TESO uses a modified version HeroEngine

wowclones

First off, HeroEngine is a great engine, so this is not a flame post. I have been a long time user of HeroEngine, after watching the leaked video, I can tell you 100% that it is HeroEngine. They tried to deny using it for the final version here http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/26/the-elder-scrolls-online-using-heroengine-as-a-whiteboard/ . They never dropped it, it was just a PR move to avoid the connection with TOR and HeroEngine. From the way the terrain textures are laid on the ground to the way the  grass blades (billboards) blow in the wind, it is Heroengine.  Understand things like that differ  from engine to engine, for it to be exact means it's using the same core. Although the water shader has been modified. Everything else is Hero. Possibly that video was made during the "Whiteboard" stage of production, but what is in the video is Hero.

PAL-18

HeroEngine Highlight reel.

wowclones

Thanks for posting that, although not much we can see there. The reason I was able to see it in the leaked video is becasue it was 1080p. Was easy to see the exact same wind  and terrain texture algorithms, which are extrememly different in CRY, UDK and Unity, different in each engine. 

Sovrath

What about this part:

Game director Matt Firor says that the firm isn't using the engine as you may expect, though.

"Think of HeroEngine 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," he explains.

 

Also this:

“Our plan is for ESO to be a world class MMO, with the social features found in any MMO to date – 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,” he added.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Doesn-t-Use-the-Hero-Engine-Developer-Says-272344.shtml

Rthuth434

Originally posted by Sovrath

What about this part:

Game director Matt Firor says that the firm isn't using the engine as you may expect, though.

"Think of HeroEngine 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," he explains.

 

Also this:

“Our plan is for ESO to be a world class MMO, with the social features found in any MMO to date – 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,” he added.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Doesn-t-Use-the-Hero-Engine-Developer-Says-272344.shtml

 

all this means is at most TESO will have its own UI not using the engine tools. haha, nothing about the gameplay, visuals or performance will be changed by this....

Iselin

Originally posted by Rthuth434

Originally posted by Sovrath

What about this part:

Game director Matt Firor says that the firm isn't using the engine as you may expect, though.

"Think of HeroEngine 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," he explains.

 

Also this:

“Our plan is for ESO to be a world class MMO, with the social features found in any MMO to date – 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,” he added.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Doesn-t-Use-the-Hero-Engine-Developer-Says-272344.shtml

 

all this means is at most TESO will have its own UI not using the engine tools. haha, nothing about the gameplay, visuals or performance will be changed by this....

 So what does "production engine" mean to you?

wowclones

also not sure how many know about game development, but any ideas you have and have coded in the whiteboard engine, for them to be moved to the "production engine" they must be written in the same core engine with same programming language. otherwise you have to trash everything you used in the whiteboard and re write it from scratch in the production engines coding language.

Sovrath

Originally posted by Iselin

Originally posted by Rthuth434

Originally posted by Sovrath

What about this part:

Game director Matt Firor says that the firm isn't using the engine as you may expect, though.

"Think of HeroEngine 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," he explains.

 

Also this:

“Our plan is for ESO to be a world class MMO, with the social features found in any MMO to date – 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,” he added.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Elder-Scrolls-Online-Doesn-t-Use-the-Hero-Engine-Developer-Says-272344.shtml

 

all this means is at most TESO will have its own UI not using the engine tools. haha, nothing about the gameplay, visuals or performance will be changed by this....

 So what does "production engine" mean to you?

Yeah, apparently some people have selective reading. I knew that was going to trip some people up.

And this might help some as well..

Firor went on to say that the custom engine created for The Elder Scrolls Online is meant to be versatile enough to run on any PC, Mac or laptop purchased within the last five years. This means that lower end machines will miss out on some of the graphical flourishes but it opens the game up to a broader range of players.

So why did ZeniMax Online choose to go with a custom engine?

"When you control the technical platform that you are developing on – by writing it yourself – you get to make all the decisions, and ensure that all features are developed with your game in mind," Firor continued. "This makes things tighter and more stable."

