Wild Space: Engines, Holidays And Videos!

It’s a big galaxy our there, and Wild Space can be a dangerous place. Worry not, explorer – each week we’ll navigate you safely through the lost hyperspace routes of the Deep Core and track down the great articles and entertainment from around the SW:TOR fan community, all in less than 12 parsecs, of course!

At their core, all video games are based on a game engine that renders the graphics and provides a framework for developers to work from when designing a game (among many other things). If you were not aware, SW:TOR is built on the Hero Engine which was built from the ground up to for MMO games. BioWare acquired one of the first licenses to utilize the engine which by all accounts has worked out very well.

This week, fansite Red Rancor has an awesome write up about the Hero Engine, what a game engine actually is and does, and what functionality the Hero Engine allows BioWare do when developing SW:TOR. The one feature of the Hero Engine that really caught my eye was how it could potentially handle game updates and patches. To quote the article:

Says [Neil Harris of Simutronic, creators of the Hero Engine] “The developer could be working on adding new content, and when they like it, they could push the new content out to the players and it will stream down to you.”  Um, did I read that right?  Wouldn’t that mean that having heaping loads of changes, in a “patch”, would no longer be necessary?  Does that mean that patches could become a thing of the past!?!  “Another advantage is that you don’t have to wait six months for another expansion pack. That content can be streamed down live to the players, and it’s very efficient,” stated Harris. 

If content can be streamed to a user’s local client, having to download a separate update or patch would become unnecessary. This should result in less downtime, traditionally need for patches and updates; perhaps less maintenance outages for the game; and an improved gameplay experience for the player since content is updated and bugs are fixed in close to real-time. I don’t think I see a downside here! The annoying “update day” could be heading for it’s demise. Check out Red Rancor for their very detailed article about the Hero Engine.

Over on Darth Hater, there is a fantastic editorial about in-game holiday events in SW:TOR. They bring up the point that holidays in other games are shared by the opposing factions and both can participate in them (for example, The Feast of Winter Veil in WoW). In the context of SW:TOR’s backstory, it’s difficult to imagine the Sith and Republic having enough commonality to share a major event like the Feast of Winter Veil. The Sith have only just returned to the known galaxy (relatively speaking) after a 1000 years of exile, which was imposed by the Republic. Being Sith, they are just a little bit prone to revenge and anger, so it seems unlikely that they would ever sit down at a table and enjoy a celebratory feast with the Republic. It’s doubtful that they would even recognize the same holidays after that huge period of time; who knows what events happened that they would recognize and celebrate as a nation (if any). All we know is that they spent the majority of their time plotting revenge.

Planet-specific holidays for the indigenous population would be more likely, but very little material exists in the expanded universe on this topic so BioWare has very little background info to go on. The benefits of holiday events are good enough that BioWare should definitely consider implementing them into the game, but the question is how. Check out the full article over on Darth Hater for some insight.

Lastly, I would like to highlight a great video podcast source, TGN. On their SW:TOR Youtube channel, TGN has been providing the community with a bunch of great video guides that detail various parts of the game. They even produce a weekly show in partnership with us here at Ask A Jedi!

The most recent release is about personal starships in SW:TOR. It’s a great view for someone relatively new to the game and doesn’t know too much about the SW:TOR’s personal starships. TGN does a great job of describing all of the things you can do with your starship and provides quite a bit of information on the starships themselves. Check out their guide over on Youtube.