neilthegreat Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Any programing Gurus know if this games engine and the way its coded will be saved? Just an honest question. Love the game just hope it will be alot smoother for some with less hardware and better all around. or is it doomed where it stands? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PostalTwinkie Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 There are a few threads on ways to help improve the game performance, but the steps are pretty drastic in terms of what a player should have to do. As for the engine itself, not sure how BW can help that, aside from a new engine. The problem with that is they would basically have to build on a new engine from the ground up while maintaining the current product. I am sure on some level they can tweak it to help, but they should have never used HeroEngine in the first place. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neilthegreat Posted February 16, 2012 Author Share Posted February 16, 2012 dang thats some harsh news. i never see many issues outside of ilum, but i hear horror stories to those less fortunate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drudenfusz Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 As for the engine itself, not sure how BW can help that, aside from a new engine. The problem with that is they would basically have to build on a new engine from the ground up while maintaining the current product. I am sure on some level they can tweak it to help, but they should have never used HeroEngine in the first place. I think the HeroEngine could handle it, but the problem is more that BioWare didn't stayed in touch with the designers of that engine (they bought the engine before it really got optimized) and BioWare made some changes so that it might now be too late to go back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RyZaMa Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Any programing Gurus know if this games engine and the way its coded will be saved? Just an honest question. Love the game just hope it will be alot smoother for some with less hardware and better all around. or is it doomed where it stands? People seem rather confused on what a Game Engine is. Please read this to inform yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine I have seen some laughable posts talking about "game engine" problems and that they "cannot be fixed". If you actually understand what a game engine is.. you'd understand that when it comes to code, anything and everything can be changed or fixed. My programming Guru friend use to run a RUNUO server (Ultima Online Free Server). RUNUO was the game engine. The RUNUO game engine had/has several issues, my friend ended up re-coding 70% of the engine. Last time I checked, Bioware has coders. And last time I checked, code can be changed. People need to stop worrying about the Game Engine. WoW's Game Engine had many issues when it first launched. Now it is one of the smoothest and most staple MMO engines out there. Bioware can do whatever they want to this Game Engine, and build it up to be as good or better then any other MMO Engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drudenfusz Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 People seem rather confused on what a Game Engine is. Please read this to inform yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine I have seen some laughable posts talking about "game engine" problems and that they "cannot be fixed". If you actually understand what a game engine is.. you'd understand that when it comes to code, anything and everything can be changed or fixed. My programming Guru friend use to run a RUNUO server (Ultima Online Free Server). RUNUO was the game engine. The RUNUO game engine had/has several issues, my friend ended up re-coding 70% of the engine. Last time I checked, Bioware has coders. And last time I checked, code can be changed. People need to stop worrying about the Game Engine. WoW's Game Engine had many issues when it first launched. Now it is one of the smoothest and most staple MMO engines out there. Bioware can do whatever they want to this Game Engine, and build it up to be as good or better then any other MMO Engine. Still they use a engine they have not entirely developed themselves, so it might take quite some time to understand what the engine can really do and what not. Then some changes might look easy, but they aren't. Ask your programming guru who complicated things might be at the back end. Look BioWare has said more than once that an issue will be solved with the next patch and then it wasn't (sometimes it even created just more problems). Sure, they might get one day everything fixed, but that might take years... years that not every player want to wait... and many MMOs have gone f2p before they could get the things right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madwooki Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Maybe your friend should apply at BW to fix the game engine then. Having said that the hero engine should not have been used, it is and always will be the core problem with performance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DigitalDreamz Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 People seem rather confused on what a Game Engine is. Please read this to inform yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine I have seen some laughable posts talking about "game engine" problems and that they "cannot be fixed". If you actually understand what a game engine is.. you'd understand that when it comes to code, anything and everything can be changed or fixed. My programming Guru friend use to run a RUNUO server (Ultima Online Free Server). RUNUO was the game engine. The RUNUO game engine had/has several issues, my friend ended up re-coding 70% of the engine. Last time I checked, Bioware has coders. And last time I checked, code can be changed. People need to stop worrying about the Game Engine. WoW's Game Engine had many issues when it first launched. Now it is one of the smoothest and most staple MMO engines out there. Bioware can do whatever they want to this Game Engine, and build it up to be as good or better then any other MMO Engine. That's right stop worrying, as long as it's CODE it can be fixed. Never mind that they have no idea how the game engine runs, restructure the entire source code of SWTOR and take another two years 60 million dollars. No problem it's fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PostalTwinkie Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) People seem rather confused on what a Game Engine is. Please read this to inform yourself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine I have seen some laughable posts talking about "game engine" problems and that they "cannot be fixed". If you actually understand what a game engine is.. you'd understand that when it comes to code, anything and everything can be changed or fixed. My programming Guru friend use to run a RUNUO server (Ultima Online Free Server). RUNUO was the game engine. The RUNUO game engine had/has several issues, my friend ended up re-coding 70% of the engine. Last time I checked, Bioware has coders. And last time I checked, code can be changed. People need to stop worrying about the Game Engine. WoW's Game Engine had many issues when it first launched. Now it is one of the smoothest and most staple MMO engines out there. Bioware can do whatever they want to this Game Engine, and build it up to be as good or better then any other MMO Engine. Anything on a computer can be changed, no one is saying that it can't. But it isn't as simple as going into the code and making quick changes. A couple of issues come up, things like dependencies within the code. How does alteration of one section effect the rest of the system? Another issue is how much access does BioWare have to HeroEngine's code? They license the product, they don't own it. EA dumped $200,000,000 into this game, we should have a far better product, not something that runs like it is in late Alpha or early Beta. Edited February 16, 2012 by PostalTwinkie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crummosh Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Maybe your friend should apply at BW to fix the game engine then. Having said that the hero engine should not have been used, it is and always will be the core problem with performance. Care to explaine why? