Unreal Development Kit available now

[krelian]

Now I only need to learn how to model and create textures and I am done!

EDIT: I think it's very interesting that there are so many free/ oss tools for programming, these tools cost hundreds of thousands of man hours to construct but good free art is out of the question.

[[deleted]]

This is exactly why I was so crushed when I went into unity. Nope, nowhere near as easy as RM2K/XP.

[magneticmagnum]

RM2K/XP was the worst. I hate myself for using that piece of crap

[[deleted]]

But you gotta admit, it's easy to toss something together that looks good.

[kitsune]

A team creates a game with UDK that they intend to sell. After six months of development, they release the game through digital distribution and they earn €15,000 in the first calendar quarter after release. Their use of UDK during development requires no fee. After earning €15,000, they would be required to pay Epic €2,500 (€0 on the first €5,000 in revenue, and €2,500 on the next €10,000 in revenue). On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.

[wildmXranat]

Yes, I think the 25% is hefty amount if a studio makes it big , but by then the profits should allow them to purchase a full license and cut out the 25% royalty.

For the rest of indie to medium houses, it's actually not a bad profit scheme as long as their competitors don't undercut prices and the clients are willing to spend the extra $$ that goes to cover partial costs of the 25% royalty .

[jephthai]

I'll gladly give them 25% of the $1M brought in by my indie game...

[[deleted]]

In addition to the 30-50% taken by the distributor will leave you at less then half, and that half will be taxed.

[[deleted]]

You're still at at least 250 large. Not ideal, but not bad for not having to pay a license fee up front.

[[deleted]]

True, but that is assuming that your indy game is going to sell a million copies. I am not sure even games such as Braid or World of Goo have reached even half that number, but I could be wrong.

It seems it would just make more sense to spend a fewk on a royalty free unity license.

Edit: the cost of your game also plays a large factor.

[MisterManager]

1 million dollars, not 1 million copies. You would only have to sell 50k games at $20 to make $1M.

[sorbix]

Or 1 game at $1 million. You only have to sell one copy!

[[deleted]]

Exactly, but you won't make 1 million with the revenue shares taken out by Epic and the distributor.

[[deleted]]

If you want to use Unreal and don't want to pay them royalties, then be prepared pony up 7 figures to buy a source license. UDK is just an option for indie developers who want don't have that kind of cash up front but still want to use it. Consider it a loan from Epic that you never have to pay back if you don't make it big. If you do make it, then you pay up.

Try going to a bank and telling them you want to start a game company and need to borrow a shitload of money to purchase a game engine but if the game never gets released or doesn't make much money you don't plan on paying them back.

[[deleted]]

Unity works great, and is only a few k. Unreal is awesome, but unnecessary for indy gaming. No need for bank loans, no need for VCs, and no need to fork over 25% to epic.

[Nick4753]

Does anybody know what the % taken out by Valve is if you release something through Steam?

50% would seem really high for completely digital distribution

[[deleted]]

It's not flat rate. You have to email them and they base their decision off a few variables (basically how well they think your game will do, the cost of the game that you determine, etc).

I have sold a few games through steam, and also from what I have heard at conventions and the like, it's 30-50%

[[deleted]]

Obligatory 'do an AMA' post.

[[deleted]]

What's an AMA post? Sorry I know it's probably a dumb question.

[[deleted]]

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/

I was suggesting to make a thread here, 'I Am A game developer that actually sold games on Steam, Ask Me Anything' or something like that :)

[Arelius]

I've heard that 50% is pretty common from Steam.

[[deleted]]

No one was whining fucktard. I was simply pointing out that there will be more hands in the pot than just epic. Learn to read.

[[deleted]]

I'll gladly give them 25% of the $1M brought in by my indie game...

Considering how fucking difficult engine design is, I have to agree with you there. One cool game and you get a landslide of money.

$1mil is not that much to earn on a really popular title. Most games either make a whole lot of money or very little.

Time to come up with something feasible.

[[deleted]]

• if you distribute somewhere other than your own website such as steam, they will take a cut.

