Can SWTOR be ported to a new engine?

[Decxswx]

Elder scrolls online I heard also uses the hero engine and runs very well. Can Bioware port this game or modify the hero engine to their purpose and make this game way better and run better?

 

Keep in mind i know nothing about how game development works or if it is economical or not. Just a thought

[Bakgrind]

ESO doesn't use the Hero engine. According to the ESO people they only used it during very early development "so while we were prototyping the game on HeroEngine, we were simultaneously developing our own client, server, and messaging layer that were specifically designed with ESO in mind. Think of Hero Engine as a whiteboard for us – a great tool to get some ideas in the game and start looking at them while the production engine was in development."

 

Biowares version of Hero was actually an alpha build for it. It is a totally customized version of the engine which really makes it a non Hero traditional engine. But, to answer your question of if they could I have no idea. I would suspect it would cost more than what they would be willing to pay.

 

Source for ESO : https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx

Edited July 26, 2018 by Bakgrind

[MadDutchman]

The simple answer is no.

 

The current engine is very customized for a reason, getting it to work on something else would take a huge amount of time and money.

[Andryah]

FACT: they started with an early verison of the hero engine, buying the rights to customize it and use it perpetually, and with the contractual understanding that the owners of the Hero Engine would not support it in any way.

 

FACT: they customized the crap out of the engine, such that it is no longer the Hero Engine. Don't believe this? .... key point --> they cannot forward upgrade to a newer version of Hero even if they wanted to.... because they departed the Hero development track a decade ago when they opened up the early version they purchased and essentially re-engineered it for their specific purposes. It is essentially the Bioware MMO Engine for SWTOR at this point in time.

 

FACT: porting to a brand new engine for an MMO is not impossible, but it is also not commonly undertaken. Why? because once you are years into using an engine in production releases your code base is so intertwined with the engine as to make yanking it out and replacing it a very resource intensive effort. So it only gets done when it is viewed as critical by a studio to the continued life of their MMO.

 

People really need to do some research before pitching "great ideas".

Edited July 26, 2018 by Andryah

[Falensawino]

Not while EA has anything to say about it.

 

SWTOR would have to survive until Disney/Lucasfilm is done doing business with EA and maintain their existing license to use Star Wars.

 

EA is hellbent on only delivering profitable multiplayer experiences, anything that resembles single player gets gutted.

 

Video:

[youtube.com]

Published on Mar 24, 2018

 

"As we kept reviewing the game, it continued to look like a much more linear game [which] people don't like as much today as they did five years ago or ten years ago."

 

Canceling the project "was an economic decision at the end of the day." and that "you gotta cut the bridge when you realize you can't make a lot of money on something,"

Edited July 27, 2018 by Falensawino

[cyrusramsey]

ESO doesn't use the Hero engine. According to the ESO people they only used it during very early development "so while we were prototyping the game on HeroEngine, we were simultaneously developing our own client, server, and messaging layer that were specifically designed with ESO in mind. Think of Hero Engine as a whiteboard for us – a great tool to get some ideas in the game and start looking at them while the production engine was in development."

 

Many companies do this. You'll note that at no point they say "we do not use hero engine", because they do. It's very uncommon to not heavily modify an engine to suit your own needs, so what you end up with does not resemble what you started with, and there seems to be this aversion to admitting that they didn't build something from scratch, but it's very much the hero engine. They give it official credit, because they have to, but talk around it when asked.

 

 

As for OP: swtor CAN be ported to a new engine, as in the sense that it is not technically impossible, but it would be such an enormous undertaking that the chance of it happening is around 0%.

[SteveTheCynic]

I'm with all the others, but I'd also like to appeal to the distinction in meaning between "possible" and "feasible".

 

"Possible" is tied to the question "Can we do this?".

 

"Feasible" is tied to the question "Can we do this at a reasonable cost?".

 

And the answer to "Is it possible for us to rebuild an MMORPG on a different engine?" is "Yes. It is possible."

 

And the answer to "Is it feasible for use to rebuild an MMORPG on a different engine?" is "No. It is not feasible. The cost of doing it is NOT reasonable."

[GrimTheGlutt]

Look at it this way - They can't even do anything decent with conquest or even create a new raid within a year and you want them to rework the whole thing?

 

[FlameYOL]

I'm with all the others, but I'd also like to appeal to the distinction in meaning between "possible" and "feasible".

 

"Possible" is tied to the question "Can we do this?".

 

"Feasible" is tied to the question "Can we do this at a reasonable cost?".

 

And the answer to "Is it possible for us to rebuild an MMORPG on a different engine?" is "Yes. It is possible."

 

And the answer to "Is it feasible for use to rebuild an MMORPG on a different engine?" is "No. It is not feasible. The cost of doing it is NOT reasonable."

 

Pretty much what Steve says. It's likely possible but not probable as it would cost enormous loads of money, which SWTOR clearly won't get for it unless a miracle happens.

[Dweessies]

Pretty much what Steve says. It's likely possible but not probable as it would cost enormous loads of money, which SWTOR clearly won't get for it unless a miracle happens.

 

^THIS

 

If EA was inclined to spend the kind of money it would cost, they'd be much better off to develop a completely new game. A port of the current code would retain all of the bugs we have today, and include some new ones related to the new engine and the port itself. I think our current bug count is sufficient and doesn't need any enhancement.

[psandak]

SteveTheCynic is absolutely correct.

 

Game engines are toolboxes that allow building games in a certain way, and you cannot just change toolboxes. (this is an over simplified example but) It would be like trying to work on a car that has imperial measurement (inches) nuts and bolts and using metric (millimeter) tools. Sure the metric toolbox has wrenches and sockets to loosen and tighten nuts and bolts, but none of them fit the nuts and bolts in the car. The only way to get the metric toolbox you work on the car would be to replace all the Imperial measurement parts with metric measurement parts; dismantle and re-assemble the car.

