Oh why oh why did they pick an engine that can only render a limited amount players?

[Chiricahua]

SWG could handle with some difficulty (lag) 50 players on each side and it's a 2003 game. Even WoW can handle 25 players on each side in a battleground. Why would the SWTOR developers hamstring themselves so badly by picking a poor engine? Eight players on each side is a poor attempt at pvp.

[Abkhazia]

Why would a pvper care? Large battles are just zerg fests where skill becomes less relevant. Very unpopular among pvpers. Wow had it right with 3v3, bioware just needs to figure it out.

[MrFrezzer]

SWG could handle with some difficulty (lag) 50 players on each side and it's a 2003 game. Even WoW can handle 25 players on each side in a battleground. Why would the SWTOR developers hamstring themselves so badly by picking a poor engine? Eight players on each side is a poor attempt at pvp.

 

Okay I am sick of people dissing this engine! "HeroEngine can hold more than 100,000 players on a cluster… but we would not recommend having 100,000 players in the same room. No graphics card on earth could handle that. Regarding SW:TOR, we have no way to know how they are handling graphics detail, shading, or other factors that impact frame rate. An engine is the first step, and then it’s up to the engineers and art directors to manage the technical steps necessary to implement their game design.

 

So, we can’t really give you any insight on how their game is performing in that way, and I’m sure they are working hard at improving any specific issues they are seeing. BioWare is responsible for their own game, we gave them the tools."

 

This gaming engine is amazing and works well in many new up coming mmos like TheRepopulation and Dominus. Maybe if some of you did your research you could narrow this down more to Bioware not the engine Bioware picked. They had on the site engineers from the Hero Engine team for 5 years and guess what EA make bioware rush things and excluded them out. Read these comments. ( http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars )

 

“It’s not productized yet,” we told Gordon. “There are whole sections of code that is only roughed in and not optimized for performance or security. And there are very few comments and very little documentation.”

 

He didn’t care. “We are going to have tons of engineers. We can finish it ourselves. We’re going to want to modify your source code for our special project anyway.”

 

Soon meaning after months of painful negotiations and many weeks of meetings with teams of engineers who examined every line of our source code and interrogated our engineers. We were concerned over their making major changes to our engine, but we loved the size of the check that came with the deal.

 

As you can see it is not the Hero Engine but more or less EA and Bioware using their master coding skills with their "TONS" of engineers they must have met from ITT Austin, Texas or who know where.

 

There is some hope yet since changes can be made to the hero engine and the development team is working on the newer engine style that is suppose to handle higher populations. One major thing about this engine is its ability to be upgraded and modified for future compatibility. As you can see with 1.4 with the new shadow algorithms and 1.5 with new rendering for out door textures. This engine can be changed and updated if done correctly but that has yet to be seen to all parts of this game.

[Rogoo]

Let's just call it "SWTORs engine" for the sake of discussion.

 

And SWTORs engine is a piece of unoptimized crap, and their "client optimization team" engineers are doing a terrible job.

 

That's all there is to it.

[Philelectric]

Aion can handle multiple hundreds of players in each faction on screen at the same time.

 

Biggest massive pvp ive seen, +/- 800 vs +/- 800 with some small lag from time to time. Oh! and Aion have possibly the best graphics in the mmo industry. Thank you Cryengine 3

 

I miss the good old days of Aion when the level cap was 50

[MrFrezzer]

Aion can handle multiple hundreds of players in each faction on screen at the same time.

 

Biggest massive pvp ive seen, +/- 800 vs +/- 800 with some small lag from time to time. Oh! and Aion have possibly the best graphics in the mmo industry. Thank you Cryengine 3

 

I miss the good old days of Aion when the level cap was 50

 

Tor looks 100x better than Aion cartoon graphics. I can't even believe you just typed that nonsense. AIon also has ******* effects and combat that was guess what TRASH! You wonder why it failed just like TOR and went FTP. Best graphics in mmo history is a bold face lie!

[Blasphemerr]

WRU Forgelight Engine.

[AMKSED]

SWG would get 10+ second server lag in a 50vs50....so OP is just dumb.

[cashogy]

Okay I am sick of people dissing this engine! "HeroEngine can hold more than 100,000 players on a cluster… but we would not recommend having 100,000 players in the same room. No graphics card on earth could handle that. Regarding SW:TOR, we have no way to know how they are handling graphics detail, shading, or other factors that impact frame rate. An engine is the first step, and then it’s up to the engineers and art directors to manage the technical steps necessary to implement their game design.