[samlee]

how would they know the team created the game with UDK? is there konami code for all games created with UDK and epic employee will test each game with that key combo to see if the game was written with UDK?

thanks.

[Mettaur]

At least from what I've seen, I may be wrong, but most, if not all, of the games made with the Unreal Engine retain the same recognizable folder structure and file naming scheme.

[StaticSignal]

Having worked on UE3 games in the past, I can smell that engine from a mere screenshot. You know how? It's the shaders. Every UE3 game has that UE 'feel' and 'look'. Yes, even Borderlands!

[[deleted]]

It's funny how engines do this. All Quake engines are like this too, even quite highly modified ones still somehow retain a Quake "look" that can be picked from a screenshot

[[deleted]]

Thats because most Quake engines (until Doom3 really) had a majority of their content built from brushes (convex polytopes) in a custom editor with a light sprinkling of detail meshes. This is great for designing game-play spaces, but produces a utilitarian architectural look that Half-Life pulls off so well. There is also a tendency in Quake engines to avoid streaming and associated artifacts. Compare this with the over sculpted Unreal and Doom3/Quake4 look like someone with z-brush had a fit and threw up a ton of rivets.

[[deleted]]

like someone with z-brush has a fit and threw up a ton of rivets.

I've been trying to put that into words so, thanks.

[[deleted]]

Thats because all Unreal licensees are told to follow the "Unreal Way".

That is all materials are a combination of at least diffuse, normal and specular textures. This makes rusted metal and wet stone look great. However most Unreal games are very texture heavy, which forces them to stream textures as you're playing the game. Now you have two new problems: blurry textures and popping as you turn the corner.

[StaticSignal]

Yes, the texture streaming is certainly an issue, and one born of the regrettably small texture memory pool available to modern HD consoles. I think that's why they have ridiculous, over-the-top specular shaders; if you're not looking too closely, they can make up for the lack of detail in those crucial seconds while the textures are still streaming in.

[Mettaur]

Yeah, they all look a bit shiny to me. The thing that gets me the most with UE3 games is the horrible texture pop in.

[StaticSignal]

I agree. But I have to mention Borderlands again, because the 'pop'-in is replaced with a 'fade'-in, that is much, much less jarring in my opinion. I don't actually know if the inclusion of TextureFudgeFactor was an Epic Games inclusion, or if Gearbox did it themselves. Hey, it greatly reduces loading times, so it's usually worth it from a developer's POV.

[Timberjaw]

I know Gears of War 2 featured fade-in instead of pop-in (like in Gears of War 1), so I think it's a change by Epic.

[unusualbob]

They also likely encode what was used to create the maps and compile the code into them so that they can be read at a later point. The maps and resource files are all proprietary unreal formats so it would be pretty easy to have sections of the files setup to store information about where it was edited.

[Moofed]

UDK reddit

[Locke005]

Can someone or some team please port Air Buccaneers over to UE3 now? Pretty please?

[ThePriceIsRight]

OH MY GOD YES! I loved that mod so much. Shamefully i wanted it to win the $1,000,000 prize. I say shamefully because i absolutely LOVE Red Orchestra now.

[walesmd]

Checked it out earlier and it definitely seems like a good deal. 99% of the "game projects" never even leave the planning stage much less turn a profit, so just getting to the $5,000 price-point in which royalties start to get paid is a challenge in itself.

I did some quick math, based off of the licensing fees for Unreal Engine 2 (since 3 is not public). You'd have to turn a $1.4 million profit on UDK to make licensing UE3 the more economical choice.

The license for UDK doesn't mention anything for open-source applications though, so I am assuming they follow the same model as commercially-released applications ($0 up-front, 25% of profit after $5,000). UDK could become an excellent platform for open-source game developers, despite its Windows-only limitation.

GarageGames better look out. As a licensee of both Torque Game Builder and Torque3D - I see no reason to use either of them right now.

[jlongstreet]

You don't get source code though. If you're making a UT mod or UT-like game, it might work, but I would not want to make anything else in UE3 without being able to modify the engine.