 

A video game built with a particular engine is stuck with that engine unless it is completely "disassembled and re-assembled." SOE sort of did this with EQ1 and EQ2; separate games different engines. FF14 had this done to it: the game launched, had all sorts of problems, it was shut down quickly, rebuilt, and relaunched.

 

Would you be OK with EA/BW shutting SWTOR down for a couple of years while they rebuild the game with a new engine (the FF14 model)?

 

Would you be OK with EA/BW developing a completely new game with a new engine that would not accept existing SWTOR characters (EQ1/EQ2 model)?

[TrixxieTriss]

FACT: they started with an early verison of the hero engine, buying the rights to customize it and use it perpetually, and with the contractual understanding that the owners of the Hero Engine would not support it in any way.

 

FACT: they customized the crap out of the engine, such that it is no longer the Hero Engine. Don't believe this? .... key point --> they cannot forward upgrade to a newer version of Hero even if they wanted to.... because they departed the Hero development track a decade ago when they opened up the early version they purchased and essentially re-engineered it for their specific purposes. It is essentially the Bioware MMO Engine for SWTOR at this point in time.

 

FACT: porting to a brand new engine for an MMO is not impossible, but it is also not commonly undertaken. Why? because once you are years into using an engine in production releases your code base is so intertwined with the engine as to make yanking it out and replacing it a very resource intensive effort. So it only gets done when it is viewed as critical by a studio to the continued life of their MMO.

 

 

Agreed.

 

Maybe if they’d kept on the Hero engine development track and not turned it into a Frankenstein engine, then they could consider doing a port. But with the current state of the game, it would probably be a waste of money if they didn’t do a lot of other work and essentially relaunch/reboot the game, like a lot of other companies have started to do.

 

Also, maybe if they’d stuck with the Hero guys through out the game’s development, we wouldn’t even need a new engine because the newer versions would be better than this one and we wouldn’t have all the problems associated with it,

[TrixxieTriss]

Would you be OK with EA/BW shutting SWTOR down for a couple of years while they rebuild the game with a new engine (the FF14 model)?

 

Would you be OK with EA/BW developing a completely new game with a new engine that would not accept existing SWTOR characters (EQ1/EQ2 model)?

 

They can run a game congruently while rebuilding or porting to another engine because all they need is a copy to work from, ie, how they run a PTS and live server or develop patches or expansions. They obviously don’t take the servers off line while they develop.

 

Honestly, I’d be fine if they relaunched the game (making it better) and not accept existing characters. Of course it would be nice if offered a sort of compensation like CCs or credits to old players on the old version. But it wouldn’t deter me.

[DaemionMoadrin]

A long, long time ago, in a game far, far away...

... EA Mythic actually invested money to upgrade the game engine of Dark Age of Camelot and then improved on it with further add-ons.

Of course, SW:TOR is a magnitude larger and more complex, so it would cost a lot more... and it's not necessary yet.

[Einobi]

This is another way of saying someone need to design and built a BRAND NEW star war MMO on a new engine. It will be called SWTNR - Star War The NEW republic.

[DaemionMoadrin]

This is another way of saying someone need to design and built a BRAND NEW star war MMO on a new engine. It will be called SWTNR - Star War The NEW republic.

 

The New Republic is set after the Battle of Yavin, so... nope. That's Disney's playground for the movies, they won't allow a MMO there anytime soon.

[merovejec]

This discussion has been here for ages as the engine is the next big issue after game content. As people already said it is possible, yet incredibly hard to do.

 

The real question here is the feasibility. Yes, you can a new engine that would allow flying mounts, better way of travel (go to hangar and board starfighter, fly from fleet to guildship etc) this would indeed make the game much more appealing and add many new features on which the Devs can build on. However, the question still remains if this is what EA wants from this game. The game is now generating quite a profit with the state that it is in, so its really a decision of the management on what to do next.

[TrixxieTriss]

This discussion has been here for ages as the engine is the next big issue after game content. As people already said it is possible, yet incredibly hard to do.

 

The real question here is the feasibility. Yes, you can a new engine that would allow flying mounts, better way of travel (go to hangar and board starfighter, fly from fleet to guildship etc) this would indeed make the game much more appealing and add many new features on which the Devs can build on. However, the question still remains if this is what EA wants from this game. The game is now generating quite a profit with the state that it is in, so its really a decision of the management on what to do next.

 

I would think it would be easier to start from scratch and just make swtor 2

I’m not saying it would be cheaper, but it would probably be easier and attract a lot more people than just upgrading this game engine.

[Haruen]

FACT: they started with an early verison of the hero engine, buying the rights to customize it and use it perpetually, and with the contractual understanding that the owners of the Hero Engine would not support it in any way.

 

FACT: they customized the crap out of the engine, such that it is no longer the Hero Engine. Don't believe this? .... key point --> they cannot forward upgrade to a newer version of Hero even if they wanted to.... because they departed the Hero development track a decade ago when they opened up the early version they purchased and essentially re-engineered it for their specific purposes. It is essentially the Bioware MMO Engine for SWTOR at this point in time.

 

FACT: porting to a brand new engine for an MMO is not impossible, but it is also not commonly undertaken. Why? because once you are years into using an engine in production releases your code base is so intertwined with the engine as to make yanking it out and replacing it a very resource intensive effort. So it only gets done when it is viewed as critical by a studio to the continued life of their MMO.

 

People really need to do some research before pitching "great ideas".

 

OP didn't pitch this as a great idea, they asked if it was possible. No need to be an *** about it.