Hero Engine MMO now free to use?

seems like another one of the big dogs will be free to use, this is fantastic.
ideasys.com
the new owner of hero engine are announcing free to use of the hero engine with a royalty deal, like UDK.

the barrier that kept indies from creating a MMORPG back in the days is now history.
we got Unity3d, UDK. and now Hero Engine. let the good times roll for all the little guys

 

I suppose indies didn't like their 5k + 1k a year license, so they were forced to do this to get some popularity.

Lol watched the video and I think it's funny how gameplay footage was low fps

Also every 12 year old's mmo dream has almost come true.

I do wonder as to how this will work. Will they give you the server or still keep it in the cloud? If cloud, then how will they keep it up without losing money(hence the 1k a year free to pay for cloud)

 

Its not the HeroEngine though
The page clearly implies that its more like a Habbo - Facebook Game sandbox that builds upon the solid bases HeroEngine / HeroCloud has but without exposing all the power (If you used it you know that the learning curve potentially is even higher than on UDK)
This is further raised due to the pure browser targeting.

None the less its an interesting move and I'm looking forward to see its limits, as it might potentially be something that leads to kill playdom - zynga "no gameplay aside of click yourself stupid" bs FB games.

 

Hey, they give a complete mmo engine for free. 30% seems very reasonable. Either that or buy a license for 1+mil without royalties.

 

Just to clarify for others, I updated my above posting as I realized that the engine really only has base traits to HeroEngine, its not the real deal

 

Now you can click yourself stupid in 3d

 

Yeah but at least its no longer slugish crap slow flash

Naw I really have high hopes for it to be used for more interesting things than another cityville - farmville - hell shall take you ville with the possibilities.

 

"Idea System's core technology is partially derived from Idea Fabrik's 3D game development platform, HeroEngine. To find out more about the HeroEngine technology please visit www.heroengine.com."

This system is even easier than HeroEngine, as you dont need to deal with any sort of management, or complex networking, you only create your game live, with your team in real time and dont worry about the rest.

 

YAY! Now 15 year olds have another way to not make their supermegaawesomewowbeating MMO!

 

No no, now when they make their MMO post we can be like:

"Nah Unity isn't for you, head over to the hero engine forums.... They are expecting you..."

 

looks like it will be the whole nine yards,

well both versions, ideasys for light social browser games using heroengine tools.
and herocloud basic using heroengine tools aswell. difference will be world size restrictions. but will be able to use all heroengine tools and backend technology as per faqs:
there are threads in mmorpgmaker forum from heroengine staff themselves answering questions about it.

http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=121&t=11414

http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=121&t=11398&start=44


I will definately check it out when they go live on mid april.

 

it is great

 

Directing people to other engines... that's a paddlin'...
;-)

 

That sounds great. Does this means that only browser games are supported?

Anyways its stupid that they show gameplay footage at extremly low frame rate. I have tested some scenes in this engine on myself and it runs very very slow. I think that engine isnt optimised at all. Shadows are supported but you have to coope with 5 frame gameplay in that case.

I would rather choose Unity if that uLink tool is as good as they say.

 

I just want to make an observation:
Unity forum is one of the few middleware forum where people can talk about other engines without being censored !
And that's great..

Nevertheless I think we should talk mostly on Unity...

 

Nah, that's the Apple "nothing exists but us" mentality. It's healthy to discuss the competition, and a few threads in Gossip that are about other engines is a good thing.

 

Considering my best friend is employed by simultronics.
http://www.heroengine.com/2010/10/free-herocloud-sandbox/

You can try it out for free, but unless you have deep pockets, this is not for indies.
HeroEngine really is easy to use, although I have never scripted for it, I have seen it work first hand, and all I can say is WOW.
But again, different market than Unity all together, so not even a competitor, UT and HeroEngine do not compete.

 

Fully agree on the non compete.
Even with Legion comming up, Unity is still 2-4 years away to compete with HeroEngines scaleable, load balanced server backend.