 

So, we can’t really give you any insight on how their game is performing in that way, and I’m sure they are working hard at improving any specific issues they are seeing. BioWare is responsible for their own game, we gave them the tools."

 

This gaming engine is amazing and works well in many new up coming mmos like TheRepopulation and Dominus. Maybe if some of you did your research you could narrow this down more to Bioware not the engine Bioware picked. They had on the site engineers from the Hero Engine team for 5 years and guess what EA make bioware rush things and excluded them out. Read these comments. ( http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars )

 

“It’s not productized yet,” we told Gordon. “There are whole sections of code that is only roughed in and not optimized for performance or security. And there are very few comments and very little documentation.”

 

He didn’t care. “We are going to have tons of engineers. We can finish it ourselves. We’re going to want to modify your source code for our special project anyway.”

 

Soon meaning after months of painful negotiations and many weeks of meetings with teams of engineers who examined every line of our source code and interrogated our engineers. We were concerned over their making major changes to our engine, but we loved the size of the check that came with the deal.

 

As you can see it is not the Hero Engine but more or less EA and Bioware using their master coding skills with their "TONS" of engineers they must have met from ITT Austin, Texas or who know where.

 

There is some hope yet since changes can be made to the hero engine and the development team is working on the newer engine style that is suppose to handle higher populations. One major thing about this engine is its ability to be upgraded and modified for future compatibility. As you can see with 1.4 with the new shadow algorithms and 1.5 with new rendering for out door textures. This engine can be changed and updated if done correctly but that has yet to be seen to all parts of this game.

 

this.

 

the hero engine is great. the problem is, this game doesnt really use it. it uses whatever concoction the biowarEA "engineers" were able to come up with. which as we know, is a piece of crap

[MindgameZ]

SWG could handle with some difficulty (lag) 50 players on each side and it's a 2003 game. Even WoW can handle 25 players on each side in a battleground. Why would the SWTOR developers hamstring themselves so badly by picking a poor engine? Eight players on each side is a poor attempt at pvp.

 

as a game designer myself i have to disagree with what you said. HeroEngine is actually pretty a pretty good engine. BW just have really bad optimizers. When sometimes i get stuck in certain parts of certain maps , i can see entire chunks of terrain , models , ect that really don't need to be there and just cause more stress , parts of the map you cant even see.

 

Take battlestar galactica for example , i am able to run it on a 11 inc Eee PC and yet it is made with Unity3D which is still in development. They made it work by only using what they need in their worlds and ect. Models are also a factor , if they are not made correctly that can also cause problems ( subsurf laziness , ect ). I would not blame hero engine as much as bioware. Many would say the game would be better with UDK , but they also dont know that UDK can only support a max of 64 players online at a time + they charge a bomb in royalty and as much as this game sold at launch even more.

 

sorry for mistakes writing this on mobile.

Edited December 20, 2012 by MindgameZ

[Rogoo]

as a game designer myself i have to disagree with what you said. HeroEngine is actually pretty a pretty good engine. BW just have really bad optimizers. When sometimes i get stuck in certain parts of certain maps , i can see entire chunks of terrain , models , ect that really don't need to be there and just cause more stress , parts of the map you cant even see.

 

Well, the best part of Bioware's attempt at optimization, was reducing the firerate of the turrets in Aldeeran Warzone. In Hero engine each laser bolt is a SEPARATE OBJECT. Those laser bolts were causing insane framerate drop.

 

And still are. Just go to any area where NPCs are shooting blasters and observe how your framerate plummets.

 

Bioware's modded version of Hero engine and they way they are using it is really THAT bad.

[MindgameZ]

Well, the best part of Bioware's attempt at optimization, was reducing the firerate of the turrets in Aldeeran Warzone. In Hero engine each laser bolt is a SEPARATE OBJECT. Those laser bolts were causing insane framerate drop.

 

And still are. Just go to any area where NPCs are shooting blasters and observe how your framerate plummets.

 

Bioware's modded version of Hero engine and they way they are using it is really THAT bad.