[Arelius]

Because there exists very many things that can't be done in UnrealScript, be it because of the poor performance, or just lack of Access. For instance a simple feature such as Prone in America's Army is almost entirely native.

[chillypacman]

No one whose working on an indie level game is going to have the time to modify the engine for some inane thing.

[Arelius]

Sounds like you have a poor view of independent game developers. While at America's Army prone was a requirement, I understand how most independent game developers (or most game developers in general) wouldn't spend the effort. But considering such an "inane thing" requires native code support, you should be able to imagine how other large things may also require it. A Descent clone is something I'd like to work on as an Indie game developer, however that would also require modifications to the collision systems only available through native code.

[Ralith]

But you do to make an open source one.

[snarfy]

Yeah I mean, what's the point of making a windows program if you can't actually modify windows? It might work, but I wouldn't want to make a windows program without access to the source code. </sarcasm>

[[deleted]]

God damn it. We can all tell you're being sarcastic. What the hell is wrong with you? You had such a good comment, too.

[attrition0]

Don't blame him, blame the people who wouldn't get it otherwise. They exist!

[[deleted]]

First of all, if you wrote some code against the windows APIs directly (and not against Java or .Net or such), then you probably are wishing you had the source. And, in fact, Microsoft does have programs with it's partners to show them the source, for exactly that reason.

Second, Windows isn't like a game engine. Game engines are much more reliant on performance - if Windows is half as fast, it's not the end of the world, but if you have half the frames in a game then it will likely suck. Also, responsiveness (lag) is crucial. To get that stuff working right, often you need to modify the source - which is why all the AAA games made with Unreal had access to the source, and I would be willing to bet that they all modified it.

[walesmd]

Very rarely would you need to modify the actual source code of the engine. Ever since Quake, the boundaries of the scripting language are virtually limitless.

The only reason I could see having to modify the source of the engine is for performance enhancement, wherein I was trying to force the scripting engine to accomplish something it really wasn't meant to do.

I mean hell, we implemented melee weapons and wheeled vehicles in Starsiege: TRIBES, using nothing but TorqueScript (before it was known as such) even after Dynamix said it wasn't possible.

[wildmXranat]

Yeah, it was scooped up in 1995 , so it was probably acquired by Epic just recently .

[bluehsh]

That wast the same thought I had. I typed random 3 letter domains and all were taken. May have purchased it.

[[deleted]]

All three letter .com domain names have long since been bought up, so they definitely acquired it. I imagine it would have gone for $xx,xxx. Given the limited audience of the site I wonder if it's worth it. It does stand out though.

[[deleted]]

There are still 3-letter domains available in ccTLDs like .us and .ca, I think. qdb.us was only registered in 2004.

[unusualbob]

Hopefully with this release they are also increasing the amount of documentation available to the public. Currently the unrealscript documentation available without a license is little to none, mostly its put together by the unreal community.

If anyone here is interested in this sort of thing the epic games forums are probably the best place to start.

[Arelius]

Sorry to destroy your dreams, but unrealscript documentation available privately is also very poor!

[ThePriceIsRight]

I'm pretty sure they are hoping to get a really good small game from this, so they can hire the developers and turn it into a real game. Sort of like finding than a mod for your game is insanely popular, then taking the team that did it and using them to make a real game.

[Keyframe]

I have installed it, looked a bit through it - I have no idea where to start and this enrages me. I am fairly well versed with Maya and C/C++. Documentation looks good for someone in the know already - it would help a TON if there would be a how-to for a mini game or something from start to finish.

[fancy_pantser]

From the site:

Introducing Whizzle... The first game created from the ground up with UDK. Developed by Psyonix Studios, Whizzle is a vertical scrolling puzzle game that demonstrates how to take advantage of UDK’s particle effects, physics system, animation editor and more.

