Hero Engine: why?

[VonAlex]

So you were part of the engine architecture team over at BioWare Austin? Interesting.

 

 

No.. I just wouldnt base my entire multi million project on something I cannot control that beeing logic

[Terko_Koslah]

So you were part of the engine architecture team over at BioWare Austin? Interesting.

 

I almost feel like being a part of the development team while playing the game.

Edited March 4, 2012 by Terko_Koslah

[Overlord_Orcus]

Well, I doubt that a player would license the hero engine just to have a look at the source code (and to "win" the argument in this thread). Unless of course Bioware would publish the engine (including the tools/editors/etc.) as OpenSource. But I don't see this coming either.

 

I have a hero engine licence... Now, anyone can get them, at no charge. Easy as pie.

[Dayfax]

In all honesty, I've wondered why smugglers and bounty hunters weren't a third faction in this game.

 

Because voicing all that extra content that 2/3 of the other players would never see would be expensive as hell.

[MaverickXIV]

 

 

No.. I just wouldnt base my entire multi million project on something I cannot control that beeing logic

Computer code, even code that isn't familiar to you, is not magic. It's controllable.

[Dayfax]

Computer code, even code that isn't familiar to you, is not magic. It's controllable.

 

Obviously, you've never worked with Perl.

Edited March 4, 2012 by Dayfax

[Overlord_Orcus]

Despite the fact that many players have NO ISSUES with this game, doesn't mean that the engine is is NOT poorly coded and uses system/hardware resources very wrongly.

 

It's a fact established by thousands of players. Accept it, you non-believers.

 

Its also a fact that poorly coded games, and older games, perform better on the systems they are aimed at. Ever wonder why games like Planescape works great on a system from its error, but fails miserably without tweaking, mods, and in-system editing on a modern system?

 

Much like how when 64bit came along 32 bit applications would run faster, and why it is a well known fact that:

 

APPLICATIONS WITHOUT HYPERTHREADING SUPPORT AND MULTITHREAD SUPPORT WORK BETTER ON SYSTEMS WITHOUT THEM.

 

Ever since I clocked my system down from 4.5ghz to 2,6ghz the game runs smoother.

[Overlord_Orcus]

And my i7 Extreme Edition 3960X 3.3GHz Six-Core is at fault also? My wife's i7 930 2.80Ghz processor doesn't seem to suffer, but it runs a HD 5770 and I built my machine with 2x SLI Dual (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580x2 3GB Asus MARS II Edition (MARS II/2DIS/3GD5).

 

I think the majority of low fps experiences in heavily populated pvp areas and fleet could possibly be caused by GPU driver compatibilty issues. It may be the engine, but I'm not a much of a programmer. I did learn and use C+ and C++ to some extent in my business but have no practical experience coding gaming engines. I do have 16 years of experience building and testing computers and related hardware and software. This is why I believe many fps issues may be resolved through GPU driver support. Does Bioware work with GPU manufacturers to develop updated GPU drivers? I don't know. I'd like to know though. Which is why Bioware should utilize a more communicative approach with it's customers on these and other issues.

 

Bioware can't work in house to fix the graphical issues of the game. How could they work with a driver manufacturer?

 

The problem is not with the drivers. I can play Skyrim and Battlfield 3 on max settings in surround vision; and my skyrim uses about 12gb worth of texture mods. The problem is that the engine is 5 years old. The modern hero engine handles things much better.

 

It might not have great threaded support, but it has less memory leaks, and faster frame rates on threaded machines and multicore machines.

 

Get a single core processor with 2gb of ram and a 8800gt and the game will be flawless, short of any network issues.

 

Get anything more modern and it will eat itself. The client gets up to almost a full 2gb of ram usage on my system (24gb of ram, not an issue) when it shouldnt. Once or twice it jumped over 2gbs of ram and crashed.

 

Furthermore, bioware's solution is to reduce graphical performance with lower res textures, reduced quality shaders, etc, etc. Does this sound like a company that will work with driver manufacturers to get better support?

 

And for the guys who have posted on this topic saying that bioware does not care, they have made their money back: they have not. Hero dudes are taking at least 30% from ALL their money made, including boxed and digital sales.

[Overlord_Orcus]

This is a very good post. This poster is the pure definition of the casual gamer BW needs to capture. yet he's not entirely satisfied.

 

He probably won't be ever, either. BW have been very obscure in their efforts to fix this abysmal game engine. They are actually advertising the fact theres a new, lowest ever, shader detail level.

 

Honestly, i dont think I could live with myself if i released a game in the last decade that looks like swtor does on the new low settings.

