Ever since I was a beta tester for "swtor", I kept asking my-self the question.

* Was the the problem with the games engine.

 

Thanks to "zocat" for posting this info.

* http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=454059&page=5

 

I personally thought the Hero engine, was the source of the problem.

* But it turns out it was Biowares fault.

 

* Source from HeroEngine : http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/

 

 

"“I NEED THIS.”

 

We showed the game to our friend Gordon Walton. We had known Gordon for many years, back in the days when he worked for Kesmai, our late great competitor. Gordon had since been with Sony for its Star Wars Galaxies game among other places. He knows games, especially online games.

 

Not only did we show him the game, but because Gordon knew us so well we showed him the development tools we had built around our special process – building the game online, in realtime, with tools for the entire team all in one package.

 

“I need this,” said Gordon. “I am about to start a special project and these tools will let us build and prototype fast and get something running in a hurry.” Gordon is not an excitable guy by nature but this had his adrenaline flowing. “This is just what I need! I want to license your engine.”

 

We had thought about offering our engine and tools to developers but we had expected that we would have to actually ship a game first, like Epic did with Unreal Tournament before they licensed the original Unreal Engine.

 

“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.”

 

BIOWARE LICENSES HEROENGINE FOR…

 

A few months after the show we heard from Gordon again. He was now the co-head of a new online game studio in Austin as part of BioWare. This was very impressive. Not only was Gordon a solid guy but BioWare was (and still is!) at the very top tier of game developers, the kind of company that made games that were always great. Soon the deal was done – 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.

 

A year or so later, it became clear to us that BioWare was building a Star Wars MMO. We had to keep the secret for another couple of years but it was incredibly exciting. If you watch some of the videos of BioWare developing SW:TOR, you can see HeroEngine and its unique tools and process being used by the massive team on this incredible project.

 

Our role began and ended long ago, in a company far far away, but we’re still excited over the part we have played in helping BioWare (now part of EA, of course) bring its vision to life."

 

 

So how are those engineers doing so far Bioware!?

The game design issue, is not game design, it has to do with the original compatibility requirements from before our testing phase.

 

The real issue has to do with the numerical basis for the system. The 'Hero engine', is basically 'class skills', that define the role players take in a group. The system expresses the basic designs through statistical information, and that includes the record of past character generations.

 

The alternative game engine, to a numerical system, is based on words. Translation makes it more difficult than the numerical system to run off of a record. The only reason that is an advantage, is the prevention of system ghosts, and past recorded characters produced in the system.

 

The internet based foundation work overseas, is not always done by the USA. The nature of that work defines more than our game community, and causes average people trouble from time to time. That is one of the things the council investigates.

May the force be with you.

Edited May 13, 2012 by Knightless

The game design issue, is not the game design, it has to do with the original compatibility requirements from before our testing phase.

 

The real issue has to do with the numerical basis for the system. The 'Hero engine', or the system that is the basis for the basic designs, statistical information, and the record of past character generation. The alternative game engine, to a numerical system, is based on words instead of the numerical system. The only reason that is an advantage, is the prevention of system ghosts, and past recorded characters produced y the system.

 

If you understand that the internet based foundation work overseas, is not always done by the USA. The nature of that work defines more than our game community, and causes average people trouble from time to time.

May the force be with you.

 

If the engine was not ready to be licensed.

* If the code was not ready nor stable, how do you plan to fix it!?

 

The Heroengine devs told him it was not ready?

* Do you think its going to be easier, once you implement more code on top of code that is not finished?

* How do you build a game with a "base" that is yet to be finished?

You do realize, had they developed their own engine, they'd have to do everything they've done & then some. Which game engine isn't exploitable? Which MMORPG isn't still tinkering with their code as we speak? How many others just released 6 months ago and are running flawlessly today?

Anyone remotely responsible for the horrid experience that was Star Wars Galaxies should not have been allowed to touch this game. Oh well. I guess it explains a few things.

You do realize, had they developed their own engine, they'd have to do everything they've done & then some. Which game engine isn't exploitable? Which MMORPG isn't still tinkering with their code as we speak? How many others just released 6 months ago and are running flawlessly today?

 

I understand that they can continue to optimize the engine.

* But they should have at least allowed them to finish the basic coding of the game.

* Not rushing the product for development.

I understand that they can continue to optimize the engine.

* But they should have at least allowed them to finish the basic coding of the game.

* Not rushing the product for development.

 

He was told do do something and he had a deadline. Stop trying to look back in time and give your 20/20 hindsight. You would have done the same thing, except you wouldn't have been qualified to make that call.

He was told do do something and he had a deadline. Stop trying to look back in time and give your 20/20 hindsight. You would have done the same thing, except you wouldn't have been qualified to make that call.

 

If I was him, I'd explore more options,

* I'd choose the Unreal 3 engine.

* Than use coding that was not yet ready.

* Thanks to his choice, optimizing the engine might not change anything.

* They would literally have to re-work the entire engine from the base code to implement any significant changes.

The code was stable, there is a reason it was not as simple as you thought. *edited above^

Hello everyone,

 

We know that a number of you wish to discuss the Hero engine and in order to keep the discussion together we ask that everyone use this thread. This will help to ensure our forums are tidy and everyone can participate in the ongoing conversation. We will be closing this thread, feel free to carry on there!