What game engine does the ESO use?

Maximis_ESO · January 2015

I've heard it was the hero engine was used to make ESO and I've heard that is wasn't.

I know they licensed it but did they use it or a variation that they made tinkering with the code?

I'm not asking for any particular reason just out of curiosity... I like to know what the devs used to build the game.

I did noticed when re downloading the game recently it pops up with the Hero Engine name and it got me thinking.

Anyone have any idea?

Dracane · January 2015

It's called the Hero Engine

I haven't heared anything about a change. But I'm no expert in such things.

Faulgor · January 2015

No, ESO does not use the Hero Engine.

Early on, ZOS licensed the Hero Engine to have an environment where to test their character models and such. At the same time, they developed their own engine which the game itself has always used.

Maximis_ESO · January 2015

Faulgor wrote: »

No, ESO does not use the Hero Engine.

Early on, ZOS licensed the Hero Engine to have an environment where to test their character models and such. At the same time, they developed their own engine which the game itself has always used.

But why, when downloading the game do they have the logo for Hero Engine flash by? Do they have to give credit to it for that?

Harleyquincey · January 2015

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

b92303008rwb17_ESO · January 2015

Faulgor wrote: »

No, ESO does not use the Hero Engine.

Early on, ZOS licensed the Hero Engine to have an environment where to test their character models and such. At the same time, they developed their own engine which the game itself has always used.

I can confirm this. I heard the same thing in an interview with Matt Firor. IIRC, they used Hero Engine as some kind of "learning tool" to accumulated experience as they developed their own in order to meet the specific needs required by ESO.

Neizir · January 2015

ESO uses its own engine, developed by ZOS specifically for ESO. They used Heroengine early on as a testing ground, but then they made their own engine.

jeevin · January 2015

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

wookiefriseur · January 2015

Yeah, you're right. Remembered something similar in May coming up. After a quick search I found it again.

Official response back then:

ZOS_TristanK wrote: »

Hi, folks. When we began development for ESO, we licensed the HeroEngine so that we could hit the ground running. We used it as a tool for things like area prototypes and design concepts so that we could begin honing the art style. HeroEngine was our whiteboard: a great tool to put our ideas in the game and seeing them while the production engine was in development.

Maximis_ESO · January 2015

Awesome, thanks for all the info

Maximis_ESO · January 2015

jeevin wrote: »

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

ESO actually runs better on my system then SWTOR, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I'm not sure what they are did or are doing but it's working for what I've got. SWTOR was probably the hardest one for my PC to handle.

wookiefriseur · January 2015

Also it is a very good thing that they have a proprietary engine.

More control and independence that way. And bugs that nobody has ever seen before. ^^

KhajitFurTrader · January 2015

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/05/25/why-the-elder-scrolls-online-isn-39-t-using-heroengine.aspx

You licensed HeroEngine a long time ago. What role did the Hero Engine play in the development of ESO?

We started ZeniMax Online from scratch, with no employees and no technology. We had to build everything ourselves. It takes a long time to write game engines, especially MMO engines, which are inherently more complicated than typical single-player ones. So, we decided to license the HeroEngine to give us a headstart. It was a useful tool for us to use to prototype areas and game design concepts, and it provided us the ability to get art into the game that was visible, so we could work on the game’s art style. [...]

jeevin · January 2015

Maximis_ESO wrote: »

jeevin wrote: »

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

ESO actually runs better on my system then SWTOR, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I'm not sure what they are did or are doing but it's working for what I've got. SWTOR was probably the hardest one for my PC to handle.

I'm glad you're getting good performance from the game. For me it's still unresponsive, laggy and in most respects, slow for server response. SWTOR, GW2 and FF14 are smooth and responsive in comparison.

My Pc is semi beastly too not that it should make much difference for this game.

Wing · January 2015

yup, as other have pointed out, in house engine.

. . .so now that they have there own engine perhaps they could make more MMO's? they do have access to other big IP's. . .

. . .such as oh I don't know, Fallout? XD

Gidorick · January 2015

I hope the engine is called the Amaranth Engine.

danno8 · January 2015

Well if the end-product does not use the Hero Engine, then they should consider removing the "Made with Hero Engine" splashscreen that is displayed when you first load the game.

Unless they are under some contract to do so, based on their initial use of the engine.

danno8 · January 2015

jeevin wrote: »

Maximis_ESO wrote: »

jeevin wrote: »

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

ESO actually runs better on my system then SWTOR, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I'm not sure what they are did or are doing but it's working for what I've got. SWTOR was probably the hardest one for my PC to handle.