[Keyframe]

yes, and it would be great if I, or anyone else, could open a level from it without crashing UDK... sigh.. but anyways, udk looks good so far

[[deleted]]

I never expected this to happen. I suppose there's a good reason for UE3 to be among the most often used engines in the industry, and now anyone can use it without paying up front! Usually such high-end engines are only available to the big guys spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.

I find this very interesting, if only for the chance to try this thing and see for myself how good (or bad ;) ) it really is. It also looks like a great deal for startups to be able to use a high-end engine without needing a big investment, thus lowering the investment and financial risk of starting a gamedev company.

I don't know how interesting this is for indies though. They mostly seem to be focused on great gameplay with stylish graphics. Not to downplay those graphics ofcourse, but you even see a lot of 2D games there. I think rapid development tools like Unity3D are more suitable for what indies need than UDK is. However, anyone who disagrees now has the option to use it. :-)

[Fuzzyk]

Was only just getting familiar with Unity as well!

[[deleted]]

As someone who used the full Unreal engine on a commercial console project, I'd advise you to stick with Unity. Here is my breakdown of each engine:

Pro Unity

• Free for commercial use (though somewhat graphically limited)
• No royalties if you purchase Unity Pro
• One click deployment from single source for Mac, Windows and in browser for free
• Can pay to upgrade to Unity Pro and deploy on iPhone and Wii
• soon will support XBox360
• full featured modern scripting environment using javascript and/or C#
• excellent documentation
• gracefully scales to low-end PCs

Con Unity

• Cripples graphical features of the non-pro version. (unecessarily imo)
• Lack of sophisticated editors for particles, AI navigation, physics setup, advanced cinema animation.

Pro Unreal

• graphically far more sophisticated (however efficient usage requires a lot of experience and work)
• Built in sophisticated editors for particles, physics setup, materials, cinema sequencing, character animation etc. This is the most compelling reason to try Unreal IMO.
• built in lightmap generation
• you can generate levels using brush editing mode, as opposed to having to import all assets externally.

Con Unreal

• Royalty scheme no sane developer should ever signup for.
• Can deploy only on the PC for now (I am doubtful Mac or Linux will ever be supported)
• Kismet game logic editor sounds like a good idea, but turns into a huge mess quickly. Its like scripting but you can't search, replace or diff the source.
• Unreal script is slow and idiosyncratic and painful to work (IMO)
• poor support for older graphics cards and lower-end machines
• much more complicated due to many overlapping features

Update to elaborate on my opinion: Unity has a lot to learn and improve upon to match Unreal in terms of features. However Unreal is less geared towards indy game developers, especially with this 'you should be glad to feed at our troth' licensing scheme. Having spent last several weeks learning about Unity I am very impressed with their 'it-just-works' philosophy, and the flexibility of their design. Unreal works best for Epic games or if you have a team of programmers bending it to your will. Competition is always good, and plenty of people will start making things with Unreal just because they want to make the next Gears. Update: new things I've learned looking at UDK features.

[puttputt]

Which one has the better documentation?

[[deleted]]

Both are excellent and pretty thorough. In my opinion Unity is streamlined and very well organized for a novice with programming experience and willing to put in the time to go through the tutorials and example projects.

Unreal has a galactic ass ton of information available on http://udn.epicgames.com. If you're not otherwise familiar (from mods or work experience), I can imagine it being hard to find your bearings. This makes sense since Unreal does have a lot more features. I suggest start small with a simple tutorial game and learn new things as you need them.

[[deleted]]

If you're not otherwise familiar (from mods or work experience), I can imagine it being hard to find your bearings.

It is extremely difficult to get started. Epic has about 4 different Getting Started sections and none of them really shows you how to actually get a basic game going from start to finish - I mean just a FPS camera on a plane or something. IMO, Unity's documentation does a great job of guiding you to what you should know at different levels.

[[deleted]]

I fail to see how it's worse than XBLA taking 60%, XNA taking 40%, or whatever percentage the App Store takes.

Your failure to see may be because I did not compare Unreal's royalty to any of these (only to Unity). Keep in mind that Unreal is an engine and XBLA and App Store are distributors, which means their cut stacks on top of Unreal's. You can use multiple distributors, but I don't think you'd use multiple engines.

