Star Wars: The Old Republic is one of the most ambitious undertakings in video game history. When the game launched in December, it was the fruition of six years of work by as many as 800 developers and an investment of an estimated $200 million.
One of the secrets behind the successful development of the game was the HeroEngine, a development platform for building online games that was created by Maryland-based Idea Fabrik.The goal of the engine is to break down the barriers to good online game development by creating a free-to-use solution that lets creators take over and push the technology to the background.
The Star Wars game is the first gigantic title to use Idea Fabrik’s HeroEngine, which was designed to enable designers of huge multiplayer games, or massively multiplayer online games, to quickly add content or update existing features on a continuous basis. While the Star Wars game required a huge number of developers, the HeroEngine tools helped streamline the process so that those developers could work more efficiently and so BioWare, owned by Electronic Arts, didn’t have to hire an even larger army of game makers. With the HeroEngine’s technology, developers log into the HeroBlade client, where they can code, drop in art assets and build the entire game.
Via venturebeat.com
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Illum is an example of the restrictions that this engine encounters. Should have made their own engine.
Yeah, disapointing engine. Not bad, but definitly incomplete.
All that money, all those developers and they use an unfinished engine and try and complete it themselves.
Would of rather waited another year and had them build there own engine inhouse.
I am a bit gobsmacked really that they went for this gaming engine.
I am not an expert on the subject but from the little I’ve read there is an issue in that it doesn’t multi thread currently.
It is my guess though that the engine is fundamentally flawed in its current incarnation and largely responsible for abilities not going off from time to time and response issues in combat. Certainly in groups when there is more happening this becomes more noticeable.
I really hope the game engine issues are resolved and that it doesn’t end up being the undoing of a game with such huge potential.
Also, the choice of this engine may have been false economy. May not be much of a saving if they have to employ an even bigger team to come up with workarounds to compensate for engine issues.
Successful development of the game? You just said…. 6 years, 200 million invested and 800 developers? It was delayed over a year too. Sorry, but what was succesful about this other than the publisher forced them to release it while it was still in a very buggy state?
Because a failed release would mean we would (or wouldln’t) be playing in the style of APB (with the original producers), the shortest mmo lifetime in history.