anomnomnomymous writes "Just a week after Unity announced its engine is now available for free to indie users, Epic Games has revealed a free version of its popular Unreal Engine technology. Called the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), it is a free edition of UE3 that allows community, modder and indie users more access to the engine's features and is available for all. Epic said game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations plus digital filmmakers can all take advantage of the UDK for non-commercial use. The UDK site also offers detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms and support resources."
A multi-platform client that allows you to load Google Sketchup files. It would be nice to walk around the models, buildings, etc.
After that, make that multi-platform client compatible with Google Earth. Yes a lot of stuff is still flat but at least they do have terrain data so it would still be nice.
And last, just for kicks, add an option for playing in that map MMOFPS style!
While it's unsurprising given that the current Unreal Engine is still in active development and a ton of commercial games are still being developed and shipped using it, it's worth pointing out that this isn't a source code release; instead, it's something much closer to an elaborate mod engine, with generous swaths of behavioral scripting but no real ability to get 'under the hood' as it were. Still, kudos to Epic for this; it'll be interesting to see who picks up the ball and runs with this.
Hmmm, I wasn't aware of that, I haven't had much time to read into this (at work and all). I was actually pretty excited, I like the Unreal Engine for its shaders more than anything else. I like to get my hands on the real gooey stuff, to take what bits and pieces I like and leave the rest. I'd rather develop my own game with my own patchwork engine rather then make an Epic Mod for Unreal (Pun fully intended).
Having modded for a few different games, I really appreciate the Unreal engine for one specific reason: it assumes that all the space you haven't touched is filled rather than empty. That way, creating the basic flow of a level is just a matter of drawing out a cuboid per room and subtracting it from the filled space. By contrast, the id style starting with empty space requires you to create a cuboid for each wall, ceiling, and floor. There's a three page tutorial on how to make all the seams line up properly - and heaven help you if your room isn't a simple rectangle.
But each release of the Unreal Engine actually changes the Game development scene for alot of game development, not just modding community pertaining to Unreal games. Given Unreal 3 is staarrting to get old, this is probably too late to boost the game back into the light of gamers but Unreal has always had this precedence in the scene of developing.
For example, I myself usually develop with the source Engine. I find it easy to use, and probably more importantly, I find Hammer easier to create maps with instead of the Unreal Editor. In one particular scenario I wanted to have a marsh with really cool fog and properly dripping water and fireflies and all this jazz. Now Source while a great PHYSICS engine isn't as fine tuned towards the details as other engines tend to be. I've found that Valve will only update the Shaders to really meet their own needs, and other little things like that - but I mean you can't complain when they are giving it out for free, right? Anyways, Unreal has been pretty good with those kinds of effects - just look at ANY screenshot of their maps, or any video of the gameplay. I was able to look into Unreal and use their structure as a basis for my own particle effects, after all, I don't want it to look EXACTLY like an UT2K3 Map. Worked like a charm. Now, before you jut in, yes, I know Steam has their own FX for this kind of stuff. But its actually pretty taxing on the system, they still haven't quite seemed to nail fog down as it lags quite a bit (See CS:S When multiple smoke nades go off)
So, the next time you think "Unreal, who cares?" - remember that while they seem to be declining a bit in their sales of games, their rendering technology is still amongst the best free stuff out there. And every bit they give to their community is another bit to every community.
Wow, I got to say I'm impressed with the/. editors. After hastily submitting this story at work, I only had links to the Unity3D- and UDK- sites in there. Whereas the text is still the same as I submitted it, the editors done a great job in actually providing some extra informative links in there.
Well done!
On topic: I think this is a very smart move by Epic. It's great to be able to tinker with a top quality engine without having to buy any of their games first. This can definitely come in use for the scientific community, where you would like other people to download your, for example, simulations, and not be constrained by them having to own a game on which it runs.
Also, as some people above mentioned, this is great for some indie developers, who can now build a complete game, see if it's feasible, and if the end-product is to their liking, they can decide to license the engine and sell it.
Of course I'd prefer them to release the whole source, but that can't really be expected of an engine that is still commercially available.
Wow, I got to say I'm impressed with the/. editors. After hastily submitting this story at work, I only had links to the Unity3D- and UDK- sites in there. Whereas the text is still the same as I submitted it, the editors done a great job in actually providing some extra informative links in there. Well done!
After that statement, I had to check my URLs and DNS cache to make sure I wasn't on some Bizarro Slashdot.
Just kidding, editors. I actually appreciate what you guys do for us here.
Oh, clearly you misunderstand this screen shot. Our hell spawn battling protagonist is getting ready to shoot something and as an enhancement for Doom 5, he not only puts down his flashlight but now also closes his eyes too. It's all very atmospheric...
Doom was released in December 1993. Doom II was released in October 1994, 10 months later. Doom III was released in February 2007, 148 months later. If this progression holds, then Doom IV won't be released this century and by the time Doom V is released the human race probably won't be recognisable, if it still exists.
Please point me to GPL'ed sources of ID software engine technology equivalent to the technology described in TFA. Thanks.
