I have been kicking around a project for a couple of years now, mostly based on my dissatisfaction with the MMORPG genre as a whole since WoW came out. I have a pretty thorough design document that now needs to start getting filled in with some technical details. In order to do that, I have to have a clue. In order to get a clue, I have to start somewhere. That brings us to the reason for the post:

Here is a short list of required capabilities/features:

• Third person shooter.
• Combination of several "open world" maps and instances (seemless transitions are a plus, but not really necessary).
• Ability to generate levels on the fly from pre-defined "tile sets", think random instances.
• Fairly robust AI.
• Persistent data for (hopefully) thousands of players.
• Networking that can support "a lot of people" shooting in the same area that also provides at least passable anti-cheat measures.
• "Easy" mapping tools.
• Scripting engine powerful enough to support complex missions, crafting and resource gathering interactions. (Scripting is the one thing I am confident about my capabilities in, so ease is less important here than capability)
• Multiple character controllers as there will be free-form flight and ground based interactions. Ideally these would be switchable on the fly, but I can deal with a transition if I have to.

I initially was looking at Unity as I was hoping to make the game playable in different ways across multiple platforms (doing your crafting from your Android phone during your lunch hour, for example, then logging in to your PC at night to blow some stuff up). I would still be willing to consider Unity, but my understanding is that the built-in networking is sub-par and the networking piece is something that simply has to work right. So, I moved on to consider some other options and came to HeroEngine.

These are what I consider to be Pros and Cons of HeroEngine for my project:

• Pro - Integrated toolset - Aside from actually creating the art, it seems like pretty much everything is included in the editor.
• Con - No pipeline for Blender, which means shelling out ridiculous money (in my opinion) for 3DS Max or Maya. Mind, if i can get the game launched and if I can start turning over money with it, I could easily call that an investment well made, but there's a lot of if there.
• Pro - HeroCloud, which pretty much addresses client-server interactions, server scaling, basically the whole network and server architecture layer. Assuming I'm not missing something I should have thought about, this is pretty huge.
• Pro - Scripting engine has a ton of capability.
• Con - Scripting engine is reportedly non-intuitive.
• Pro - Size and scope of the game worlds don't seem to be an issue, seamless transitions are usable out of the box.
• Pro - Ridiculously low cost during development ($100 for a single developer seat or $200 for a 10-pack of developer seats per year).
• Pro - Assuming you launch using HeroCloud and don't just acquire licensing to use the engine wherever, your infrastructure needs are covered including server scaling, bandwidth, availability, redundancy, backups, billing ... pretty much everything.
• Con - HeroCloud costs you 30% of your revenue (I'm not even sure this is a con, really... seems pretty reasonable considering the above).

So, Hero seems to address a lot of stuff, not a whole lot of downside in the grand scheme of things... but, that's what their web site is designed to make me think. What are some of your thoughts?

The quality of Unity's networking is fine, but it's not designed for MMOs. I've written MMO code using Unity but this involved putting in entirely bespoke networking.

HeroCloud isn't really what you say it is. It's a kind of hosting, not something for 'client-server interactions'. That sort of thing is part of the HeroEngine itself. Just a terminology confusion, I think.

HeroEngine is going to do a lot for you on the server side which most other engines (eg. Unreal, Unity) won't even attempt. The only concern I would have, is that you don't get source code access without a special licence. They boast of big-name clients like EA and Zenimax, but you can bet that they have full source code licences. Without that flexibility you may find that some of the ideas you have are simply not possible within the constraints of their system. Now, I don't see anything too unusual in your requirements list that makes me think HeroEngine wouldn't be able to handle it. But I don't have the experience to know otherwise. You'd probably need to go over each of the tech specs with someone who has used the engine, or someone on their support team (or ideally both), to check that what you want can be done.

Fair enough. As I said, I'm in the process of starting to fill in technical details in the design document, I suppose one of the things I should attempt to do while I'm doing that is develop a list of yes/no/short answer questions that I can toss up to whoever I find willing to entertain them. The real appeal to HE is the completeness, though... Is there anyone who has used it that has any thoughts on what tools (aside from 3DS Max or Maya) need to be acquired outside of a HeroCloud subscription?

HeroEngine also has capability to help get you resources you need. I am posting this as the social media and community manager for HeroEngine, and I know I am around the net as well as on Twitter, FB and G+ to help folks out and share news about their games. So there is some help with marketing in that way :). If you have any questions, please let me know. I am here to help :)

I used to use Hero Engine for my MMO project and I was beyond satisfied. The real time editing was amazing. Not having to wait for a new build to compile is priceless.

One thing I noticed you didn't mention, was all the included licenses you get with HE. The list is quite impressive after factoring in the cost for each individual license.

If you are making an MMO I highly recommend HE. If you are making something smaller, say 2D RPG, then stick to Unity or another engine.

Excellent feedback tekniko. Super fair re smaller 2D RPGs as well.

If you are making something smaller, say 2D RPG, then stick to Unity or another engine.