If BIOWARE, who had hundreds of employees couldn't handle the problems this engine put out, in no way can the 4 developers making this game be any more successful...
Lets be logical people.........lol geez
To me it sounds like someone bought the Collectors Edition of Star Wars the Old Republic, said to everyone and their brother that it was giong to be the best MMO ever, and then ended up very dissapointed with the results.
To you, I offer whatever drink you prefer in comfort.
We've all been there, we've all been dissapointed by games.
Though I was sceptical about The Repopulation when I first read about it, the more I read, the more I talked to the team and to the people who want to play the game, the more I'm thinking this one is going to turn out well.
I'm not projecting that it will be a smash hit.
I am saying that it looks like it is the kind of game that I want to play. Personally, that's what matters to me.
For those that don't want to play it, that's cool too. There are so many MMO's out there, plenty for everyone to choose from.
This one however is the one that I like. It's the one that from what I can see, has the most going for it in the elements of game play that I enjoy. That hasn't happened for a long time.
I am not worried. I will support them when they release the game, if I like what they have to offer. Kickstarters is also full of promises. "Game will have this and that".
Though I was sceptical about The Repopulation when I first read about it, the more I read, the more I talked to the team and to the people who want to play the game, the more I'm thinking this one is going to turn out well.
I'm not projecting that it will be a smash hit.
I am saying that it looks like it is the kind of game that I want to play. Personally, that's what matters to me.
For those that don't want to play it, that's cool too. There are so many MMO's out there, plenty for everyone to choose from.
This one however is the one that I like. It's the one that from what I can see, has the most going for it in the elements of game play that I enjoy. That hasn't happened for a long time.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I think this game will really turn out well, as well as giving many, many players that are missing certain elements of an MMO, such as RP/social elements and sandbox content, some hope.
Originally posted by CreepProphet
Originally posted by Atrocitus
If BIOWARE, who had hundreds of employees couldn't handle the problems this engine put out, in no way can the 4 developers making this game be any more successful...
Lets be logical people.........lol geez
To me it sounds like someone bought the Collectors Edition of Star Wars the Old Republic, said to everyone and their brother that it was giong to be the best MMO ever, and then ended up very dissapointed with the results.
To you, I offer whatever drink you prefer in comfort.
We've all been there, we've all been dissapointed by games.
LOL... yea... I can understand the frustration. I purchased the CE and went in full force with many friends. I mean... something had to replace SWG. I was just soooooo wrong in thinking any themepark (ewww... that term now makes me feel ill) would ever come close to a sandbox. In the back of my mind I knew it, but what other choices were there... I wanted a new sci fi MMO to replace SWG.
Well... I'm still playing TOR... in a way like sort of reading a book... you follow the story, but without any control over anything. I figured I'd play TOR for a while and then stop playing MMO's altogether. Thank goodness we actually now have small developers willing to bring back some of that sandbox adventure so many of us need.
I thought I would never pre-pay for any MMO again. But, The Repopulation has sold me. I pledged and will continue to support this grand endeavor. SWG is gone, but I think I will have a new home.
If BIOWARE, who had hundreds of employees couldn't handle the problems this engine put out, in no way can the 4 developers making this game be any more successful...
Lets be logical people.........lol geez
To me it sounds like someone bought the Collectors Edition of Star Wars the Old Republic, said to everyone and their brother that it was giong to be the best MMO ever, and then ended up very dissapointed with the results.
To you, I offer whatever drink you prefer in comfort.
We've all been there, we've all been dissapointed by games.
LOL... yea... I can understand the frustration. I purchased the CE and went in full force with many friends. I mean... something had to replace SWG. I was just soooooo wrong in thinking any themepark (ewww... that term now makes me feel ill) would ever come close to a sandbox. In the back of my mind I knew it, but what other choices were there... I wanted a new sci fi MMO to replace SWG.
Well... I'm still playing TOR... in a way like sort of reading a book... you follow the story, but without any control over anything. I figured I'd play TOR for a while and then stop playing MMO's altogether. Thank goodness we actually now have small developers willing to bring back some of that sandbox adventure so many of us need.
I thought I would never pre-pay for any MMO again. But, The Repopulation has sold me. I pledged and will continue to support this grand endeavor. SWG is gone, but I think I will have a new home.
I didn't plan on pre-paying for an MMO ever again myself really. A lot of games have a lot of hype to them, but then don't really pan out.
What I've read and seen from the videos of The Repopulation, there's a lot more that's already working in the game than what I see on a lot of upcoming releases. It's not all stories, art and marketing flash. It's about having a game that works and then adding the fun on top of that.
I'm really hoping this works out for all of the SWG folks. It's always sad when players lose a game they love. It sucks when we get frustrated about a game we want to play, but having a game shut down is another story entirely.
