Seamless Worlds

HeroEngine now fully supports seamless worlds by enabling developers to connect shared or instanced area instances together into one continuous world.

• Full support for seamless transitions between shared areas, instanced areas, or both.
• Infinitely flexible, construct an entire seamless world or just specific instances and areas.
• Automatically replicates as necessary to keep clients up to date
• Game logic functions transparently when interactions cross server boundaries.
• Automatic translation of positions from other servers and world areas to match the current area.

Linux Server Support

HeroEngine servers now fully support both Microsoft Windows and Linux.

• Official support for CentOS
• Full Linux build system for source code licensees
• Ability to run servers in a full Linux environment, full Windows environment, or a heterogeneous mix

Proxy Data Nodes

HeroEngine's proxy data nodes are surrogates that allow scripts to work with data nodes that are actually instantiated in other areas.

• Fully integrated with Seamless World functionality
• A data node can have multiple proxies in separate areas

Data Object Model (DOM) Editor Enhancements

HeroEngine's Data Object Model (DOM) editor includes a range of new features and enhancements.

• Classes, fields, and other data are automatically updated when a definition is created or deleted
• Full support for Seamless World and Proxy Concepts

Data Replication System

HeroEngine's data replication system provides a unique and highly optimized communication path that is largely automated once setup.

• Highly scalable, replicate any arbitrary number of data nodes
• Flexible designer driven replication strategies
• Works alongside or replaces remote calls
• Automates communication between servers and clients

Bandwidth Management

Fully integrated with HeroEngine's data replication system the bandwidth manager intelligently manages each client's bandwidth, automatically choosing which data to replicate, and in what priority, via developer-specified filters, conditions, and rules.

• Flexible and adaptive bandwidth control
• Fully integrated into the HeroEngine replication system
• Developer specified filters, conditions, and rules

Built on HeroEngine's Replication System, the Apatial Awareness System presents a general-purpose, high performance system for tracking what objects are "aware" of each other in 3D space.

• Supports large numbers of moving entities with dynamic awareness ranges.
• Available for general use via HeroScript.
• Can be utilized for game-specific advanced AI and gameplay applications.

Live Update and World Push

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HeroEngine's Live Update and World Push technologies allow developers to push any game content including scripts, assets, data definitions, data files, and area data between live, running worlds without having to bring them down or take them offline.

In other MMO server architectures, game content updates require game servers to be brought down before they are updated with new data. This blocks developers and players from interacting with the game or development worlds for the time that the servers are down - and in the case of live player servers, this can result in lost revenue and unhappy players.

• Introduce content to players at key moments rather than giving it to them ahead of time, allowing for surprise events.
• Fix or adjust content on the fly without having to bring games down and kick all players out.
• Identify all world differences, and choose whether to push the changes in part or in whole.

Robust Time Representation

MMOs and virtual worlds run for very long periods of time, and therefore they require the utmost precision in time representation and synchronization in order to avoid temporal drift or other precision errors.

• Robust integer time model
• Automatic resynchronization for systems that require floating point time calculations

HeroPath

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HeroPath provides a sophisticated near-realtime pathfinding solution for advanced AI and gameplay applications. HeroPath is fully accessible from HeroScript and built on HeroEngine’s multivendor, plugin-based Pathfinding System.

• Automatically generates pathing solutions
• Path generation takes into account all collision-capable world geometry including heightmap terrain and assets.
• Near realtime pathfinding navigation mesh (navmesh) updates during game development and live servers
• Developer control options for navmesh generation
• Integrated debugging and visualization options

Arbitrary Root Nodes

Developers can now quickly save and load any arbitrary hierarchy of data nodes to or from the database utilizing HeroEngine's new arbitrary root node system.

• Arbitrary root nodes can contain any collection of node data independent of area or player character.
• Minimize a character’s active memory footprint.
• Reduce data overhead for remote calls.

Character Position Interpolator

HeroEngine's new Character Position Interpolator allows developers to eliminate resource overhead of distance characters.

• Reduce or eliminate overhead of distant characters.
• Quick and easy to setup
• Scale down or eliminate animation or controller updates.
• Reduce or eliminate collision checks.

Environment Schemes

HeroEngine's powerful new Environmental Schemes allow developers complete control of their game environment.

• Dynamic weather including rain
• Environmental effects including lightning
• Atmospheric effects including clouds, stars, and moonlight

Terrain Sculpting

HeroEngine's new terrain sculpting tools bring an unprecedented level of precision and realism to world and area building with a number of new heightmap-editing filter tools.

• Hybrid Erosion filter combines Hydraulic Erosion and an edge-softening filter.
• Mean Leveler filter moves affected vertices toward the mean of their heights.
• Canyon Cutter filter lowers can create complex canyons and ridges, reminiscent of riverbeds cutting through stone.

9Slice and Universal Glyph Rendering

HeroEngine's extensive GUI design and building system adds two new major features.

• 9Slice control simplifies the authoring of compound controls, buttons and windows.
• Significant memory and performance optimizations by eliminating the need for edge and spacer controls.
• GUI controls can now render any language character set supported by Windows, including Asian fonts.

New UI controls

New and intuitive UI controls have been introduced for value, vector and color timelines.

Emitter Mesh

Emitter Meshs are are a powerful new addition to HeroEngine's particle system.

• Emit particles at any vertex, along any edge, or the surface of any polygon.

Region Nodes

Region nodes allow developers to delineate specific 3D shapes in the world.

• Create arbitrarily shaped bounding volumes.
• Lightweight and flexible for any generic use.
• Color codeable and easy to shape.
• Built in HeroScript function to return a random point inside the node, or determine if a given point is or is not within a given region.

Path Editing

The Path Editing process has been improved in version 1.20 of HeroEngine.

• Visual, real-time, interactive, spline manipulation.
• Easily add and remove path waypoints.
• Waypoints can now have orientation.

HeroSense

HeroSense brings intelligent, adaptive, script assistance to the HeroScript editor.

• Automatic minor syntax correction.
• Intelligent list boxes help guide script creation.
• Tooltips with definitions, parameters, and return types.
• Real-time collaborative updates to all HeroSense contextual information.

Ribbon Water

HeroEngine's new Ribbon Water feature allows world builders to quickly and intuitively create flowing rivers.

• Collision detection for cameras, characters, and objects.
• Manipulate altitude, width, and depth in real-time.
• Create spline-based water shapes.
• Animated "flow" of water along spline direction.

Vortex Nodes

The Vortex Node is a powerful new screen space based visual effects system.

• Extensive parameters, limitless customization options.
• Create powerful parameter driven effects in tandem with the effects system.
• Visual processing is conducted in the frame buffer for a lightweight powerful effect.