Xreal [xreal-project.net] Heavily improved version of the (GPLed) Id Tech 3 engine. Includes features such as shadow mapping, per pixel lightning, etc... bringing the whole project visually closer to what's available in modern engines. Other questions ?
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More seriously :
Giving away free (gratis) access to some proprietary technology is nothing more than a complex marketing ploy to try to attract more commercial licensee in the long term, by gaining more fans and hackers in the short term. The basic idea is "let the Indie market play around with the engine, and if some group emerge with a new killer-app, they'll have to license our engine".
Whereas giving complete freedom to tinker with the GPL is the most community enabling. Granted, id Tech 5 is not in the GPL now. But on the other hand, the full freedom offered by the GPL has enabled heavy customisation such as the above and many other. And in the long term, are much more valuable for creativity.
Giving away free (gratis) access to some proprietary technology is nothing more than a complex marketing ploy to try to attract more commercial licensee in the long term, by gaining more fans and hackers in the short term. The basic idea is "let the Indie market play around with the engine, and if some group emerge with a new killer-app, they'll have to license our engine".
Oh noes! Epic actually wants people to use their technology and make money from it! The horror! The horror!
Well I guess if your goal is to GPL engine then ok. However in general that isn't the goal of a company, they want to make money so they can do things like pay their employees to develop more software. So how have licensing the engines gone? Well Unreal Engine 3, which was released after iD Tech 4, has about 150 games out using it. iD Tech 4? 7 games.
So I'd say Epic has been pretty successful at their primary goal of making a good engine that people wish to license for designing games.
Frankly, I have no problem with that model to help indie and poorer developers make their mark. It improves the field by keeping companies on their toes constantly improving and allows people with little/no upstart cost get a foot in the door.
John Carmack specifically told he did not want to be like Epic. They had (relatively) huge success with Quake 3 engine sales, however he had to spend lots of time for technical support of engine licensees, while he could've spend those times on this on games.
Yes, his stirring, creative games that would be amazing even without a nice set of graphics tech running them. I know the first time I killed the Cyberdemon in Doom I nearly wept, it was like a modern re-imagining of a Greek tragedy.
Okay, that's getting pretty thick there but lets get one thing out of the way: Id's claim to fame has been sweet tech demos, they've yet to make some kind of interesting innovation that isn't a technical one.
Still behind id software and their GPL releases of the game engines.
What a troll. id releases its old generation engines as GPL, not the current or even last-generation engines. Unreal Engine 3 is not comparable to the Quake 3 engine, it's more like the id Tech 5 engine, which certainly isn't available for free licensing let alone GPL distribution.
GPL is a terrible license for a game engine if you plan to have a multi-player mode, because releasing the code to your game makes it really easy to make cheats.
No. Bad design makes it really easy to make cheats. A server naive enough to trust the clients makes it really easy to make cheats. A well designed multiplayer game is no easier to cheat in with or without the source code. If releasing the source code makes it easier to cheat, the game was poorly designed. Conversely, if a developer knows the source code will be available, they may be motivated to do the job right. Since people can make cheats for a poorly designed game anyway, regardless of whether y
No. Bad design makes it really easy to make cheats. A server naive enough to trust the clients makes it really easy to make cheats. A well designed multiplayer game is no easier to cheat in with or without the source code. If releasing the source code makes it easier to cheat, the game was poorly designed. Conversely, if a developer knows the source code will be available, they may be motivated to do the job right. Since people can make cheats for a poorly designed game anyway, regardless of whether you release the source code or not, a game that releases the source code and is designed to be secure anyway is certainly going to be harder to make cheats for than games which mistakenly think if they don't release the source code, their game will be more secure, a fact proven wrong again and again and again.
The same thing was said by open source supporters when Quake 1 source code was released and cheating went rampant. It's, of course, absolutely true, if you desing so that automating your input doesn't give you an advantage, and so that having the information that your RAM hides doesn't give you an advantage, then there's no cheating problem! The catch? This involves adding auto aim into a FPS game and not hiding players behind walls, which would make them flicker on sight, degrading severely the gaming expe
AC, I think you might be right. I remember SiN and Soldier of Fortune both having location-based damage modifiers, but SoF was released in 2000 and SiN was 1998.
Unreal Tournament may not have invented the head shot, but it did invent the neck shot. Sadly the ripper was dropped after the first game in the series. An unwieldy weapon that was just fun to use.
The Unity engine also mentioned in the caption (which is now also free, and even lets you make money with it) has always had a mac version (it actually used to be mac-only for content generation until earlier this year).
They're not giving it away. They're giving a free license for non-commercial use. If you create a game with it and want to sell it, then you will have to get a commercial license. Basically, they want people doing game design courses to practice on their engine and not something free.
Sounds like they're training programmers for free. Would you want someone working for you that had never touched your engine and would cost $50K to train, or someone who had spent many caffeine-filled nights writing exceptional code on their own time, for fun?
Well maybe they removed some nice features, or there is no support (highly likely).
My guess would be they are about to announce UE4 and trying to get people onboard with the UE3 would be the best way to get them to upgrade in the future.
It's Windows-only and still closed-source, so that's enough of a catch, really. This is a free dev kit, not an id-style open source release of the engine (title was kind of misleading).