 

They have not been. They have said we are thinking of ways to fix things, but will not comment further. Basically: We do not know how to make the engine better, so please stop asking. Just give us more monies nao!

[kisharrr]

Because voicing all that extra content that 2/3 of the other players would never see would be expensive as hell.

 

What? I'm pretty sure Smuggler and Bounty Hunter are already voiced. Why would putting them in a third faction have required more/different voicing?

[Overlord_Orcus]

Azzras,

 

Heres the thing.

 

Hero engine is based around it being streamlined for developers. It is marketed and has received awards because it is ground breaking in the sense devs can work on their game in real time online with other devs from anywhere in the world.

 

That is hero engines primary selling point. That is what makes it attractive to developers. It is fast at prototyping and getting games up and running.

 

Thats what it does best.

 

What it doesn't do best is performance and render quality.

 

For that you have the number one engine in the world, unreal engine 3. It is the the top of the line, it is refined and the results are unbeatable and its performance cant be matched.

 

It is how ever not as streamlined. Meaning people work on seperate things then upload a build nightly. It means slower production, but a higher quality production if you get what I mean.

 

Unreal engine has won the best engine award since 2004 for a reason. It is by far the best engine out there and they have the support of every major company out there. They also provide the best developer support. Where as bioware doesn't even work with hero engine devs anymore.

 

This is what the Tera devs had to say about U3:

 

“Unreal Engine 3 is an excellent engine that a large majority of our developers had experience of with through previous games,” said Sung-joong Lew, lead client programmer at Bluehole Studio. “The Unreal Engine provides essential features like rendering expression and performance, as well as a variety and productivity of development tools. In addition, the technology’s expandability is excellent. The engine’s strong point is that features implemented during the development of Unreal Tournament 3 and Gears of War 2 were automatically applied to Unreal Engine 3, allowing developers direct access to the latest technology.”

 

Shin-hyoung Im, technical art director on the game, said his team utilized UE3’s Kismet and Matinee to create the game’s opening cinematics. The engine’s good modularization helped the team add features needed for first-person shooting without difficulties. Im added that UE3’s well-formed development tools allowed the team to easily make additional resources.

 

There were early challenges in developing TERA back in 2007. Lew said his studio was concerned about the level of productivity for developers guaranteed by the game engine. But Unreal Engine 3 had well-organized development tools that allowed them to produce resources at the early stage of game development.

 

“We had to struggle with bugs at that stage on account of having used the engine at its immature development stage,” said Lew. “Also, it was hard to develop dynamically loading massive data with a vast terrain development tool for a MMORPG.”

 

Ultimately, the team was able to get the most out of UE3 technology, thanks in part to the past experience of key members of the team, as well as help through the Unreal Development Network and later Epic Korea.

 

Azzras if you want more technical details heres a site.

You seem like a smart person and I think you can read and determine what we are talking about here and why.

http://www.heroengine.com

http://www.UDK.com or http://www.unrealengine.com/features

 

Slight problem: At least based solely on looks: Both CryEngine3 and the most recent Frostbite eat UE3 for breakfast in terms of graphical looks. Both are considerably less stable, however.

 

The most recent frostbite handles physics far better then the stock UE3 does though, just look at Battlefield 3 and The Race in terms of the physics involved, but for the most part, and as a whole, yes, best engine around.

[Overlord_Orcus]

I'm going to quote myself here because gosh darn, who the hell releases a game designed for low end computers, then gets it so wrong they have to add a new low setting (after already removing previous settings because they got that so wrong too).

 

Cmon who can defend that sort of behavior??

 

Bioware. Thats who. Patch notes on test server

 

NEW ULTRA LOW SHADER

SETTING

Edited March 4, 2012 by Overlord_Orcus

[Overlord_Orcus]

Wish they mentioned what they based the script off of.

 

They have, somewhere. Javascrpt, if memory serves

[Overlord_Orcus]

Nope there wouldnt be. Because most of the people here wouldnt be able to run the game due to the pretty heavy requirements of the U3 engine.

 

It does not have heavy requirements, unless you consider the 9800gt, a slightly updated 8800gt, which is a slightly updated 8800, which is... 10 years old? 7 years old or so, basically the very first dx10 card (9800gt) if memory serves, heavy requirements.

 

My mate had 2gb of ram and a i5-750 with 9800gt and had no issue with any UE3 game, mmo or otherwise.

[Dayfax]

What? I'm pretty sure Smuggler and Bounty Hunter are already voiced. Why would putting them in a third faction have required more/different voicing?