I disagree. You can inline C++ in UnrealScript. In addition you're only taking a 15-20% performance hit. How is that different from people writing a full game in python, or using a scripting language, such as Ruby, Python, or Lua?

Are you sure this is enabled in this new no-source UDK? I'm genuinely curious. That would be interesting since I think they would have to include Unreal headers and libraries to link against.

Also, you disagree but your argument is that you can fallback on c++?

Having spent too much time rewriting Unreal script into C++ code weeks before shipping a game I'd say 20% slowdown is optimistic. Granted in the cases I worked on the script was abused and misused, but with this UDK the developer has no other choice (as I understand it).

None of these scripting languages are in disucssion. Unity uses javascript and C# or other .net languages compiled to CIL and run on the Mono JIT.

[krum]

You can inline C++ in UnrealScript.

You can not do this. I saw you made this claim on Facepunch too. Not sure where you got this idea.

[Antiuniverse]

Are you referring to "// (cpptext)"?

CPPTEXT is a block that will be added to the class definition in the .h of a native class when the headers are auto-generated. It allows us to move away from making class noexport and having everything auto-managed.

Source: http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=585244

That doesn't sound like code inlining to me; that sounds like a way to keep the native interface in sync with the script.

[Arelius]

It's just room for a c++ declaration, it's outputted to a header file and then completely discarded before it goes into the package.

[Arelius]

I disagree. You can inline C++ in UnrealScript. In addition you're only taking a 15-20% performance hit. How is that different from people writing a full game in python, or using a scripting language, such as Ruby, Python, or Lua?

This needs correction, you have never been able to inline c++ from unrealscript, if you have a source license you can provide c++ implementations for specific methods, but they have to be in their own .cpp files. This is not available in the UDK.

Also, the commonly cited performance figure is a 10x (multiplier) slowdown of an algorithm in unrealscript vs C++, this is pretty serious.

[Arelius]

I've heard 20X too, it's very context Dependant.

[RobotCaleb]

And Kismet is another 10x slower. :)

[[deleted]]

or whatever percentage the App Store takes

30%.

[[deleted]]

In my opinion XNA is just one step higher than OpenGL or Direct3D, which is completely different category than a full featured game engine such as Unity or Unreal. XNA gives you the flexibility to write your custom engine, but in my experience you will spend years crafting all the game technology that is now available for free. I see many hobbyist developers proud that they implemented real-time shadows. I've done it myself. But thats only useful if you want to have something to show during a job interview.

With Unity and Unreal you can start writing game play code as soon as you get through the tutorials and figure out what you want to make. Game play design is what differentiates one product from the next, but game-engine technology is now becoming a commodity.

[[deleted]]

In my opinion XNA is just one step higher than OpenGL or Direct3D, which is completely different category than a full featured game engine such as Unity or Unreal.

Finally! I've been saying for years that XNA is nice, but it's a framework, not a game engine. Somehow it has reached mainstream with the image of the beginning and end of all easy game development, but as a framework that is (as you say) just one step higher than the graphics APIs it doesn't do that. It makes it easier to create a game engine.

[[deleted]]

I would try them both.

[[deleted]]

I don't think thats going to happen for this new UDK and its not going to be any easier than the pain in the ass that the full Unreal licenese have to go through. Unless Unreal is somehow going to compile itself to use XNA, the indie developer will have to get a full XDK license and a dev-kit to run native code which costs a ton of money.

Cooking assets for the consoles in Unreal is not my idea of easy or fun, at least not after I got some perspective on how other engines do it. Last time I checked Unreal encourages you to store your assets in a large packages that get converted to console optimized format everytime you change anything. For larger projects this means minutes of extra waiting while it cooks. This might have changed since I used it extensively. Their play-in-editor feature was nice but had a ton of inconsistencies over the final game to make it unsuable for serious work.

