Original Article found: here
By: Ten Ton Hammer
Date: March 12th, 2007

March 12th, 2007 - At last year's GDC, Simutronics cloistered themselves into a tiny kiosk. That didn't stop the foot traffic, and the success of the veteran company's complete MMO middleware solution, HeroEngine, was obvious at GDC 2007. With five announced licensees (four were announced just last week), the game-builders responsible for some of the best known MUDs in the industry found themselves increasingly the tool-makers. But that doesn't mean that Simutronics has forgotten about the well-anticipated fantasy MMO Hero's Journey. From a high-tech, spacious turnbuckle booth at GDC 2007, Technology Director Erik Slick gave us a quick update on the status of Simutronics' up-and-coming flagship MMO.


The Simutronics Booth at GDC 2007
(click for larger image)

So how close is Hero's Journey to release? “Not nearly as close as we should be, unfortunately,” Slick admitted. “In fact, the success of HeroEngine has slowed us down, but we're speeding up again this year. We're doing a lot of hiring for Hero's Journey... developers, artists. In fact, we're probably going to double the number of people we have working on Hero's Journey by the end of the year. As a company, we're moving to a new location to house all these people we're hiring. And that's all due to the success of HeroEngine. This is where we're going to catch up (and hopefully surpass) where we would have been otherwise.”

But maybe this was the plan along: to build the toolset, then sell the toolset to support the increasingly costly endeavor of building an MMORPG? “[HeroEngine] has allowed us to move faster. We have our own income stream, but we maxed that out. With the new income stream, it's a lot easier to expand and generate more interest in our games as a result.”

Simutronics also aims to build up their powerful volunteer staff, the Gamemasters (or, more commonly, GMs), which are a longstanding trademark of Simutronics games dating back to the Gemstone series in the late eighties. The staff currently ranges between 50-60, and building quest scripting tools for this dedicated team is a priority for Simutronics in the near future.

I also asked Eric about some of the recent trends in MMORPG design. Regarding DirectX 10, “We're still waiting. We're going to support it like everyone else, but we're still waiting.” On the more established tech front, Hero's Journey will be 100% compatible with hardware / software AGEIA PhysX support. This technology is described by AGEIA Marketing VP Micheal Steele as a way to allow developers to do more visually without hurting gameplay performance (rather than just a way to increase framerate – we'll have a separate feature on AGEIA PhysX technology from GDC 2007 later this week).

Also, on UI modding, Eric Slick stated “I think it's fine, so long as its safe,” referring to the tendency of user interface addons to go beyond reorganizing information and improving layout and into the seedy realm of exploits and keylogging.

Most of the big names behind in-development titles we talk to have the conceptual side of the game planned out, but can't seem to produce the technical tools to realize their vision quickly enough to meet their deliverables. Simutronics seems to stand the typical design process on its head by building out a robust, cutting edge toolset, then leaving at least a portion of the design (quest scripting) in GMs hands.

Visually, you'll see some very cool stuff in the video demo of Hero's Journey. There's no denying the sheer volume of character customization options, but some of the coolest stuff is also the most subtle. For example, you'll see distinct shadows (such as the outline of a house or tree) form across moving character models when appropriate. In just about any other RPG, you'll only see the model lighten or darken on the whole. In addition to dynamic shadows, Hero's Journey boasts dynamic weather, a true sense of physics (as mentioned above- rather than elaborately manipulating objects on a 2D plane as in WoW), some very nifty lighting techniques, and a truly impressive level of graphical detail.