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madwooki Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 ^read the response above you or use google plenty of info about it and its limits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Knewt Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Care to explaine why? The hero engine is too small for a game this size. Considering the money and time poured into this game, Bioware should have written their own engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PostalTwinkie Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Care to explaine why? HeroEngine was originally, and still is, a single threaded system. BioWare had to on some level bastardize the code of HeroEngine to allow multi-threaded execution. Again, taking a product not designed for a task and bastardizing it until it semi-works. Using a sledge to smash a square peg into a round hole. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inarai Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 (edited) The hero engine is too small for a game this size. Considering the money and time poured into this game, Bioware should have written their own engine. ... That would have taken more money and time than this game already took. The engine used in DA:O took 5 years, and that's a far more simple engine than an MMO would require. Engines are huge investments of time and money - absolutely massive, more so than any game you'd develop for it. Edited February 16, 2012 by Inarai Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inarai Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 HeroEngine was originally, and still is, a single threaded system. BioWare had to on some level bastardize the code of HeroEngine to allow multi-threaded execution. Again, taking a product not designed for a task and bastardizing it until it semi-works. Using a sledge to smash a square peg into a round hole. No, actually, they probably just stripped out large chunks of that code and recoded it from scratch - CDProjekt did a similar thing with the Aurora Engine's renderer for The Witcher. Which still beats having to do the network backend from scratch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PostalTwinkie Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 ... That would have taken more money and time than this game already took. The engine used in DA:O took 5 years, and that's a far more simple engine than an MMO would require. Engines are huge investments of time and money - absolutely massive, more so than any game you'd develop for it. This game had a budget of $200,000,000, they had the resources. Rushed product is rushed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inarai Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 This game had a budget of $200,000,000, they had the resources. Rushed product is rushed. Not even close. To do a new engine, they'd have needed a whole crapton of money on top of that. And time. The game took the better part of a decade as is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Itukaaj Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 I think that Bioware has stated that they chose the Hero engine because they felt it would enable them to make changes without shutting the game down and enter the "world" I am guessing to try to replicate or observe issues. They then over the course of the years made modifications to what they felt met there needs. That being said some people who claim to understand gaming or have otherwise made a judgement on technical deficiencies attribute this to the inceptive choice of the game engine. I don't know enough myself but I have not seen much more than assumptions and spurious arguments. Since programming usually follows logical rules the given attacks on the hero engine are not supported by classical logic. That is not to say they are wrong but they are not providing valid reasons why they are right. In the end it will all come down to money. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yuuj Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Still they use a engine they have not entirely developed themselves, so it might take quite some time to understand what the engine can really do and what not. Then some changes might look easy, but they aren't. Ask your programming guru who complicated things might be at the back end. Look BioWare has said more than once that an issue will be solved with the next patch and then it wasn't (sometimes it even created just more problems). Sure, they might get one day everything fixed, but that might take years... years that not every player want to wait... and many MMOs have gone f2p before they could get the things right. A lot of assumption on your part. They've been using this engine for how long now? And you think they don't understand it yet? Stop assuming and stop making everything so sound dramatic. You aren't doing anyone any favors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crummosh Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 ^read the response above you or use google plenty of info about it and its limits. I did but nobody says anything they know, they just repeat what the read somewhere. A game engine isn't one thing. It's a framework for building games (at least in the form of hero engine and other mmo engines). So why is it bad and why can't be changed? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akirator Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 HeroEngine was originally, and still is, a single threaded system. BioWare had to on some level bastardize the code of HeroEngine to allow multi-threaded execution. Again, taking a product not designed for a task and bastardizing it until it semi-works. Using a sledge to smash a square peg into a round hole. No, just no. It is NOT single threaded and the "proof" everybody uses is a quote taken completely out of context and applied to something it was never meant to comment on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PostalTwinkie Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Not even close. To do a new engine, they'd have needed a whole crapton of money on top of that. And time. The game took the better part of a decade as is. Not even close? Frostbite 2.0 was built from the ground up and cost about $100,000,000! It is the most advanced engine on the market and the most advanced ever created. To sit here and say EA couldn't afford a custom engine for SWTOR is ludicrous. We aren't asking for BF3 graphics here! At $200,000,000 they damn well had the resources, they just took the quick path, not the right path. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yvin Posted February 16, 2012 Share Posted February 16, 2012 Hello everyone! In order to keep topics consolidated, we're closing this thread. Please continue discussing the Hero Engine here: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=131110 Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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