When comparing HeroEngine vs Shoot 'Em Up Kit, the Slant community recommends HeroEngine for most people. In the question“What are the best 3D game engines?” HeroEngine is ranked 40th while Shoot 'Em Up Kit is ranked 55th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Real time development- No nightly builds
Pro Streamlines MMO development
Backend completely handled by the team at Hero.
Pro Versoning control included in both HeroEngine and HeroBlade
No need for Perforce, Github or any other versioning software. It is built in. Check, Compare, Merge, revert, etc.
Pro Server and Networking built in
Pro Engine developer support
Developers of the engine and game developers are active on the Forums and Skype for private messaging.
Pro Versatile
Able to create many types of games and scales all the way from a single area up to a full-blown MMO.
Pro HeroScript
Designed for the needs of a MMO. HSL is also relatively easy to learn as scripting languages go. It was geared towards beginners, not time hardened programmers, and as such, its easier for a novice to pick it up sometimes, than a c++ programmer. That, and it was intended to be "readable" more like English.
Pro Very active community and support groups
Skype channel and forums questions answered by developers of HE and users very quickly.
Pro Highly optimized asset export plugins included
Though the export pipeline may be different and currently requires 3ds Max or Maya, the format is highly optimized to reduce high quality models down to KB's.
Pro NPC Generators
Control NPC spawning position, frequency, maximum enemy active at once, and maximum enemies created by the generator.
Pro Support for user-created HLSL shaders
Both model and post-process shaders.
Pro Great for shoot 'em ups
The name fits the functionality.
Cons
Con Lack of DirectX 11.1 or 12 support
DirectX 9 is the last version supported.
Con High price
Con HeroScript
A standalone scripting language with (so far) little in the way of learning resources.
Con Custom model export
Con Lacking some details
No information on file formats or codecs in the manual.
Con Tutorials are too short and too old
The only real tutorial videos are 1 or 2 minutes long, and date from 2013.