 

agree aswell,
i am a unity fanboy too but did not intended to create this thread to compare unity and HE, as they are 2 different beasts.

Unity is good for what it was intended for and HE is good for what it was intended for.
so please lets all be civilized and lets act like adults that we are

ok back to topic:
I think it is great, pretty much a high percentage, probably 80% of any engine users are individuals and or small indie studios, with mostly
low to none budget to startup a game dev deal.
but the great thing is that there is so much talent out there, and now the tools being free to use, this will create a new wave of games to the market,

I think the free tools to work era with will be the way to go from now on. so I'll bet you the rest of the big dogs will follow sooner or later.

release your tools to the mass and let the talent come to you and do their job.

 

Rest? UE3 is free, Cryengine 3 is(will be in summer) free, hero is free.
What other big dogs are there?

 

Correction HERO != FREE, you can try their sandbox free but note the fine print, you can't save any work, you can play all you want but can't create anything to sell. UE is not the full engine although you can make and sell work and save your work at least so you can be profitable. Cryengine, we shall see how that pans out.

This is a purely strategic move to get more people educated on the platforms, how they work and how to create products with them, the money is in the long term gains, so if an individual learns how to use the engines then they get a job with a big dog, there is no ramp up time and it saves the gaming company money which they turn around and use with licensing. So, is anyone actually loosing money by doing this? No, and it opens the door to more people being educated about the engines, not to mention more people testing it for free and reporting bugs. It is a win/win situation all around.

 

I stopped by their booth at GDC and got some info. Apparently the actual service is where they intend to make money, not the engine.

 

Wasn't that obvious?

 

The O.P. isn't talking about the hero sandbox, they're talking about ideasys.com (which uses a version of the Hero engine - not sure what features will be missing yet though).

 

They're also making heroengine basic and heroengine pro. The basic will be free to use and create.

 

2dfxman posted

Which is why I responded that HERO != FREE and as far as the O.P., I think the engine that ideasys.com is using is not really HeroEngine per say but some clone, going to call my buddy tonight and ask him whats up with ideasys and see what he has to say, like I said, I do know someone who goes to work every day for simultronics corporation. Maybe he can shed some light on that thing because ideasys.com looks to good to be true.

 

Uh ideasys belongs to simutronics .

 

simultronics does not exist anymore, they sold hereoengine to ideafabrik, same as ideasys.com, so it is the same heroengine.
http://ideafabrik.de/

http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/599200-wolfgangbrand/85715-idea-fabrik-plc-purchases-heroengine-technologies

they will release both heroengine moded version for social games on ideasys.com for free and they are also releasing a herocloud heroengine basic and pro, basic being free to use with 30% royalties.
restriction will be world size from basic herocloud

as per previous posts from mmorpgmaker forums discussion from heroengine devs.
links:

http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=121&t=11414


and

http://mmorpgmaker.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=121&t=11398&start=44

 

Absolutely, it simply mirrors the general direction of MMOs.

 

They will launch two products with similar royalties system (70/30 split), HeroEngine Basic and IdeaSys with no upfront cost. No server management cost, or usage, bandwidth etc.
"The price for both Idea System and HeroCloud Basic is $0 up-front. Revenue share is 70/30 of net revenues with you getting 70."

Though they will both have HeroEngine client tools to build your network games but their server backend tech are a bit different. IdeaSys is more for casual/social networking gaming. With IdeaSys you wont be able to have a bunch of players syncing/interacting in real-time while with HeroEngine Basic will allow you to do so and create any kind of MMO game.

And yes, HeroEngine isn't an Unity competitor. They are both different products and targets different audience.

 

lol

 

lol, I say competitive, and how many people focus on that ONE word, that's so funny

 

I wonder what features they will cut from HE basic.

 

You mean what features they cut from the HE Pro (available in the HE basic)?
Based on Neil statements (one of Idea marketers) the basic version does not offer unlimited worlds/players, you are somewhat limited in your world sizes and amount of players on a server, but still quite big for MMO dev.

 

Sounds good.

