Hero Engine: why?

Incorrect.

World of Warcraft was built on a salvaged engine built for Warhammer.

Hey look. Another factoid magically produced from the herd with no backing or basis in reality.

Bioware has never made good engines themselves, and making an engine takes years. They also weren't owned by EA when they started development on TOR

Bioware said they have heavily modded the Hero engine to the point it doesn't resemble much of the original.

I think the game will mature and improve over time, there are always ways to improve and get around software issue if you give it proper care and attention.

I am not worried.

I have same problems as you... This is just nightmare... :S

There's so much misinformation in this thread it's unreal. Now, I may not be a AAA game developer but I have been teaching Software Engineering and Games Development for the last 11 years and there are a great many points that are being overlooked, all in favour of nay-saying and engine bashing based primarily on GFX and the (admittedly terrible) ability activation lag.

1) The engine is customised from stock. This means the ability lag caused by waiting for an animation to finish before starting the new one can be fixed. This does not mean however that it will be fixed, the whole animation style and flow from one move to another is quite possibly an active design decision made around the game's aesthetics. What could happen here is that some moves will interrupt animations (primarily interrupts and other off-GCD abilities) and others won't - but we shall have to see BioWare's response when it comes.

2) The GFX in this game are, like WoW, highly stylised. This is a design decision modelled on the animated series and has most likely been made to allow the GFX to run smoothly on lower end systems with as little loss of quality as possible. On a personal note: I really do quite like the art style.

3) Memory leaks: can and will be fixed eventually, see point 1.

4) GFX are not the be-all and end-all of the reasons to choose a game engine. Server architecture, network useage, asset pipeline, development tools and a whole slew of other factors need to be assessed. If you think BioWare chose the Hero Engine based purely on a sales pitch of "Hey we can all play together in a big sandbox to make a game!" then you are being, quite frankly, ignorant. Did a little test the other day, in 10 hours of constant gameplay the network useage added up to just under 125Mb combined upstream and downstream, this alone is a remarkable figure! It worked out averaging 1.4kBps down and 600Bps up over the play session, so theoretically (discounting other issues related to the hardware) you could play this game on a 56.6k modem.

But, as with all MMORPG's since time began, when there is a public forum to discuss the game there will be people ringing the death knell and saying the game is doomed, the engine sucks and worst "fix it now or I will quit". You know what, for the good of the game and the community why don't you save your post and sod off. Leave the game to those of us that want to play the game and have fun!

+1

to the amount of stupid in this thread.

I'm loving the game on principle, I'd love any star wars mmo attempt and I think it looks decent (with aa on, without it's disgusting to look at), but I agree the engine is horrible. You get the feeling that everything (people, buildings, speeders etc.) can break apart anytime and there are small lags constantly (NOT due to latency) where your companions, your char and pretty much everything flies around due to some strange delay that doesn't make sense.

Ye I would have loved if it had the weight and feel of a "heavy" working world, but it just doesn't at all, it feels alot like playing STO but slightly better (not enough though). The static feel of everything doesn't make it feel very immersive, sadly.

EDIT: I won't stop playing this game and I'm not saying it's doomed in any way, but I do think a fair share will "go back to wow" simply due to how much more "stable" their game feels. Just an honest opinion.

The technical aspect why and who is interesting to discuss but it's not something for this forum.
My respect to all people who are well studied programmers but well this forum is full of trolls and people that are full of them selves, so pardon me if I don't take every ones word for it.

I did some programming myself during education but It was more the necessary basics as a part of a different study, I wouldn't claim that I know the fine points this engine and Biowares decision or the complexity of coding.


How ever what I can point out is this.

MMO's tend to be CPU depended, this translates into that the CPU has a big impact on your FPS.

Now think of it like how the average player experiences this engine.


1: It doesn't support dual/quad cores (even though Bioware stated that SWTOR would) this automatically means a FPS loss.
This is a common question asked by people, why is the FPS bad well this a part of the reason.


2: Another thing is people asking why the loading screens a long.
Well no matter if you use a SDD and have a fast computer the loading screens are pretty long.
This has also something to do with the hero engine.


3: Character responsiveness, basically the choppy gameplay.
Well I don't know if it is hero engine related so I can't point a finger.
Seen some claims here and there.
What I can say is that I've seen this done much better.


4: No DX 10/11 , DX 10 has been out for a long time DX11 improves FPS.
This is engine related.
The lack of AA and other eye candy is something I will leave in the middle.


Point is many problems people run into are because of the engine choice.
Now I am not stating that making their own engine that would be tuned to their MMO needs would have been a better option financially and time wise.

I'm just stating that this engine has limitations and does cause some problems.

And right they were to say so, SWTOR does support up to 4 cores.