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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.

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