 

If you kept all of the same content -- which is littered with faction specific references -- they'd be a "faction" in name only.

 

If you want something with more depth, that means unique starting areas and their own sidequests, planets, and neutral class quests.

 

That means big money.

[MGriffith]

Hehe yeah... would have been better... more control.. more freedom..

 

Also: more work, more programmers, more bugs, more time before the art and assets could start working (can't start on those development tools until your core engine is stable and not going to change its specifications overnight because you need to rewrite it for better performance), which means a lot more money up front, and more development time.

 

There is a reason why hardly anybody writes his or her own game engine anymore, and why those that do almost always base it on another engine.

[Overlord_Orcus]

Also: more work, more programmers, more bugs, more time before the art and assets could start working (can't start on those development tools until your core engine is stable and not going to change its specifications overnight because you need to rewrite it for better performance), which means a lot more money up front, and more development time.

 

There is a reason why hardly anybody writes his or her own game engine anymore, and why those that do almost always base it on another engine.

 

So... more then 6 years and $200 million? Erm... they had several engines. They could have used the NWN2 engine, dated but much better appearances and performances then bioware's modified hero engine.

 

They could have used the Dragon Age 1/2 engine. Perfectly capable of it. Hell, they could EASILY take the DA engine and mod it as a front end for hero engine, problem solved. Would take... 6 months of work? maybe dedicated. Would be worth it.

 

Press release: we are modifying the dragon age engine to function as a front end for the game. This will see massive graphical improvements, addition of high res and super high res textures, community modifiable user interface, and much greater performance and stability.

 

Watch the subscriptions remain, and even gain more (if not immediately, upon release of the new front end)

[lethal_ghost]

One of the top BW devs prob had a mate involved with hero engine lol o! Wait they did

[MGriffith]

So... more then 6 years and $200 million? Erm... they had several engines. They could have used the NWN2 engine, dated but much better appearances and performances then bioware's modified hero engine.

 

They could have used the Dragon Age 1/2 engine. Perfectly capable of it. Hell, they could EASILY take the DA engine and mod it as a front end for hero engine, problem solved. Would take... 6 months of work? maybe dedicated. Would be worth it.

 

Press release: we are modifying the dragon age engine to function as a front end for the game. This will see massive graphical improvements, addition of high res and super high res textures, community modifiable user interface, and much greater performance and stability.

 

Watch the subscriptions remain, and even gain more (if not immediately, upon release of the new front end)

 

Just maybe you can go sit in a corner of the internets and study games engines for a while, you know just to find out what is really involved with them and how complicated they are (and how they are far more than just making a pretty picture on your screen).

Then try to learn about the difference between single player game engines, fps game engines and mmo game engines.

And take it from somebody who programs for a living (yes, even on games) that the words 'easy' and 'modify' never ever go together when it comes to software (and rarely ever in other situations for that matter). I would even go so far as saying that every developer shop has banned the use of the word 'easy' because it never is and letting the ptb think it might be only leads to all nighters and projects that run massively over time and budget.

 

Yes, the game in its current state has its issues. Partly those are to blame on the hero engine that got used and that could be better optimised. Bioware has officially said they are aware of these issues and are working on correcting them. And no, they can not magically make them go away.

 

Most of this hero engine thread, and its predecessors, are filled with wags, epileptic trees and conspiracy theories. The amount of common sense applied is very thin, the amount of informed knowledge is even thinner.

 

But what it ulitmately boils down to is the following: any of us either believes Bioware when they say they will improve performance and will be waiting for it, or we don't and leave.

[Overlord_Orcus]

Just maybe you can go sit in a corner of the internets and study games engines for a while, you know just to find out what is really involved with them and how complicated they are (and how they are far more than just making a pretty picture on your screen).

Then try to learn about the difference between single player game engines, fps game engines and mmo game engines.

And take it from somebody who programs for a living (yes, even on games) that the words 'easy' and 'modify' never ever go together when it comes to software (and rarely ever in other situations for that matter). I would even go so far as saying that every developer shop has banned the use of the word 'easy' because it never is and letting the ptb think it might be only leads to all nighters and projects that run massively over time and budget.

 

Yes, the game in its current state has its issues. Partly those are to blame on the hero engine that got used and that could be better optimised. Bioware has officially said they are aware of these issues and are working on correcting them. And no, they can not magically make them go away.

 

Most of this hero engine thread, and its predecessors, are filled with wags, epileptic trees and conspiracy theories. The amount of common sense applied is very thin, the amount of informed knowledge is even thinner.

 

But what it ulitmately boils down to is the following: any of us either believes Bioware when they say they will improve performance and will be waiting for it, or we don't and leave.