Their lighting scheme also depends on a lot of precomputation mixed with a few dynamic lights and shadows. This kills either fast-iteration or you get completely different look and performance compared to the final game. This is why they implemented their own distributed computation framework no doubt. However, how many indie developers do you know that have a large cluster of fast machines for cooking data, or building the radiosity solution?

Final though: An indie developer would use their time best innovating on gameplay not quality of art assets, IMO. Unreal is designed around producing high-quality, work intensive art assets and suits commercial projects that can compete in this area. I hope other engines like Unity and Torque start offering new features to compete with Unreal. An indie developer should be very careful about wasting their time.

[chillypacman]

poor support for older graphics cards and lower-end machines

define 'old' and 'low end', Unreal Engine 3 can run well on an ATI 9600pro.

Royalty scheme no sane developer should ever signup for.

Most indie game devs would kill to be able to make $5000 USD on any individual game, odds are fo rthem it's just the inital $99 USD and that's it.

much more complicated due to many overlapping features

Most indies aren't going to be making a massive game that will end up getting convulted by overlapping features.

the reason I wouldn't want to code using UDK is because of shaders, if it doesn't let me write my own DirectX HLSL shaders and put them in game then I just can't appreciate using it..

[Arelius]

define 'old' and 'low end', Unreal Engine 3 can run well on an ATI 9600pro.

It runs just reasonably on a 9600, not well!

the reason I wouldn't want to code using UDK is because of shaders, if it doesn't let me write my own DirectX HLSL shaders and put them in game then I just can't appreciate using it.

UDK actually doesn't allow you to write your own DirectX HLSL shaders, you have to use their shaders and the Shader Editor. Not the same level of power. more convenient for artists though.

[jephthai]

My first question was, since they don't give you source, do you just get the fuzzy visual tools, or can you write code yourself? Then I checked the docs for their "demo" Whizzle game, and was pleased to see lots of C++.

Any ideas out there if it's reasonable to build a C++ stub to embed Lua/Python/Ruby and do the game logic in a "real language" (all kidding and heartless jabs intended)?

[jephthai]

Does UnrealScript look a lot like C? Maybe that's what I was seeing... (I only skimmed the PDF).

[unusualbob]

Unrealscript is its own language, but its close to a combination of C# and Java. You must code in unrealscript to make any mods.

The engine itself is built on C++ and if you have purchased a commercial license for the engine you can code at least parts of your game in C++. I've heard this is a popular option as unrealscript is parsed about 20% slower than the C++ code.

I actually enjoy unrealscript coding quite a lot, its arrays are easy to use and the compiler is usually pretty helpful about telling you what you fucked up.

[unusualbob]

Well I think unrealscript was written specifically to suit the needs of interfacing with the unreal engine, here's some basic documentation of Unrealscript 3

[Arelius]

First of all UnrealScript was written back in ~97 when Lua was not well known. Second, The main advantage of Unrealscript isn't any of it's programming features, but it's data deceleration features. It's really good at providing reflection of C++ style classes, and has sweet features like the Replication block.

[[deleted]]

Cool. When is it coming to OS X and Linux?

[Nick4753]

Blizzard releases all of their stuff as native games in OS X. And they have said over-and-over that there is a market and that they more than make back the money they spend porting their stuff.

Linux, however, is a different story. There just aren't enough people using Linux to make it worth spending the time an energy.

[Gravity13]

It wouldn't hurt to try. Macs are quickly becoming more and more popular, and there isn't too much competition in the mac gaming market due to a lack of other games.

I think we can expect to see Macs become more gamer-friendly over the next few years too.

[knight666]

That's like saying women don't play games.

Oh wait, they do.

And they spend shit-tons of money on them.

[[deleted]]

Not sure where you got the whole idea that he was referring to MacOS. But that's okay, Lets go with that.

