Hero Engine

A unique MMO Engine

Description

HeroEngine is a 3D game engine and server technology platform for building massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Simutronics originally developed the engine for their own game, Hero's Journey, and it went on to win awards at trade shows. Other companies, including BioWare Austin, have licensed the engine for their own projects. 

Here are some details about the HeroEngine: 

Purpose

The engine was designed to break down barriers to online game development by making it easier for creators to add content and update features. 

Features

HeroEngine features a real-time collaborative workflow that is yet unmatched in the industry. This predates even collaborative document editing like Google Docs. Engines of today, even those like Roblox Studio, still are nowhere as collaborative as HeroEngine.

The ability to modify the game in real-time extends beyond development and also functions while the MMO is live and players are happily engaged with the content. This makes for an unparalleled rapid development cycle.

History

In 2010, Idea Fabrik purchased the HeroEngine and hired staff associated with its development and support. 

Uses

HeroEngine has been used for a number of high-profile projects, including Star Wars: The Old Republic and Gatheryn.


My Contribution

HeroEngine was my baby. I conceived, designed and lead the development effort. I was the lead engineer on nearly every aspect of the engine, and for lead most every technical aspect even when I handed off big chunks to other developers. Over time this became quite an enormous project.


At the heart of the engine was a real-time collaborative workflow, still unmatched in any engine to this day. This was inspired by my original work on the interactive Fiction Engine (IFE) games GemStone and DragonRealms. While those games were text-based, this was an effort to bring this sort of development style and capability to modern (for its day) 3D graphics.


Underpinning this was a Domain Specific Language named HeroScript which I developed. It was designed to lend itself to rapid development of MMO type games in a collaborative environment. This is the second coding language (of many so far) that I developed after GSL (GemStone Language).


This tech platform was adopted by BioWare for their MMO title Star Wars: The Old Republic. And several others.