 

You are not the only one on these forums who has knowledge and/or experience with software coding.

As someone who claims to you should know that game type and genre have little impact, ultimately on game engine.

Yes, its a trite example, but look at the Unreal 3 engine.

 

You claim there is a difference; but there is not. The differences come in how easy the engine is to develop with, how difficult it is to modify, and the technical specifications of what it can do, such as incorporation of physx/havoc.

 

Unreal Engine 3 has been used in development of titles such as:

DC Universe (MMO)

Tron: Evolution (Action/Adventure)

TS Online (MMO)

Tom Clancy's End War (RTS with MMO features)

TERA (MMO)

Stargate Resistance (Shooter)

Red Orchestra 2 (Realism WW2 Shooter)

Mortal Kombat (Fighter)

Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 (RPG with shooter elements, Shooter with rpg elements, shooter/rpg)

DUST 514 (Shooter with integration into EVE Online database, directly impacting the EVE Online world)

Dungeon Defenders (tower defence)

Bulletstorm (Action)

Army of Two (co-op shooter)

Alpha Protocol (Stealth Action)

APB Reloaded (MMO)

Aliens: Colonial Marines (I am unsure of this one, likely shooter with multiplayer elements)

 

See the point?

If not, then might I also point out Dead Space which was turned into a browser based game requiring high speed internet to play, seeing as it is the entire game in the entirity of its graphics.

 

Now, the EVE developers have shown us that with proper netcode (which TOR seems to lack) all the client does is interact with the server databases, then render those changes in a graphical display for the client. As such, if one has client side assets in a format that is usable by more then one client, modifying one engine to make the neccessary calls and translate those calls and the responses it sees as appropriate, you could have both a hero engine client for those with low end machines and an unreal/dragon age client for those with high end machines.

 

As most, if not all, clients optimised for windows use some form of the .x format, it should not be difficult.

[Barracudastr]

One of the top BW devs prob had a mate involved with hero engine lol o! Wait they did

 

Whats funny is the guy that pushed for hero engine and set up the deal left bioware before swtor released lol.

 

Im not one to make up theory's but draw your own conclusions from that.

[apatiaa]

You are not the only one on these forums who has knowledge and/or experience with software coding.

As someone who claims to you should know that game type and genre have little impact, ultimately on game engine.

Yes, its a trite example, but look at the Unreal 3 engine.

 

You claim there is a difference; but there is not. The differences come in how easy the engine is to develop with, how difficult it is to modify, and the technical specifications of what it can do, such as incorporation of physx/havoc.

 

Unreal Engine 3 has been used in development of titles such as:

DC Universe (MMO)

Tron: Evolution (Action/Adventure)

TS Online (MMO)

Tom Clancy's End War (RTS with MMO features)

TERA (MMO)

Stargate Resistance (Shooter)

Red Orchestra 2 (Realism WW2 Shooter)

Mortal Kombat (Fighter)

Mass Effect 1, 2, 3 (RPG with shooter elements, Shooter with rpg elements, shooter/rpg)

DUST 514 (Shooter with integration into EVE Online database, directly impacting the EVE Online world)

Dungeon Defenders (tower defence)

Bulletstorm (Action)

Army of Two (co-op shooter)

Alpha Protocol (Stealth Action)

APB Reloaded (MMO)

Aliens: Colonial Marines (I am unsure of this one, likely shooter with multiplayer elements)

 

See the point?

If not, then might I also point out Dead Space which was turned into a browser based game requiring high speed internet to play, seeing as it is the entire game in the entirity of its graphics.

 

Now, the EVE developers have shown us that with proper netcode (which TOR seems to lack) all the client does is interact with the server databases, then render those changes in a graphical display for the client. As such, if one has client side assets in a format that is usable by more then one client, modifying one engine to make the neccessary calls and translate those calls and the responses it sees as appropriate, you could have both a hero engine client for those with low end machines and an unreal/dragon age client for those with high end machines.

 

As most, if not all, clients optimised for windows use some form of the .x format, it should not be difficult.

 

 

If U3 engine was used for all above games then what was BW thinking. All above games run so smooth even on older computers when SWTOR runs very poorly compared.

 

Even if you run TERA beta it just runs so smooth and GFX is amazing.

[MGriffith]

They chose a engine of a friends is what it boils down to. A engine the developer wasn't even ready to release yet.

 

If you believe that fundamental decisions like the game engine are taken on a whim, and that the developers stake a hundred million development money and their careers on 'I know a friend of a friend who is good with visual basic and wrote a game engine in his spare time' then I do not know what will convince you of what really happens at such meetings.