If BIOWARE, who had hundreds of employees couldn't handle the problems this engine put out, in no way can the 4 developers making this game be any more successful...
Lets be logical people.........lol geez
Logic would be reading the thread and seeing why ToR is not indicative of what the Hero Engine is capable of.
Regardless, this is like everything else. You either have faith, or you don't. The information is there, the devs are quite communicative and everything seems to be quite transparent. Until the game comes out, you really don't have a horse to ride.
If BIOWARE, who had hundreds of employees couldn't handle the problems this engine put out, in no way can the 4 developers making this game be any more successful...
Lets be logical people.........lol geez
Having 100s of people working on something isnt always better. Ever heard the phrase "too many cooks in the kitchen"?
And FYI, there are more than 4 people working on The Repopulation
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT Playing: Skyrim Following: The Repopulation I want a Virtual World, not just a Game. ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
I'm not entirely sure if this is widely known but Hero engine is in transition to Hero Engine 2,Idea Fabrik are making a massive update so pretty much every Hero Game in development will move over to the new engine.
So this should finally kill off all the SWTOR stigma once and for all.
I guess there is a well laid out plan for how the game will feel, which attracts people, like sandboxers. The alpha videos were so-so, but it's still early to mid in development I suppose, so I'll wait and see.
On the Hero Engine, SWTOR had procured an unfinished version sometime early in the games development, thinking that coding an engine was a walk in the park - they would just fill in what was missing and make it work, within their unique specifications. Well they bought what there was, then found out it wasn't so easy. It was rumored also that the EA Bioware people who supported buying (and knew all about) the unsupported early version had left the company way before the game released ... but after Hero was paid.
The sad series of events was only known about because EA had to balls to say that the graphics engine couldn't be improved upon much because of limitations of the Hero engine. To which (surprise surprise) Hero posted all the events and poor decisions by EA to clear their name. So the blame fell back on EA. The source for the SWTOR-Hero engine is so mutilated from the original, that Hero will not support it.
Bioware not EA Bioware bought the Hero Engine way before EA came along or before they jumped into bed with EA. The fault lies with the original Bioware team not EA, some people need to except the fact that BioWare are just as much to blame as EA are when it comes to swtor.
The Hero Engine is not a good engine for MMOs buttom line.
I guess there is a well laid out plan for how the game will feel, which attracts people, like sandboxers. The alpha videos were so-so, but it's still early to mid in development I suppose, so I'll wait and see.
On the Hero Engine, SWTOR had procured an unfinished version sometime early in the games development, thinking that coding an engine was a walk in the park - they would just fill in what was missing and make it work, within their unique specifications. Well they bought what there was, then found out it wasn't so easy. It was rumored also that the EA Bioware people who supported buying (and knew all about) the unsupported early version had left the company way before the game released ... but after Hero was paid.
The sad series of events was only known about because EA had to balls to say that the graphics engine couldn't be improved upon much because of limitations of the Hero engine. To which (surprise surprise) Hero posted all the events and poor decisions by EA to clear their name. So the blame fell back on EA. The source for the SWTOR-Hero engine is so mutilated from the original, that Hero will not support it.
Bioware not EA Bioware bought the Hero Engine way before EA came along or before they jumped into bed with EA. The fault lies with the original Bioware team not EA, some peopld need to except the fact that BioWare are just as much to blame as EA are when it comes to swtor.
The Hero Engine is not a good engine for MMOs buttom line.
Err, you do realise that the engine was actually built ground up for a Mo in the first place but Heroes Journey was canned due to the publisher going under,but survived as it morphed into an all round engine for developers and quite a few assets from the game remain for devs to develop with.
So unless you have had experience with Hero and a game in development and as not many Mo's have yet hit full release as the engine is still young,you are making one hell of an assumption based on it seems hot air as the new engine is light years ahead of the one raped by Bioware.
Bioware not EA Bioware bought the Hero Engine way before EA came along or before they jumped into bed with EA. The fault lies with the original Bioware team not EA, some people need to except the fact that BioWare are just as much to blame as EA are when it comes to swtor.
The Hero Engine is not a good engine for MMOs buttom line.
Hero Engine is great to work with. They're currently putting in HE2 and it's even better than the first.
I had my doubts about the whole HE thing and most of it was based off of TOR, but after working with the tools myself, I can tell you this HE/HB is designed for MMOs. It's designed to allow teams to work together in real time, which is huge for us. It's a great tool and people really need to back off of HE. It's not their fault SWTOR turned out as a steaming pile of crap.