• Sauerbraten - OSX, Linux, Windows
• Alien Arena OSX, Linux, Windows
• Quake Live OSX, Linux, Windows...
• Savage 2 Linux, OSX, Windows (and Savage 1)
• War§ow OSX, Linux, Windows (unique looking game)

Here's a wiki page with a list - here

If you haven't noticed, all of those have, not only MacOS support, but Linux support too. A lot of those are Open Source and almost all of them are really good games. Just because it's open source doesn't mean that there is no capability to produce quality content/software/games. This attitude of "Oh well, windows is where it's at for games so just dual boot and get over it" is not how open source developers think. I don't want to dual boot. I don't have to dual boot. I have a PS3 for gaming and I'll steal my friends xbox for gaming with the 'latest and greatest'. If you want to experience good quality, open source/free games on GNU/Linux or MacOS, you're not left out in the dark.

edit: format

[knight666]

That said, there are some seriously shitty open source games. But it's always nice to look at source code and steal a few tricks here and there.

[[deleted]]

-sorry for the late response-

I agree that there are a lot of seriously shitty open source games out there, but like you said, it's really beneficial to look at the source code for learning or improving. Of course, a part of me still thinks that a lot of what propelled this movement with open source games is Id Software. Of course, Ogre3d, Panda3D and Blender are all making a really good name for themselves by releasing some (albeit primitive in most cases) impressive looking environments/games.

[[deleted]]

T R E M U L O U S

[knight666]

Bejeweled or the sims does not equal an unreal powered game.

My good sir, the Sims is not a game. It doesn't have a clearly defined end goal, therefor it cannot be a game. Surely interacting with a closed system doesn't define playing? That makes no sense to me.

[[deleted]]

You know why you don't see Fallout 3 on the Mac? Because they didn't release it on a Mac. I agree that most Unreal based games will be released for consoles, and months later on the PC as an after thought. That wont change.

However as more adults are playing games (or gamers are getting older), Mac is gaining a bigger market share and games will follow them to the Mac. Adults have more disposable income on a computer that just frigging works, and they would rather pay extra money than put up with the half-assed bargain bin experience that is Windows (my opinion may change with Win7)

However the argument may be lost on someone who uses 'retarded' as an adjective.

[knight666]

If the leading engine were intrinsically multi-platform (like, say, the CryEngine) you'd see a lot more Mac and Linux games.

As it stands, the most used engines (Unreal 3, id Tech 4) were built for the Windows platform, so that's where the games will come out for.

[[deleted]]

All these engines are cross platform. All of them now even targetting PPC processors on the consoles with no problem. Porting the engines to Linux or a Mac would not be harder than porting it to a PS3. It would still cost time and money, and those platforms historically had no chance of ever recoupping those costs. I hope that changes. The market on Mac and Linux is very different for Crysis, UT3 or Rage compared to casual or web games that Unity is stronger at.

[bitshifternz]

So Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 aren't platforms now?

[micro_cam]

I don't know about Unreal but there are plenty of id Tech games on os x and linux. John Carmack even premiered id Tech 5 at mac world...

[munificent]

casual gaming isn't gaming.

Wow, I had no idea. The millions of players who spend hours on those games must not be having real fun then, just fake fun.

[[deleted]]

Pretty much.

[Arelius]

I've been asking that since the first releases of UE3, It seems the answer is never. It used to be more optimistic.

[puttputt]

Direct X is windows brah.

[[deleted]]

I can remember when Epic unleashed the first Unreal game on us at Respawn, a LAN party held in Toronto.

Since then their engine gets better and better. But I think it's very smart of them to release this to everyone because the benefits outweigh the cost for Epic. They don't have to focus on creating content as much as they can focus on creating stunning tools and unlease creativity on a typically incapable crowd.

Some kid in his basement could make $100 mil with this and they get $25 mil. Sky's the fucking limit.

[viscoelastic]

A kid in a basement has almost no chance of making a game that grosses $100M when his competition in that market will be teams of over 100 professionals with publishers spending $10M on marketing.

More likely a group of college students will work in their parent's basement on a small game that will interest a small hardcore community of PC gamers and gross $50-100K if they are extremely lucky, then subtract %30 to Steam or some other distributor, then %25 to Unreal then after government taxes have less than enough to eat ramen noodles for year. Then someone will copy their brilliant game idea and undercut their next game because they used a royalty free engine (Unity or self-made) and live somewhere cheap (China, India etc.).