 

What i think bioware should do to fix this is instead of using ( Transform.Instantiate ) Scripting command to spawn a separate object that will heat seek the target. They should use a particle effect or low poly cylinder with no collision or rigidbody and make it a trigger using IF statements they could script the bolt hitting the target and the chance it will crit / resist / block / non crit / ect. Tbh a simple 6 sided cylinder would do fine for the bolts a blaster. They go by so fast nobody can even tell they are so low poly. As for the lasers in aldderan warzone , those could be another low poly teardrop model with particles adapting to its shape. Just anything to cut on on polys and ect. Using less particles in the first place could help as well... those lasers look like they have 10,000 at least.

[Totaltrash]

Funny, now they are blaming each other....

 

Lag is only on side of the story of the Heroengine:

Upon launch, I found (without looking very hard) that the disassembled source code was readily available on the web. Within days, hackers developed cheat programs such as speedhacks, maphacks, teleport/no clips, gcd hacks - you name it, it was there. So while we knew that the Heroengine was unfinished, we also found out that it was not secure (and several experts had warned about just that).

 

Today, ONE YEAR LATER, we still have lag, glitches, hackers and bugs everywhere.

We, the average paying customers, DO NOT CARE if it was Idea Fabrik's faulty engine, Bioware's shotty coding or EA's infinite greed to rush the unfinished product.

 

WE JUST WANT IT FIXED!

[GNWP]

Well, the best part of Bioware's attempt at optimization, was reducing the firerate of the turrets in Aldeeran Warzone. In Hero engine each laser bolt is a SEPARATE OBJECT. Those laser bolts were causing insane framerate drop.

 

And still are. Just go to any area where NPCs are shooting blasters and observe how your framerate plummets.

 

Bioware's modded version of Hero engine and they way they are using it is really THAT bad.

When my character stand in the waiting room before the warzone I press my class buff and I see 10 FPS loss, while graphics effect of the buff, 50 down from 60.

Is there any way to disable or reduce spell gfx in the game?

Edited December 20, 2012 by GNWP

[Malkavier]

Yes, you have to lower particle affects in an .ini file in your installation folder.

[Knockerz]

Why would a pvper care? Large battles are just zerg fests where skill becomes less relevant. Very unpopular among pvpers. Wow had it right with 3v3, bioware just needs to figure it out.

 

Last I herd wow got kick out of the major league gaming for being any thing, but skillful or entertaining to watch. It was more like the same comps over and over and dull game play. As for large battles the whole point of crz is to promote world pvp or as you call it zerg fest in wow. I doubt it any mmorpg will ever implement arena pvp like wow due it's failure. From a developers point it doesn't make sense to focus on small scale pvp zones like arenas due to the difficulty of class balance and insignificant amount of player participation. Only reason arena was popular when it first launch was due to the fact that arena was the only way to get the best pvp gear in wow and that it was some thing new. That fad has passed in wow and hopefully no future mmorpg implements small scale pvp.

Edited December 20, 2012 by Knockerz

[MindgameZ]

Funny, now they are blaming each other....

 

Lag is only on side of the story of the Heroengine:

Upon launch, I found (without looking very hard) that the disassembled source code was readily available on the web. Within days, hackers developed cheat programs such as speedhacks, maphacks, teleport/no clips, gcd hacks - you name it, it was there. So while we knew that the Heroengine was unfinished, we also found out that it was not secure (and several experts had warned about just that).

 

Today, ONE YEAR LATER, we still have lag, glitches, hackers and bugs everywhere.

We, the average paying customers, DO NOT CARE if it was Idea Fabrik's faulty engine, Bioware's shotty coding or EA's infinite greed to rush the unfinished product.

 

WE JUST WANT IT FIXED!

 

i dont see how this has anything to do with this thread , at all. BW does not have many programmers left , this is why rise of the hutt cartel is coming so late. Holes in the engine will not just be fix just because bioware wants it to be. Or just because we want it to be. It would have been better if they did this before launch. a team of 5-10 coders are not going to rearrange an entire game engine very quickly.

[Theodulus]

as a game designer myself i have to disagree with what you said. HeroEngine is actually pretty a pretty good engine. BW just have really bad optimizers. When sometimes i get stuck in certain parts of certain maps , i can see entire chunks of terrain , models , ect that really don't need to be there and just cause more stress , parts of the map you cant even see.

