stuff up based on nothing or vague source material and seeing what they want to see. You make me laugh. Pathetic.

 

Obvious troll is obvious.

 

It is the internet, no one says you have to believe me. I could claim to be the CEO of EA and know first hand, and you wouldn't believe me anyway, so no point defending my point, you believe what I have to say or you don't on its own merit.

[Bollah]

Just how much money have those two "horrible" games made Blizzard/Activision? More than Crysis, Shank, Skate, SSX, Mirror's Edge, Kingdoms of Amalur and Burnout combined for EA.

 

McDonald's makes a lot of money too. However, it isn't the best restaurant.

[CupieFoxtail]

Just how much money have those two "horrible" games made Blizzard/Activision? More than Crysis, Shank, Skate, SSX, Mirror's Edge, Kingdoms of Amalur and Burnout combined for EA.

 

I'm going to appreciate a video game company for how much money they can make, instead of how good their games are.

Right....

Well by that logic, I guess we shouldn't even argue, because Nintendo absolutely murders Activision in numbers sold.

Surely you will agree that Super Mario Bros. is the greatest game of all time, with over 40 million sold

Edited January 10, 2012 by CupieFoxtail

[DTuloJr]

I'll credit EA for recognizing talent and bankrolling their games. I won't credit Activision, because they don't buy talent, as demonstrated by the fact that pretty much any (non-Tony Hawk Pro-Skater) game that says Activision on the front without Blizzard as dev will be tolerable at best.

 

Activision's strengths in the mid 90's was in-house development (MechWarrior II, Zork series, etc.) and in publishing and distribution. They transitioned to supporting third party developers and publishing and distributing their products primary, with in-house development really taking a back seat. THAT is where they've made huge profits; supporting good products and making sure they're available all over the planet. Say what you will about Bobby Kotick, he probably deserves a lot of the grief he gets these days, but the guy has excellent business skills.

[Godsfear]

McDonald's makes a lot of money too. However, it isn't the best restaurant.

 

The real issue is that people except that as food.

 

Mediocrity rules this age.

[DTuloJr]

Surely you will agree that Super Mario Bros. is the greatest game of all time, with over 40 million sold

 

I thought that was Hearts and Mine Sweeper...

[Kanharn]

well, if SOE's SWG project proves anything, it was that they knew nothing about MMO then or now

 

Agreed, SWG turned in to a fancy dress game nothing more, game was riddled with bugs that had been in game for over 7 years lol.

[Kanharn]

McDonald's makes a lot of money too. However, it isn't the best restaurant.

 

To call McDonald's a restaurant is just lol, Like calling a Hot dog vendor a cafe.

[Hanni]

To call McDonald's a restaurant is just lol, Like calling a Hot dog vendor a cafe.

 

Do you know what a restaurant is? McDonald's is a restaurant.

[Ommm]

It actually runs a system trick to function as mutl threaded by running two .exe's at once, but yes, the lack of native multi threading is a weakness. As for games over the last 6 years? Multi core systems were really only popular the last 4-5 years, so most folks weren't writing a ton od multi threaded games previously.

 

Ah so this is what i was seeing in the taskmanager, very clever, thank you!

And yep and yep and yep.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Ommm

[MusedMark]

This would appear to be why they used the Hero Engine:

 

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

[TheHirogen]

Do you know what a restaurant is? McDonald's is a restaurant.

 

also in Sweden their meals are all natural, no transfats and green energy and naturally produced, even got symbol on it that only healthy food receives. Why is mccdonalds this way in sweden? because we are entitled people demanding good things in life with law and order and customer support that replies after weeks opening a ticket in this pos game.

Edited January 10, 2012 by TheHirogen

[Ommm]

This would appear to be why they used the Hero Engine:

 

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

 

Somehow it makes me proud of the guys from hero engine. Really cool! And i like the tools.

But highres textures still dont work. >.<

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r277/UnruheEndlos/The%20Old%20Republic/TORTextureComparison.jpg

 

I hope someday they bioware gets it right, because left side does not give the project justice imo.

Edited January 10, 2012 by Ommm

[Hanni]

Somehow it makes me proud of the guys from hero engine. Really cool! And i like the tools.

But highres textures still dont work. >.<

 

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r277/UnruheEndlos/The%20Old%20Republic/TORTextureComparison.jpg

 

I hope someday they bioware gets it right, because left side does not give the project justice imo.

 

"We were concerned over their making major changes to our engine, but we loved the size of the check that came with the deal."

 

LOL.

[gurugeorge]

Why did they choose a engine that is so heavily instanced instead of building their own like Blizzard did?

 

Im just wondering because I keep hearing about all the money they spent and the heart of this game the main engine seems very cheap.

 

Any reason for this?

 

BW have said that the reason they chose the Hero engine was because of its back end tools and content creation tools. They are apparently pretty advanced and enable large but spread-out teams to co-ordinate and work on pumping out and iterating/tweakng content quickly and coherently.

 

That's it.

 

They have also said they have already heavily modified the engine itself.

 

Bear in mind also, that development of SWTOR started in 2006 and that's when the choice was made.

[DTuloJr]

This would appear to be why they used the Hero Engine:

 

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

 

So basically, it was a sole-sourced purchase because it was made by a friend of the guy running the company... not necessarily because it was actually the best thing on the market.

 

Nice to see most of what I've posted here and in other identical threads completely confirmed, though. FYI, I'm betting they finally got a newer build of HE a couple of months prior to launch and slipped a lot of their custom code into some parts of the client/server engines. There were too many features that suddenly appeared that coincided with additions to vanilla HE.