JC has repeatedly explained why SWTOR has the problems that they have and why we won't be having the same issues. It's not HE, it's the chocies TORs development team made. Instead of linking, I'm copying the appropriate section from a post JC made on these forums:
"In the case of TOR, your talking about multiple texture styles per visual tier, per class and 8 classes. It offered some great variety and within the goals of their game it made sense. However, it can cause a struggle when dealing with PvP because your really pushing a ton of state changes and using a lot of memory on the video card. A PvP focused game wouldn't want that, as PvP players are generally going to turn down the options to make gameplay silky smooth. That's the balancing act that developers need to deal with. In the case of TOR they choose their parameters as it made the most sense for their game. For us, 15-20 tintable sets would make a lot more sense than 100, for example. And end user might look at WoW and at ToR and wonder why they can have more customization in WoW and it handles more players well. For them they blame the engine, but the reality is that TORs characters were FAR higher polygon wise, and used normal and specular map data and higher resolution textures. WIth the same texture, just adding normal/specular will more than double your texture usage. So this makes the hit on each texture much more harsh, and as users begin to fill their texture memory it makes it far more inefficient. In general the less texture or state changes you can get away with the better. Single player games always have an advantage here because they can develop content that is single model and single texture. In MMOs players can not be handled in that manner. That ensures that they can't be batch rendered efficiently. Developers have to make a compromise somewhere in between. How much customization is enough for what we're trying to accomplish. You can't blame the engine for decisions they make."
With all the heat Hero is taking from being associated with SWTOR, i bet they have mixed feelings selling it to EA....
It all goes to show, never sell an unfinished product, even if there is s a buyer.
True, but I'm sure they were looking forward to using some funds to help continue building their engine.
Fallen Earth was a game designed originally to sell an engine, so was Second Life. Every game engine has it's hiccups. Hero is just going to have to overcome this stigma and move on. Sadly with an unforgiving community, it'll take a few successful examples before opinions change.
On the upside, that would mean having a few successful games to play so it's not all bad.
Long ago in a company far far away, we were building a game called Hero’s Journey. It was an ambitious game with many wonderful features. We had our own special way of building games based on a unique process that we had developed while building pioneering online games like GemStone and DragonRealms. Our goal was to build a modern graphical MMO RPG that allowed our team of designers to continually add new content into the game – new areas, new spells, whatever they could think of.
We took an early version of our game to the legendary 2005 E3 show. We rented a small room in the back of a small hall, very far away from the giant multimedia extravaganza exhibits of EA, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and the rest of the empires. We set up meetings with people we knew, members of the press, friends in the industry, and publishers. We hoped to build enough interest to get a publisher to provide enough funding to expand the team and finish the game.
A few people got very excited, but not the way we planned.
“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.
Comments
To me it sounds like someone bought the Collectors Edition of Star Wars the Old Republic, said to everyone and their brother that it was giong to be the best MMO ever, and then ended up very dissapointed with the results.
To you, I offer whatever drink you prefer in comfort.
We've all been there, we've all been dissapointed by games.
Though I was sceptical about The Repopulation when I first read about it, the more I read, the more I talked to the team and to the people who want to play the game, the more I'm thinking this one is going to turn out well.
I'm not projecting that it will be a smash hit.
I am saying that it looks like it is the kind of game that I want to play. Personally, that's what matters to me.
For those that don't want to play it, that's cool too. There are so many MMO's out there, plenty for everyone to choose from.
This one however is the one that I like. It's the one that from what I can see, has the most going for it in the elements of game play that I enjoy. That hasn't happened for a long time.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
I think this game will really turn out well, as well as giving many, many players that are missing certain elements of an MMO, such as RP/social elements and sandbox content, some hope.
LOL... yea... I can understand the frustration. I purchased the CE and went in full force with many friends. I mean... something had to replace SWG. I was just soooooo wrong in thinking any themepark (ewww... that term now makes me feel ill) would ever come close to a sandbox. In the back of my mind I knew it, but what other choices were there... I wanted a new sci fi MMO to replace SWG.
Well... I'm still playing TOR... in a way like sort of reading a book... you follow the story, but without any control over anything. I figured I'd play TOR for a while and then stop playing MMO's altogether. Thank goodness we actually now have small developers willing to bring back some of that sandbox adventure so many of us need.
I thought I would never pre-pay for any MMO again. But, The Repopulation has sold me. I pledged and will continue to support this grand endeavor. SWG is gone, but I think I will have a new home.
I didn't plan on pre-paying for an MMO ever again myself really. A lot of games have a lot of hype to them, but then don't really pan out.
What I've read and seen from the videos of The Repopulation, there's a lot more that's already working in the game than what I see on a lot of upcoming releases. It's not all stories, art and marketing flash. It's about having a game that works and then adding the fun on top of that.
I'm really hoping this works out for all of the SWG folks. It's always sad when players lose a game they love. It sucks when we get frustrated about a game we want to play, but having a game shut down is another story entirely.
Logic would be reading the thread and seeing why ToR is not indicative of what the Hero Engine is capable of.
Regardless, this is like everything else. You either have faith, or you don't. The information is there, the devs are quite communicative and everything seems to be quite transparent. Until the game comes out, you really don't have a horse to ride.
