Hero or Unity

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Merlin_sl

shitlord
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My wife and I are creating a small independent MMO as a hobby. I've narrowed it down to either Unity or Hero as the engine and was leaning to Hero but wanted to hear some opinions from those on here before I plop down my $99.
This thread was created to specifically discuss the strength's and weaknesses of each engine rather then suggestions on the MMO. It's strictly a hobby. We really don't care if it see's the light of day or not. Were not trying to make money or become the next WOW. We are doing it for fun. So telling me I'm insane "you'll never make it work" isn't necessary.
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LennyLenard_sl

shitlord
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Well if money is important, $99 for Hero is cheaper than $1500 for Unity Pro.

There is a free version of Unity, but it lacks a number of things, one of the most/first noticeable things is lack of shadows. That alone might be enough of a deal breaker for some.

I don't know what Hero is offering, but I will assume their $99 package is already geared towards making an MMO (however crappy or awesome that may be). Does Hero offer some kind of server and client? How about tools for making content or getting art/sounds/music into game?

Unity, free or pro, offers basically a renderer, physics, sound and very very simplistic (IMO) networking. You'll have to find or provide all the rest. You'll need a server, you'll need to make tools and/or create a pipeline for content and you'll have to connect it all together. The nice (or bad) thing is that most of it can be done in the Unity editor.
 
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LennyLenard_sl

shitlord
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Celestein_sl said:
Though for Unity Free vs Pro, you don't really have to buy pro until you're ready to ship. You can just recycle pro trials every month.

The cost isn't really prohibitive if you have a finished game you're going to release, also if it applies, Unity gives a 50% discount to students and academics that still allows commercial releases.

It's more prohibitive if you havent even started and see $1500 as a barrier to entry.


Ultimately every engine is just a set of compromises, so pick the compromises you can live with the best. That's why for my next project I'll be making my own engine. I never understood why people do it until recently.
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Absolutely true, but as he mentioned he has no actual plans to ever release, or that he and his wife are academics or students, so those are all irrelevant points. Unity is great for a lot of things, but I think if you want to go for a homebrewed MMO, Hero is probably the better of the two.

So Zeus, what exactly are you hoping to do?
 
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Merlin_sl

shitlord
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LennyLenard_sl said:
Absolutely true, but as he mentioned he has no actual plans to ever release, or that he and his wife are academics or students, so those are all irrelevant points. Unity is great for a lot of things, but I think if you want to go for a homebrewed MMO, Hero is probably the better of the two.

So Zeus, what exactly are you hoping to do?
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It will be more or less a small MMO. Think....Antonica size. Don't get me wrong, it will be fully functioning, quests, crafting, races, classes, dungeons, raids....it's just going to be very small. It's more or less going to be a prototype of a bigger project I want to create when I graduate.
 
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LennyLenard_sl

shitlord
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The setting is going to be high fantasy? First person/third person individual character? Auto attack + special trigger attacks? Tab targeting?

Just asking, because the more exotic you go in terms of design, while potentially more awesome, the bigger the challenge and less likely to complete.
 
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Merlin_sl

shitlord
2,329
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LennyLenard_sl said:
The setting is going to be high fantasy? First person/third person individual character? Auto attack + special trigger attacks? Tab targeting?

Just asking, because the more exotic you go in terms of design, while potentially more awesome, the bigger the challenge and less likely to complete.
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For the purpose of this conversation, we will just say it's similar to Everquest.
 
Denaut

Denaut

Trump's Staff
2,739
1,279
As a Unity developer I would recommend you go with Hero. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love Unity and think it is a great engine, but we have a fantastic back-end that some brilliant programmers have been hammering away on for 2 1/2 or so years now. That seems a bit out of scope for what you want and you are probably better off just buying the server logic and not worrying about it.

However, if you were making a single player RPG, with no server logic, then I would recommend Unity.
 
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Merlin_sl

shitlord
2,329
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I, at least temporarily went ahead and purchased the Hero engine to start. Worst case scenario I change my mind in the next 6 months to a year. Right off the bat I can tell you the big disadvantage is acquiring art assets to at least use as placeholders. Art is insanely expensive if your not an artist who's able to handle the drawing and rigging yourself. Unity has many options for inexpensive art you can purchase. It's pretty much plug n play. Getting something as simple as a bear can run ya $50 to use for the Hero engine. That's for ONE creature haha.
 
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LennyLenard_sl

shitlord
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Celestein_sl said:
Every one of my games has started as non-animated cubes for all the characters until the game is pretty much near feature complete. If the game isn't fun as cubes its not going to be anymore fun when you add fancy art assets, it'll just be lipstick on a pig.
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This man speaks the truth. Use primitives and colors to quickly populate a scene or level.

Another option is rip content from other games.

It'll take technical wrangling to get them from their various proprietary formats, but if you want something more visually appealing than geometric primitives it's a possibility.

As for the legality of it, I look at it like using Monopoly pieces in design play-throughs -- if you've legally purchased the source game & it's for private use only -- then, at least morally, it's ok. Just don't start sending screenshots/vids around, and certainly do not redistribute anything.
 
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Kharza-kzad_sl

shitlord
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Good advice, and check out torchlight and torchlight 2 mod stuff. They release some characters and monsters in max format that have the rigs and everything. I used them to help test my collada stuff.
 
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Merlin_sl

shitlord
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Celestein_sl said:
$50 for a usable 3d model(of good quality) it pretty cheap. Personally I wouldn't even worry about art from the start.

Every one of my games has started as non-animated cubes for all the characters until the game is pretty much near feature complete. If the game isn't fun as cubes its not going to be anymore fun when you add fancy art assets, it'll just be lipstick on a pig.

So if you can't make the art yourself(yet?) then don't even worry about it until you get to the point where the art is all you're missing.

Plus wait until you realize how expensive good sound is XD
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Do you build the world then populate it, or build a zone, then populate it?
 
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