I'm glad you're getting good performance from the game. For me it's still unresponsive, laggy and in most respects, slow for server response. SWTOR, GW2 and FF14 are smooth and responsive in comparison.

My Pc is semi beastly too not that it should make much difference for this game.

It is strange how performance compared to other games is so different across the population.

Even in huge battles Cyrodil has been very smooth for me, with little to no lag, about as good as GW2.

SWTOR was fine in PvE until you went to the fleet, where 100 people in the same instance was enough to give terrible framerates and large scale PvP was very laggy/choppy.

Naivefanboi · January 2015

Maximis_ESO wrote: »

I've heard it was the hero engine was used to make ESO and I've heard that is wasn't.

I know they licensed it but did they use it or a variation that they made tinkering with the code?

I'm not asking for any particular reason just out of curiosity... I like to know what the devs used to build the game.

I did noticed when re downloading the game recently it pops up with the Hero Engine name and it got me thinking.

Anyone have any idea?

really guys? did you see the big giant "HAVOK" logo? lol
the havok engine , or havok helped them build a custom one.

PBpsy · January 2015

jeevin wrote: »

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

Really!?
In truth I would be on SWTOR if the technical quality of that game could be rated as lower then terrible POS. For me SWTOR makes TESO look like the most polished turd ever. I was in that game from day one and loved almost all aspects of gameplay but I had to leave and return multiple times due to various technical problems. First 3 months could rarely play more than 30 minutes without a disconnect.The lag spikes were constant and I think they were one of the major reasons that game went f2p.I remember there were a couple of threads with hundreds and hundreds of pages about these problems.I knew many people that left that game due to lag spikes and connection problems.I was one of the people that resisted the most . The loading times were and still are never ending. The graphical and sound glitches were all over and still are there.

fromtesonlineb16_ESO · January 2015

Dracane wrote: »

It's called the Hero Engine
I haven't heared anything about a change. But I'm no expert in such things.

jjf42001_ESO wrote: »

really guys? did you see the big giant "HAVOK" logo? lol

Yes, LOL?

They only used that during initial development while their own in-house engine was being developed. ZOS have said that many times in response to false comments about Hero.

LOL?

Tankqull · January 2015

jeevin wrote: »

Maximis_ESO wrote: »

jeevin wrote: »

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

ESO actually runs better on my system then SWTOR, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I'm not sure what they are did or are doing but it's working for what I've got. SWTOR was probably the hardest one for my PC to handle.

I'm glad you're getting good performance from the game. For me it's still unresponsive, laggy and in most respects, slow for server response. SWTOR, GW2 and FF14 are smooth and responsive in comparison.

My Pc is semi beastly too not that it should make much difference for this game.

try to pvp in swtor with mor than 20 people in one place - come back and tell us again how smooth swtor is compared to ESO :P

Harleyquincey · January 2015

Weeeeell.. regarding SW:TOR and its issues with the Hero Engine - this is precisely why SW:TOR can not rework their graphics and why it is very limited in what they can do whereas ESO has the full flexibility.

I've been a Founder in SW:TOR, si I've been there from launch until ESO came out and there's been bugs and glitches with the Engine and some things can't even be fixed on BioWare's side without tremendous effort (and I think in a few cases it's even an "at all" issue).

So yeah.. we can be very, very, very glad about ESO having its own engine - improved lightings, reworking animations, new effects.. all thanks to having your own engine to work with.

To me there is three major issues that really hindered SW:TOR's success to be even larger - the dead-server-issue after launch, the Hero Engine's limitations and finally.. using the BitRaider client for handling logins since a long while now.
Don't get me started on that one, really. Let's leave it at "30 to 60 minutes per login" for many many many players. Well. Ex-Players in my case and quite some part of the reason was that client....

AlexDougherty · January 2015

Nevermind, misread, my comment was in reference to the fleets.

RinaldoGandolphi · January 2015

I am not sure, but it could be possible parts of the Hero Engine code is their.

Take Pfsense for example, its a fork of monowall, they both share some parts of the same code base, but pfsense has so many code modifications that you can't call pfsense monowall anymore then you could call Linux Windows 7.

I think the hero engine got a bad rap unfairly, it don't matter to me if ESO borrowed some code from hero or not, I still think its a great game.

Harleyquincey · January 2015

I think it got a bad rep for valid reasons on the one side and for not being a custom engine on the other side, both not tremendously good points for using it in a MMO. SW:TOR already cost way too much though so I get why they purchased it. Don't get me wrong, it's an ok engine - but it's far from awesome or even from having your own custom one.

