

Unreal Development Kit Released - eswat
http://www.udk.com/

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EvilTrout
I really like the fact that the engine is free for many non-commercial
purposes.

I think the indie game scene in particular, which often releases their titles
for free, can benefit tremendously from having these tools available.

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pxlpshr
Yeah no kidding. I believe the UE3 engine costs somewhere around $350k to
license. In the past, I don't think you could get non-commercial access to
mess around with. That said, this is pretty huge for indie developers.

I grew up playing UT99, UT2k*... UT3 was a tragedy on the PC but nevertheless,
Unreal Tournament was the reason I got into my first startup. We licensed our
tech to Quake Live but yeah... there's a reason we died, Oracle is too
expensive for game developers given all the other costs associated to
development.

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mindaugas
Why did you use Oracle in the first place?

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pxlpshr
You're asking the wrong person. I was the creative/mkting director... but
also, the startup began in 2005 and died in late 2007-ish. AFAIK, there were
not very many scalable solutions for a gaming platform when we first started.
But again, I'm not the right person to ask about this. :)

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jcw
Ha ha. I'm in the middle of a class where we make an environment for UT3.
Everyone gripes and complains about how limited we are, because we're only
using the level/script editor that comes bundled in with the game, and that
you need the super expensive license in order to make anything that deviates
too much from the third/first person shooter formula.

This changes a lot of things. I know there will be a lot more interesting
output from my school now that Unity3D and the UDK are free.

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bvttf
This has no C++ support, it's the same SDK you get buying UT3 plus the ability
to make a standalone binary that doesn't require UT3 installed.

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evdawg
I'm a little confused by this... so the Unreal Engine 3 (included in the
UDK)... isn't the same as what's being distributed to the big-time game
development studios?

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_pius
This is probably the first time in six years that I wished I had a Windows
machine or image laying around.

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plinkplonk
IIRC Unreal (the game) does work on Linux. Too bad UDK doesn't seem to work on
Linux. OTOH I do have a dual boot machine with Win XP (though I haven't booted
into windows in years now).....

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etherealG
unreal the original has a linux port I think, but this udk is for unreal 3,
which I don't think does.

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aw3c2
From what I know, Ryan (icculus) Gordon is still working on it. But that might
be my memory mixing that up with another game that took ages and I was not
remotely interested in.

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goodgoblin
Anyone know if Blender works with UDK beyond static meshes? I don't have any
modelling package and the pro ones seem to cost around $3K. Thats alot of
money for just messing around.

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jcw
It does. You need a certain Python script to get Blender to export *.ase
meshes: <http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tools_utilities.htm#ase>

~~~
goodgoblin
Thank you. One more question from complete Blender ignorance - can you create
models with animation in Blender and still export to .ase or only static
meshes?

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Keyframe
This is amazing. Sure, it's not a lib access SDK like you'd get with full
license, but with UScript and engine behind it you can do A LOT - and
leveraging on devteam from Epic for 25% of royalties after initial 5000$ are
made is a great deal.

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jheriko
No source? I'll try it out anyway, but if I don't have the ability to plug in
my awesome new untested rendering techniques I doubt I will do anything with
it at all... id Tech 3 still looks better from that perspective.

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hypermatt
Wow the world just changed today. You can have the best 3d engine on the
market with no upfront costs ;) Interesting startup possiblities

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teamonkey
For certain values of "best", yes. It's completely unsuited for many game
types, but what it does it does really well.

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Tyheam
Yay for playing The Ball without owning UT3!

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anigbrowl
As well as Whizzle, including source code and developer notes...this is quite
a throwdown against Valve. Should get interesting!

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vlad
This is likely a response to the recent announcement that Unity3D is now free
to download and use for individuals as well as companies that make less than
100K per year.

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10ren
video for "Whizzle" and "UT Demo" aren't playing for me on linux (but "UT
demo" and "" videos do work).

I think we'll see a lot of casual games with amazing graphics.

BTW: their commercial licensing for redistribution is great: $99 + 25% after
the first $5,000