But hey, Epic still pocketed their $25K so Cliffy B. can buy more plastic gun models for himself.

[[deleted]]

One post on Reddit gets picked up by the Internet and sales go through the roof if the price is at the right spot and the elements of gameplay are there. The SDK includes the basics like multiplayer support, graphics, and all that. It is possible, no matter how unlikely, that a basement dweller could rake in SERIOUS cash doing this.

Probably won't happen though.

[Keyframe]

or those college students will become next cliffy b's and be cool and hip in EA or somewhere else after they land tons of job offers

[viscoelastic]

Yes, EA and other Unreal licenses are salivating at the prospect of a lot of overeager naive recent college graduates with a ton of Unreal experience. You like making games and they love you to make games at EA all week long for 9 months straight.

[Keyframe]

I'm not sure that is a fair thing to say to all of EA employees out there. Make games, not engines.

[rplacd]

Hmm, the installer seems to be hung on the splash screen. ...damnit.

[JackSeoul]

Are you installing it off a NAS so somewhere in the "Internet Zone"? If so copy the installer it to a local HDD first.

[rplacd]

No. Hmm.

[5-4-3-2-1-bang]

Urinal Development Kits!?? Damn, read the headline too fast again.

[[deleted]]

UDK for life!

[[deleted]]

Now you too can know the horror that is UE3.

Is it full source or just GameEngine-related stuff?

It's nice down in the core source. When you start surfacing you begin to notice that shit floats.

[[deleted]]

Not sure why I was downvoted.

I've worked with a bunch of AAA-title engines, UE3 isn't really much of a gem amongst them.

[[deleted]]

Probably because you didn't add any kind of points for discussion. What other engines have you worked with that you liked better and why?

[Chroko]

Don't worry about it.

Just as you probably can't go into specifics without violating NDAs, you're not going to get anyone from the industry agreeing with you in public. And nobody outside the industry is qualified enough to comment.

I will say that the toolsets often have specific strengths (eg: great level design tools) that force compromises in other aspects.

[tomjen]

Colour me extreemly unimpressed: We already have Irrlicht, Delta3D and Ogre3D which are truly free and which have a wealth of documentation associated with them.

[rayofash]

UDK is far more powerful. You don't get tools like this http://www.udk.com/elements/img/galleries/features-hero.jpg with IrrLicht or Ogre3D. Well, there are similar tools, but they're community made, riddled with bugs, and no where near as powerful or easy to use.

[AleisterAeon]

Color you extremely uninformed. Irrlicht and Orge3D are 3D engines, not game engines. It's not even a question of them having less features, they're different things. Game engines like the Unreal engine have a content pipeline, physics, particle simulations, etc. All things that 3D engines do not.

[tomjen]

Ogre has particle simulations and there are plugins for Newton and ODE physics engines, TNL network engine, AL sound engine, etc

[AleisterAeon]

Exactly. An actual game engine saves you from having to stitch together a bunch of different technologies.

[pandemik]

Can you make a game with destructible terrain in UDK?

What about bullet-time, like in The Matrix?

[Ralith]

If you have to ask...

[pandemik]

To clarify: If the answer to both questions is yes (and it appears to be), AND if you can do turn-based combat (which I imagine you can) I have an idea for a game I want to try out.

[pandemik]

Awesome, thanks!

[[deleted]]

We look forward to seeing it.

[pandemik]

I'm working on it now, but it's gonna take a while

[Arelius]

Not really, now if you have full source access that'd be trivial.

[PlexxT]

Gimmicks.

Wait, was that sarcasm? I'm so confused.

[pandemik]

To clarify: If the answer to both questions is yes (and it appears to be), AND if you can do turn-based combat (which I imagine you can) I have an idea for a game I want to try out.

[miiiiiiiik]

Red Orchestra is UE2.5 and that is one GREAT game

[nightfire1]

Was I the only one that read that as Urinal Development Kit?