[WLpride]

Look...the Hero "Engine" is not a graphics platform like Unreal. It is a MMO development toolkit. Graphics and such are designed using plug-ins, which can be other "engines" (like Unreal), Maya, or whatever graphic design suite you want to use. What the Hero Engine is, is a collection of scripting tools and the server back-end. It was designed from the ground up as a MMO platform. It has actually won a number of awards for being a best-in-class MMO toolkit. One of its strengths is that it allows real-time, collaborative content creation and allows for rapid deployment of updates. That is, new content can be created and added to the game on the fly while the servers are running. One of the examples given is that a designer can build a house while another works on the landscape outside and both will see each others changes in real time. So really, BW made a good decision by going with a software platform that was purpose built for online game play.

 

Sounds well and good, but this overview doesn't account for critical MMO issues like - Lag, many players playing at once in one area and efficient RT combat. Best designed worlds will still only go so far - just not a very action oriented game.

[wifeaggro]

This was last week's bandwagon. Sorry, you missed the boat.

 

This was actually a bandwagon in 2008 when they announced the engine they would use.

[DTuloJr]

Look...the Hero "Engine" is not a graphics platform like Unreal.

 

 

Nope. It's also a graphical engine, just like Unreal and CryEngine. Except Unreal that everyone loves to talk about, is not designed to be the full engine for an MMO. Now, most graphical clients are modular to some extent, and can certainly be adapted for MMO (or FPS) use. That's what happened with Aion's use of CryEngine; they took an FPS game client and bolted it onto an MMO game development framework as their graphics engine.

[Hanni]

Nope. It's also a graphical engine, just like Unreal and CryEngine. Except Unreal that everyone loves to talk about, is not designed to be the full engine for an MMO. Now, most graphical clients are modular to some extent, and can certainly be adapted for MMO (or FPS) use. That's what happened with Aion's use of CryEngine; they took an FPS game client and bolted it onto an MMO game development framework as their graphics engine.

 

There are several MMOs that used the Unreal Engine.

 

I don't remember the name of one of them, but I can name the other. Fury. Although this game absolutely failed and probably lasted less than any other MMO in the history of mankind.

[DTuloJr]

The main differentiator with "game engines" is whether or not they're designed to manage and track hundreds to thousands of players on the same "world", and whether or not they're able to interact with each other, both via the server, and via an end-user client. Make or break is usually at the end-user client end... a phenomenal example of that would be the old "LagForge" issue that WoW encountered... regardless of the actual problem, the preception was that the end-user experienced a serious performance problem, which was not fun. Not fun = BAD. The trick is in optimizing which end handles what calculations; minimizing the amount of data flow required between servers and clients, while maximizing security and preventing end-users from being able to cheat in a manner that provides them any form of an advantage over other players or the game world. FPS engines are typically NOT designed to handle a data flow of hundreds of players all localized, while MMO engines are meant for that, but tend to have much more complex interaction capabilities than FPS games. Hence, why true MMO's rarely port well to consoles or phones, and when they do, are severely limited.

[Poogination]

Why did they choose a engine that is so heavily instanced instead of building their own like Blizzard did?

 

Im just wondering because I keep hearing about all the money they spent and the heart of this game the main engine seems very cheap.

 

Any reason for this?

 

It's simple. The Hero Engine does not graphically hold up to any of the latest engines out there right now, especially that which is being used in GW2.

 

It's simply not a great engine, and it's a shame that a game with so much potential was build on a terrible foundation.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Poogination

[Mormack]

Why did they choose a engine that is so heavily instanced instead of building their own like Blizzard did?

 

Im just wondering because I keep hearing about all the money they spent and the heart of this game the main engine seems very cheap.

 

Any reason for this?

 

My brain hurts so much right now.

[DTuloJr]

It's simple. The Hero Engine does not graphically hold up to any of the latest engines out there right now, especially that which is being used in GW2.

 

It's simply not a great engine, and it's a shame that a game with so much potential was build on a terrible foundation.

 

1. Typical MMO game development frameworks aren't designed, necessarily, to have highly optimized graphics engines that are bleeding edge. Bleeding edge typically means you're going to alienate a large amount of your potential customer base, especially with the STAR WARS property.

 

2. It is funcitonal and does exactly what BioWare AUSTIN needed it to do.

 

3. The potential was lost when the scope and vision of the game design was sacrificed in order to make a mediocre KotOR sequel, rather than a "fully-realized online world" that was half Theme Park, half Sandbox, as originally stated. None of that is the fault of the game engine.

 

4. Someone chose not to strengthen the foundation... It was a deliberate business decision made by someone, somewhere, at some time.

[Poogination]

1. Typical MMO game development frameworks aren't designed, necessarily, to have highly optimized graphics engines that are bleeding edge. Bleeding edge typically means you're going to alienate a large amount of your potential customer base, especially with the STAR WARS property.

 

2. It is funcitonal and does exactly what BioWare AUSTIN needed it to do.

 

3. The potential was lost when the scope and vision of the game design was sacrificed in order to make a mediocre KotOR sequel, rather than a "fully-realized online world" that was half Theme Park, half Sandbox, as originally stated. None of that is the fault of the game engine.

 

4. Someone chose not to strengthen the foundation... It was a deliberate business decision made by someone, somewhere, at some time.

 

I completely understand your first point and I agree, but I still think the graphics optimization for this game was very poorly done, and it could have been so much better.

 

I agree that it should have been a "fully-realized online world," and not some HEAVY themepark based world. A lot more sandbox elements should have been incorporated from the beginning and they weren't.

 

I guess EA didn't feel the need to fund the more "technical" side of graphic optimizations, which resulted in very sparse graphics options to choose from and poor optimization.

Edited January 11, 2012 by Poogination