Also.. the ESO engine is really performing quite epic, my spouse's PC isn't all that good but she can still run it at 30-45 FPS in decent settings. In SW:TOR the performance was in fact way worse on her machine. Be sure not to confuse server lag with engine issues / FPS lag. Server lag is much more frequent here imho, eventhough "if" it was present in SW:TOR it was ... extreme. We're talking 35.000 ms lag spikes out of nowhere (but only like 1x per 6 weeks or so).

Lord_Kreegan · January 2015

From personal experience, it takes a very long time to build an engine from scratch -- which is why game companies don't and other companies dedicated to the business of making engines do.

There is an enormous number of similarities between the "stock" Hero Engine and ESO's engine -- similarities most readily apparent in terms of the engines' shortcomings -- so I have no doubt whatsoever that ESO is using major "parts" of the engine. It can be purchased in that fashion: where you get the source code and can do with it whatever you want. EA/BioWare essentially did that for SW-TOR, although they went with an early release of the code.

Notice that both games are zoned, have problems (network lag) with multiple players in the same local area, suffer graphical hitching in complex scenes, have very limited and linear game play in terms of types of quests, have memory management issues causing slowdowm after playing for extended periods of time, are event-driven to an extreme, suffer loading screens (that can be "inifinite") in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason... I could go on, but it's not worth it. The white knights will simply declare the problems are common to all MMOs; the fanbois will declare they never have any of those problems; etc. ...and admittedly, the similarities are not conclusive evidence of related engine use/development.

Primarily, the Hero Engine is "middleware"; that is, you build your own code around it. In ZOS' own words:

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

... Considering the usual marketing doublespeak we get from ZOS, that statement basically tells me that they built the "wrappers" around the Hero Engine code. There's a whole lot more than just client, server, and messaging in an MMO engine.

And, noting that ZOS was being rushed at the end there before release (which is why they released the game in such a sorry state) because they were running out of money and the investors were getting anxious, it's easy to surmise that they went with what they had "as a whiteboard".

The Hero Engine is not a bad engine; it's just not a great engine. EA/BioWare has spent a lot of time and money "fixing" its game implementation on top of the engine. ZOS hasn't had enough time to fix everything.

CodexMMO · January 2015

Whatever engine it actually is, it runs really well for me on High. ~55 FPS

technohic · January 2015

Tankqull wrote: »

jeevin wrote: »

Maximis_ESO wrote: »

jeevin wrote: »

Harleyquinceyeb17_ESO wrote: »

Yes, indeed, since it has been used at some point during development. Trust me.. this is not the Hero Engine and we can all be very, very, very glad about that. Ain't that right SW:TOR? *sigh*

So yeah, the current engine has been developed specifically for ESO afaik and definitely is not the Hero Engine anymore, that one was indeed only used for the first test environments as Faulgor already pointed out.

Why can we be thankful that ESO doesn't use the Hero Engine? The engine ESO uses doesn't seem any better to me, if anything I would have to say SWTOR is technically a superior product. Although I do like the visuals and art style in ESO better it's the worst performing mmo I've played in a very long time.

ESO actually runs better on my system then SWTOR, Rift, and Guild Wars 2. I'm not sure what they are did or are doing but it's working for what I've got. SWTOR was probably the hardest one for my PC to handle.

I'm glad you're getting good performance from the game. For me it's still unresponsive, laggy and in most respects, slow for server response. SWTOR, GW2 and FF14 are smooth and responsive in comparison.

My Pc is semi beastly too not that it should make much difference for this game.

try to pvp in swtor with mor than 20 people in one place - come back and tell us again how smooth swtor is compared to ESO :P

They have a hard enough time with 8 these days. It is the reason Illum went away so you could forget about Cyrodiil there.

FWIW; SWTOR is not really using the Hero engine. It took the beta of the Hero engine and heavily modified it until they couldn't even update the engine any more as it was improved.

kevlarto_ESO · January 2015

Faulgor wrote: »

No, ESO does not use the Hero Engine.

Early on, ZOS licensed the Hero Engine to have an environment where to test their character models and such. At the same time, they developed their own engine which the game itself has always used.

This^^^ This is what I read and heard Matt or Paul talk about this been awhile.

danno8 · January 2015

kevlarto_ESO wrote: »

Faulgor wrote: »

No, ESO does not use the Hero Engine.

Early on, ZOS licensed the Hero Engine to have an environment where to test their character models and such. At the same time, they developed their own engine which the game itself has always used.

This^^^ This is what I read and heard Matt or Paul talk about this been awhile.

Having come fresh from SWTOR, when I first logged on and saw the "Made with Hero Engine" splash I thought "Oh God no!"

Very glad it is not the same situation as SWTOR, and they ended with their own engine.

Still think they should kill that splash screen though.