"There are no compromises with the technology that we’re using – everything in the game’s engine was written for this game, with no extraneous code, features, or tools."

 

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-elder-scrolls-online-is-not-using-the-hero-engine

ShakyMo

So basicly they prototype in hero engine because its quick to knock up a prototype in.

Then they make the real version in the proper engine (probably a very heavily modified gamebryo like skyrim)

That's pretty much how I work, bang up quick prototypes to demo / test ideas using c#. Make the real version in C++ (striping out stuff like dynamic polymorphism and substituting templates / functional techniques) using our in house compiler. Because my stuff needs to be blisteringly fast.

Phry

Originally posted by ShakyMo
So basicly they prototype in hero engine because its quick to knock up a prototype in.

Then they make the real version in the proper engine (probably a very heavily modified gamebryo like skyrim)

That's pretty much how I work, bang up quick prototypes to demo / test ideas using c#. Make the real version in C++ (striping out stuff like dynamic polymorphism and substituting templates / functional techniques) using our in house compiler. Because my stuff needs to be blisteringly fast.

no, not prototype in hero engine at all, just means they used the hero engine to mess around with, there is no intention of using the hero engine for anything else. Which tbh, is probably to be expected, the only game to use the hero engine, if a heavily modified one, suffered throughout development for it, and still does even after release, even the repopulation which is still in development stage, and which  isnt really at a state yet that you can really call it an alpha.. maybe they would have been better off doing the same as Zenimax, and just using hero for creative purposes while their own game engine was being developed, although its not too late for them to do that even now i guess, perhaps they will do so.

hopelessness

ah hero engine.. loved them low res textures that teased you with hi res textures when you clicked the hologram button on the ship and oh that ability delay ... and those graphics man.. them were the days ( about 20 days) 

wowclones

He said they were using Hero while the production engine was being prepared. If the production eninge is not base on Hero code, they have to start from scratch. Everything, although the models will carry over, everything has to be re-export. My whole point of this post is to call their bluff about "ditiching Hero", assuming the leaked video is something current, which was rumored to be from PAX. HeroEngine is superior to any mmorpg based engine on the market, 10 year plus has gone into development, do you honestly think TESO is going to make an mmorpg engine from scratch? likely what they will do is use the backend server tech of HeroEngine and put in a new graphical frontend, that is the "production engine" being prepared.

hopelessness

If you are saying that is hero engine then that is what the game will be created from - no way are they gunna rebuild that amount .. the only thing i can imagine them using it for is testing quests and designing maps... 

wowclones

Originally posted by hopelessness
If you are saying that is hero engine then that is what the game will be created from - no way are they gunna rebuild that amount .. the only thing i can imagine them using it for is testing quests and designing maps... 

Sorry ,edited my post, likely what they will do is use the backend server tech of HeroEngine and put in a new graphical frontend, that is the "production engine" being prepared. At that point it will not be HeroEngine anymore. 38 studios used Bigworld and Unreal for Project Copernicus. Used graphics from Unreal, backend server tech from Bigworld coded the two together. At that point it is no longer Bigworld or Unreal. Same thing TESO is probably doing. They can then say "it's not HeroEngine", as they did in the article.

hopelessness

Originally posted by wowclones

Originally posted by hopelessness
If you are saying that is hero engine then that is what the game will be created from - no way are they gunna rebuild that amount .. the only thing i can imagine them using it for is testing quests and designing maps... 

Sorry ,edited my post, likely what they will do is use the backend server tech of HeroEngine and put in a new graphical frontend, that is the "production engine" being prepared. At that point it will not be HeroEngine anymore. 38 studios used Bigworld and Unreal for Project Copernicus. Used graphics from Unreal, backend server tech from Bigworld coded the two together. At that point it is no longer Bigworld or Unreal. Same thing TESO is probably doing. They can then say "it's not HeroEngine", as they did in the article.

If were are to presume that the leaked video was recent - ie in the last 2 weeks is it possible for them to do what you are describing within 6 months.. I think I can guess the answer.

Dihoru

All hail Lord Themepark, another treasured IP has been sacrificed in your name!