 

since they are taking care of the server hosting, billing system and marketing costs i think limitting world size and player base to save on hardware resources and bandwidth is very understandable.

limited world/players still be a great deal for herocloud basic if it is $0 upfront cost while developing, since once the game takes off, that means you are making money and can always upgrade to pro for 5k if more room for players/expansions.

even tho i would not doubt if ideafabrik will be more then reasonable to negotiate the pro version to a promising game, afterall your success is their success.

 

Well they got me curious to go check them out.Having never heard of Hero Engine before this thread I initially thought it was a server backend like Badumna or SFS2 that could be used WITH Unity... silly me.

Anyways, it was asked above, what features they would cut... Have a look at this:

It seems they cut out all Mac developers

 

Meh, I am ok with this.

 

That mac devs are cut was clear from the start, hero engine as most $$$$ engines don't support mac and that for good reasons (namely Apple being 5-8 years behind current Hardware support on OpenGL with their OpenGL 2.1 only support)

Perhaps the field will become more favorable with 10.7 which is meant to finally get it up to 3.2, but if I look at the state of ATI drivers on OSX, I would not exactly hold my breath

 

Can we stop having the PC version of Unity held back by the Apple versions. I know that's where Unity started, but it's beginning to feel we're all losing out on a fun trip to the zoo because of that slow kid in class called Mac.

 

Pretty much.
Mac and OSX are terrible for gaming because they are never updated. Old hardware, old software.
It's kinda like consoles holding back pc gaming, but here not only hardware is old, but also is software.

I mean come on, you need an os update just to run latest open source product? Jeez.
And as Frank said, drivers on mac are really not gaming. Sure you can game, but they're trash compared to drivers on pc.

I seriously don't get people who buy a mac. You pay almost twice the price of a pc and all you get is an outdated, shiny machine...

 

Exactly!

I look at it this way, the Mac version has the IOS building ability, us PC users don't. So let us have DX11. It wont change anything for Mac builds from a PC, cause we have to always downgrade stuff we do to run on the Mac anyway. It just means we can do more than we can right now on our own systems.

If Mac owners then want a better version, well, they can buy a PC, like they keep saying we should buy a Mac if we want to develop for the iPhone.

 

Well for sure Hero engine will be a huge hit for certain. Community will grove extremly fast, since lot of peoples are interested in making of mmos. It doesnt matter how many will succed at start it will help community to develop and to create some stable future projects.
However at the momment as i said before Hero engine is unoptimised. I am wondering how much did Bioware modified engine since they dont get such a low frame rate with all candies like other Hero videos (and when i say others i mean almost all of them).

 

Unity rendering is rather slow already, dx11 will make it crawl on the ground and cry for mommy. I am still waiting as to when will they optimize their rendering engine.

 

Oh wow, can you imagine that community!? It'll be like the blind leading the blind!

Kid 1 "I wanna make MMO"

Kid 2 "me 2!"

Kid 1 "lets make one!"

Kid 2 "yeah!"

Kid 1 "ok what now?"

Kid 2 "I dunno this is hard im gonna go mod Crysis"

Kid 1"ok bye"

Kid 2 "I'm back, how do you mod Crysis?"

Kid 1 "Dunno use Unity"

Kid 2 "k"

Kid 2 "Unity free has no shadows all my dreams are ruined because I can't make anything without shadows, my life is F***ing over, im gonna go be an hero"

Troll "Use Hero engine to be an Hero"

Kid 1 "lulz sigged"

Modder "someone make me pic NOW I can draw gud but find no art thing"

Kid 3 "Gimp"

 

It is not hero engine thats being talked about here but IdeaWorks Social Gaming platform which already from its light information on the page surely will be lacking 50%+ of what makes up HeroEngine in favor of offering stuff geared towards social games / facebooks. (there are several places where its made pretty clear that it has similarities or used aspects of hero engine, not hero engine itself)

 

I see what you did there

 

*whistles innocently*

 

I told him to use Gimp . *Schlumpfsack destroys Frank Oz's life, step by step*

 

How can you destroy his life if he has none?