 

 

They basically took unfinished code and tried to finish it.

 

If you develop a game that is to be state of the art 5 years down the road you will always be developing against unfinished code and the risk of vapourware. Any game engine worked on today is designed for projected capabilities of computers and graphics cards years in the future. Mostly it is a projected increase in on-card and system memory, better access speed and such. And every now and then a new technology comes along like the new sandybridge motherboards which changes the game, literally.

 

They had other options better options.

 

Not having been present at the discussions I can not comment on what made them decide for this particular engine, and neither can anybody else who is going to comment on this discussion thread. The projected technical specifications must have looked good enough, the development backend suite certainly was (and is) the best around. Technical support plays a role (though I can not imagine that unreal was not the best choice in that regard) and of course the licensing cost and scheme is a huge consideration that may sway the preference into a particular direction.

 

Finally, regarding the severity of the issues, I suspect that a significant portion of the players has no problem with running the game. If you don't PvP on Ilum you are much less likely to encounter unacceptably low fps, now that the population of the game begins to spread out a bit and 300+ populations at Dromund Kaas or Fleet are becoming a fond memory of the early days of the game.

Truth is that if your computer handles the game at all, it will handle up to 20 players simultaneously just fine (with some slowing down perhaps but not down to slideshow levels), which means that there is hardly any content outside of the PvP that players will not be able to visit without much of an issue.

Of course this does not make it any less frustrating (and infuriating) for those whose computer for whatever reason is not handling the game well.

[hurriedcorgi]

If you believe that fundamental decisions like the game engine are taken on a whim, and that the developers stake a hundred million development money and their careers on 'I know a friend of a friend who is good with visual basic and wrote a game engine in his spare time' then I do not know what will convince you of what really happens at such meetings.

 

Not to be an *** - but have you ever been in upper management at a large corporation? We with advanced degrees are wonderful at using big words but what you just described is how a fair portion of business gets accomplished around the world.

 

If you develop a game that is to be state of the art 5 years down the road you will always be developing against unfinished code and the risk of vapourware. Any game engine worked on today is designed for projected capabilities of computers and graphics cards years in the future. Mostly it is a projected increase in on-card and system memory, better access speed and such. And every now and then a new technology comes along like the new sandybridge motherboards which changes the game, literally.

 

Heh, the projections are a little more specific than what you describe; with big budgets you start working with actual product pipelines - not just guesses.

 

Not having been present at the discussions I can not comment on what made them decide for this particular engine, and neither can anybody else who is going to comment on this discussion thread. The projected technical specifications must have looked good enough, the development backend suite certainly was (and is) the best around. Technical support plays a role (though I can not imagine that unreal was not the best choice in that regard) and of course the licensing cost and scheme is a huge consideration that may sway the preference into a particular direction.

 

Not all of us operate on pure speculation. In fact - I'd be willing to bet very, very, very large sums of money I can explain the financial analysis in great detail that went into the these decisions (even using the exact same words!) Why? Because post-graduate finance diploma's require a standardized education process. How does this relate? Because the finance department rules the world.

 

Finally, regarding the severity of the issues, I suspect that a significant portion of the players has no problem with running the game. If you don't PvP on Ilum you are much less likely to encounter unacceptably low fps, now that the population of the game begins to spread out a bit and 300+ populations at Dromund Kaas or Fleet are becoming a fond memory of the early days of the game.

Truth is that if your computer handles the game at all, it will handle up to 20 players simultaneously just fine (with some slowing down perhaps but not down to slideshow levels), which means that there is hardly any content outside of the PvP that players will not be able to visit without much of an issue.

Of course this does not make it any less frustrating (and infuriating) for those whose computer for whatever reason is not handling the game well.

 

I'd hardly argue this last paragraph is a positive statement in light of the fact that you were defending BW. At worst, this is an argument on the side of their poor decision making in this particular matter.

 

If I come across as pretentious in this post - sorry, sort of. Your blatant implication that any and all of us who post on these forums lack any better information than idle "trolling" speculation is wrong and insulting to us who spent many years working toward a certain amount of education (whether institutionalized or self-taught: ton of respect for the kids writing graphics engines with no university help) can offer a little bit more informed opinions than just guessing. I'm not saying that each and every one of us has all the answers but often, many people can contribute accurate estimations of the processes involved in these decisions from experience.

[DarthKhaos]

 

 

No.. I just wouldnt base my entire multi million project on something I cannot control that beeing logic

Actually you would. That's what companies do so if things break... It's not their fault.