Karelia

Hero Engine. nice, very nice...

wowclones

Originally posted by hopelessness

Originally posted by wowclones

Originally posted by hopelessness
If you are saying that is hero engine then that is what the game will be created from - no way are they gunna rebuild that amount .. the only thing i can imagine them using it for is testing quests and designing maps... 

Sorry ,edited my post, likely what they will do is use the backend server tech of HeroEngine and put in a new graphical frontend, that is the "production engine" being prepared. At that point it will not be HeroEngine anymore. 38 studios used Bigworld and Unreal for Project Copernicus. Used graphics from Unreal, backend server tech from Bigworld coded the two together. At that point it is no longer Bigworld or Unreal. Same thing TESO is probably doing. They can then say "it's not HeroEngine", as they did in the article.

If were are to presume that the leaked video was recent - ie in the last 2 weeks is it possible for them to do what you are describing within 6 months.. I think I can guess the answer.

Yeah it is very possible, it's like having two different builds, you got one group of people working on all the mechanics and implementing game code and a group working on the modified engine. All they would have to do is merge the code into the production engine and call it TESOSuperHeroEngine. 

ShakyMo

Phry:
That's what a prototype is.
Messing around to try stuff out.

Quizzical

Originally posted by hopelessness
ah hero engine.. loved them low res textures that teased you with hi res textures when you clicked the hologram button on the ship and oh that ability delay ... and those graphics man.. them were the days ( about 20 days) 

Texture resolution is limited by how much video memory you're willing to require, game installation size (on your hard drive), and how many different textures you need to have loaded at once.  None of those is meaningfully impacted by your choice of a game engine unless you find creative ways to be really inefficient.  They are heavily impacted by how dense your game world is with things you need to draw, the maximum distance at which you want to have things loaded so that you can draw them, and how much you're willing to reuse the same texture.

I don't know what the terms of their Hero Engine license are, but if you're using the same programming language, there's no technical reason (as opposed to copyright reasons) why you couldn't selectively pick out small pieces (10 lines of code here, 20 lines there) of the Hero Engine that do exactly what you want and cut and paste them into your own engine, possibly changing some variable names or such to fit the rest of your engine.

waynejr2

Originally posted by ShakyMo
So basicly they prototype in hero engine because its quick to knock up a prototype in.

Then they make the real version in the proper engine (probably a very heavily modified gamebryo like skyrim)

That's pretty much how I work, bang up quick prototypes to demo / test ideas using c#. Make the real version in C++ (striping out stuff like dynamic polymorphism and substituting templates / functional techniques) using our in house compiler. Because my stuff needs to be blisteringly fast.

 Sounds more like a proof of concept and design testing placeholder while they make the real engine. 

ShakyMo

That's what a prototype is. A proof on concept.

snapfusion

Originally posted by wowclones

First off, HeroEngine is a great engine, so this is not a flame post. I have been a long time user of HeroEngine, after watching the leaked video, I can tell you 100% that it is HeroEngine. They tried to deny using it for the final version here http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/05/26/the-elder-scrolls-online-using-heroengine-as-a-whiteboard/ . They never dropped it, it was just a PR move to avoid the connection with TOR and HeroEngine. From the way the terrain textures are laid on the ground to the way the  grass blades (billboards) blow in the wind, it is Heroengine.  Understand things like that differ  from engine to engine, for it to be exact means it's using the same core. Although the water shader has been modified. Everything else is Hero. Possibly that video was made during the "Whiteboard" stage of production, but what is in the video is Hero.

What a mess of wrong you have conjured together, there are so many ways to disprove your tin foil drama post its just funny.

waynejr2

Originally posted by ShakyMo
That's what a prototype is. A proof on concept.

 Sorry if my all my years in software was confusing you.  Explaining it to the idiots.

Lobotomist

According to Bioware - main reason SWTOR failed is HeroEngine.

It is a blight on the industry.

ShakyMo

Main reason swtor sucks

Ea are involved

What was the last decent ea game? first dragon age I reckon.

What was the last great ea game, a contender for game of the year? Probably going back as far back as sim city 3000.