 

Take battlestar galactica for example , i am able to run it on a 11 inc Eee PC and yet it is made with Unity3D which is still in development. They made it work by only using what they need in their worlds and ect. Models are also a factor , if they are not made correctly that can also cause problems ( subsurf laziness , ect ). I would not blame hero engine as much as bioware. Many would say the game would be better with UDK , but they also dont know that UDK can only support a max of 64 players online at a time + they charge a bomb in royalty and as much as this game sold at launch even more.

 

sorry for mistakes writing this on mobile.

Makes one think doesn't it? If the hero engine guys didn't let Bioware touch the engine with their reversed Midas touch then we would have had cross server queues from launch.

[Totaltrash]

i dont see how this has anything to do with this thread , at all. BW does not have many programmers left , this is why rise of the hutt cartel is coming so late. Holes in the engine will not just be fix just because bioware wants it to be. Or just because we want it to be. It would have been better if they did this before launch. a team of 5-10 coders are not going to rearrange an entire game engine very quickly.

 

It has everything to do with the topic - not only was the Heroengine incomplete, it is also full of security holes.

 

You (one of many) defended the engine and blamed Bioware:

 

as a game designer myself i have to disagree with what you said. HeroEngine is actually pretty a pretty good engine. BW just have really bad optimizers.

 

All I'm saying is that it doesn't matter now who is to blame - Idea Fabrik, Bioware, EA - who cares?

One year into the game, all this crap should have and could have been fixed!

But no, forget about lag, forget about bugs - lets code the Cartel Market and rip off the players instead!

 

Why would a pvper care? Large battles are just zerg fests where skill becomes less relevant. Very unpopular among pvpers. Wow had it right with 3v3, bioware just needs to figure it out.

 

If you want pure pvp, you are playing the wrong game.

There are half a dozen better pvp games out there and SWTOR will never be able to compete with them.

 

I want functional PVP within the Star Wars theme - epic battles included, because that's part of the theme.

Sure, I agree with you that zergs dimish skill, but so be it.

[Arkerus]

It was already explained by someone who IS a developer what's going on. The engine can handle a lot of players on screen just fine.

 

The problem is the poly count on the model is way too high. They could make it work but they would have to cut out detail.

[xxdragonragexx]

It was already explained by someone who IS a developer what's going on. The engine can handle a lot of players on screen just fine.

 

The problem is the poly count on the model is way too high. They could make it work but they would have to cut out detail.

 

If you look at the armor detail in swtor, it is very crappy. Compare it World of warcraft tier armor, WoW beats swtor easily in the armor aesthetics. A lot of MMO games can beat the armor looks of swtor.

 

Even if the polygon count is high, they are not using it very well. Even if they reduce it, we will barely notice it. Swtor devs did a poor job at the graphics of this game.

[NoTomorrow]

SWG could handle with some difficulty (lag) 50 players on each side and it's a 2003 game. Even WoW can handle 25 players on each side in a battleground. Why would the SWTOR developers hamstring themselves so badly by picking a poor engine? Eight players on each side is a poor attempt at pvp.

 

Doom 1 engine can hold levels with 10000 monsters. Just saying.

[Nijraw]

Why would a pvper care? Large battles are just zerg fests where skill becomes less relevant. Very unpopular among pvpers. Wow had it right with 3v3, bioware just needs to figure it out.

Guess you never played DAoC, AC1, GW2 ,EvE, Darkfall to name a few, large scale PvP is crazy fun and very, very,very popular if done right, only games that lack the tech or lack the know how will fail at large scale PvP, and there bandaid fix is arena type pvp or battlegrounds.

[Royox]

If you look at the armor detail in swtor, it is very crappy. Compare it World of warcraft tier armor, WoW beats swtor easily in the armor aesthetics. A lot of MMO games can beat the armor looks of swtor.

 

Even if the polygon count is high, they are not using it very well. Even if they reduce it, we will barely notice it. Swtor devs did a poor job at the graphics of this game.

 

This is Star Wars. Not stupid medieval phantasy where everybody wears plate armors with lightnings and volcanos in them.

[rawfox]

SWG could handle with some difficulty (lag) 50 players on each side and it's a 2003 game. Even WoW can handle 25 players on each side in a battleground. Why would the SWTOR developers hamstring themselves so badly by picking a poor engine? Eight players on each side is a poor attempt at pvp.

 

The Hero thingy has improved a lot over the last year.

I hope they can improve it even futher.

A Fusang like Playfield would be win for this game

TSW can handle 300 people pvp'ing in one playfield.

 

Some work left to do, gogo BW ^^