Having 100s of people working on something isnt always better. Ever heard the phrase "too many cooks in the kitchen"?
And FYI, there are more than 4 people working on The Repopulation
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)
Looks like some interesting things in this game. They have an interesting quest generator iirc and faction influence also:
FEATURES
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
I'm not entirely sure if this is widely known but Hero engine is in transition to Hero Engine 2,Idea Fabrik are making a massive update so pretty much every Hero Game in development will move over to the new engine.
So this should finally kill off all the SWTOR stigma once and for all.
http://www.heroengine.com/2012/11/heroengine-2-empowers-indie-game-developers%E2%80%99-to-focus-on-creativity/
Bioware not EA Bioware bought the Hero Engine way before EA came along or before they jumped into bed with EA. The fault lies with the original Bioware team not EA, some people need to except the fact that BioWare are just as much to blame as EA are when it comes to swtor.
The Hero Engine is not a good engine for MMOs buttom line.
Err, you do realise that the engine was actually built ground up for a Mo in the first place but Heroes Journey was canned due to the publisher going under,but survived as it morphed into an all round engine for developers and quite a few assets from the game remain for devs to develop with.
So unless you have had experience with Hero and a game in development and as not many Mo's have yet hit full release as the engine is still young,you are making one hell of an assumption based on it seems hot air as the new engine is light years ahead of the one raped by Bioware.
Hero Engine is great to work with. They're currently putting in HE2 and it's even better than the first.
I had my doubts about the whole HE thing and most of it was based off of TOR, but after working with the tools myself, I can tell you this HE/HB is designed for MMOs. It's designed to allow teams to work together in real time, which is huge for us. It's a great tool and people really need to back off of HE. It's not their fault SWTOR turned out as a steaming pile of crap.
JC has repeatedly explained why SWTOR has the problems that they have and why we won't be having the same issues. It's not HE, it's the chocies TORs development team made. Instead of linking, I'm copying the appropriate section from a post JC made on these forums:
"In the case of TOR, your talking about multiple texture styles per visual tier, per class and 8 classes. It offered some great variety and within the goals of their game it made sense. However, it can cause a struggle when dealing with PvP because your really pushing a ton of state changes and using a lot of memory on the video card. A PvP focused game wouldn't want that, as PvP players are generally going to turn down the options to make gameplay silky smooth. That's the balancing act that developers need to deal with. In the case of TOR they choose their parameters as it made the most sense for their game. For us, 15-20 tintable sets would make a lot more sense than 100, for example. And end user might look at WoW and at ToR and wonder why they can have more customization in WoW and it handles more players well. For them they blame the engine, but the reality is that TORs characters were FAR higher polygon wise, and used normal and specular map data and higher resolution textures. WIth the same texture, just adding normal/specular will more than double your texture usage. So this makes the hit on each texture much more harsh, and as users begin to fill their texture memory it makes it far more inefficient. In general the less texture or state changes you can get away with the better. Single player games always have an advantage here because they can develop content that is single model and single texture. In MMOs players can not be handled in that manner. That ensures that they can't be batch rendered efficiently. Developers have to make a compromise somewhere in between. How much customization is enough for what we're trying to accomplish. You can't blame the engine for decisions they make."
Full post can be found here: http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/371248/page/3
Thanks Kayletta, that is a reassuring post and link!
I am still bruised by SWTOR lol.
With all the heat Hero is taking from being associated with SWTOR, i bet they have mixed feelings selling it to EA....
It all goes to show, never sell an unfinished product, even if there is s a buyer.
True, but I'm sure they were looking forward to using some funds to help continue building their engine.
Fallen Earth was a game designed originally to sell an engine, so was Second Life. Every game engine has it's hiccups. Hero is just going to have to overcome this stigma and move on. Sadly with an unforgiving community, it'll take a few successful examples before opinions change.
On the upside, that would mean having a few successful games to play so it's not all bad.
How it went down:
http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/
for the lazy:
Hero’s Journey
Long ago in a company far far away, we were building a game called Hero’s Journey. It was an ambitious game with many wonderful features. We had our own special way of building games based on a unique process that we had developed while building pioneering online games like GemStone and DragonRealms. Our goal was to build a modern graphical MMO RPG that allowed our team of designers to continually add new content into the game – new areas, new spells, whatever they could think of.
We took an early version of our game to the legendary 2005 E3 show. We rented a small room in the back of a small hall, very far away from the giant multimedia extravaganza exhibits of EA, Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and the rest of the empires. We set up meetings with people we knew, members of the press, friends in the industry, and publishers. We hoped to build enough interest to get a publisher to provide enough funding to expand the team and finish the game.
A few people got very excited, but not the way we planned.
“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.
by Neil Harris, President and COO of HeroEngine