The engine is without a doubt -THE- hardest part of development. I myself have only ever hacked together Frankenstein Engines using bits from everywhere, and never really added my own component (why write your own when someone else already has). With the engine out of the way, a feature Length Game can be done in as little as 6 months*, tested, released, and on the shelf in about a year.
*This is assuming you've got one guy with the ideas who fleshes out a story, 1 guy who does the artwork (both concept and
Sure they would. If somebody uses the GPL version, they have to include the source code of their game with it along with a license that says anybody can copy or modify it for free! That is a pretty big limitation on any business model for a game company. They could however pay Epic for a different license to the code that would allow them to release closed source or otherwise limit what end users can do with the software.
You know what I want to see now? (Score:3, Insightful)
A multi-platform client that allows you to load Google Sketchup files. It would be nice to walk around the models, buildings, etc.
After that, make that multi-platform client compatible with Google Earth. Yes a lot of stuff is still flat but at least they do have terrain data so it would still be nice.
And last, just for kicks, add an option for playing in that map MMOFPS style!
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A Link to the Press Release (Score:5, Informative)
3...2...1.... Virtual Porn! (Score:2)
Not a source release... (Score:5, Interesting)
While it's unsurprising given that the current Unreal Engine is still in active development and a ton of commercial games are still being developed and shipped using it, it's worth pointing out that this isn't a source code release; instead, it's something much closer to an elaborate mod engine, with generous swaths of behavioral scripting but no real ability to get 'under the hood' as it were. Still, kudos to Epic for this; it'll be interesting to see who picks up the ball and runs with this.
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Hmmm, I wasn't aware of that, I haven't had much time to read into this (at work and all). I was actually pretty excited, I like the Unreal Engine for its shaders more than anything else. I like to get my hands on the real gooey stuff, to take what bits and pieces I like and leave the rest. I'd rather develop my own game with my own patchwork engine rather then make an Epic Mod for Unreal (Pun fully intended).
Why I like Unreal (Score:5, Interesting)
Having modded for a few different games, I really appreciate the Unreal engine for one specific reason: it assumes that all the space you haven't touched is filled rather than empty. That way, creating the basic flow of a level is just a matter of drawing out a cuboid per room and subtracting it from the filled space. By contrast, the id style starting with empty space requires you to create a cuboid for each wall, ceiling, and floor. There's a three page tutorial on how to make all the seams line up properly - and heaven help you if your room isn't a simple rectangle.
Alot of people don't appreciate this (Score:5, Interesting)
But each release of the Unreal Engine actually changes the Game development scene for alot of game development, not just modding community pertaining to Unreal games. Given Unreal 3 is staarrting to get old, this is probably too late to boost the game back into the light of gamers but Unreal has always had this precedence in the scene of developing.
For example, I myself usually develop with the source Engine. I find it easy to use, and probably more importantly, I find Hammer easier to create maps with instead of the Unreal Editor. In one particular scenario I wanted to have a marsh with really cool fog and properly dripping water and fireflies and all this jazz. Now Source while a great PHYSICS engine isn't as fine tuned towards the details as other engines tend to be. I've found that Valve will only update the Shaders to really meet their own needs, and other little things like that - but I mean you can't complain when they are giving it out for free, right? Anyways, Unreal has been pretty good with those kinds of effects - just look at ANY screenshot of their maps, or any video of the gameplay. I was able to look into Unreal and use their structure as a basis for my own particle effects, after all, I don't want it to look EXACTLY like an UT2K3 Map. Worked like a charm. Now, before you jut in, yes, I know Steam has their own FX for this kind of stuff. But its actually pretty taxing on the system, they still haven't quite seemed to nail fog down as it lags quite a bit (See CS:S When multiple smoke nades go off)
So, the next time you think "Unreal, who cares?" - remember that while they seem to be declining a bit in their sales of games, their rendering technology is still amongst the best free stuff out there. And every bit they give to their community is another bit to every community.
Nice one editors. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well done!
On topic: I think this is a very smart move by Epic. It's great to be able to tinker with a top quality engine without having to buy any of their games first. This can definitely come in use for the scientific community, where you would like other people to download your, for example, simulations, and not be constrained by them having to own a game on which it runs.
Also, as some people above mentioned, this is great for some indie developers, who can now build a complete game, see if it's feasible, and if the end-product is to their liking, they can decide to license the engine and sell it.
Of course I'd prefer them to release the whole source, but that can't really be expected of an engine that is still commercially available.
Overall, great move Epic!
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Wow, I got to say I'm impressed with the /. editors. After hastily submitting this story at work, I only had links to the Unity3D- and UDK- sites in there. Whereas the text is still the same as I submitted it, the editors done a great job in actually providing some extra informative links in there.
Well done!
After that statement, I had to check my URLs and DNS cache to make sure I wasn't on some Bizarro Slashdot.
Just kidding, editors. I actually appreciate what you guys do for us here.
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You mean the ones they won't be releasing anymore, because they're broke and have been owned by the man?
But whoa, I'm really looking forward to Doom 5 or whatever their working on now. I'm sure it will be nice and dark.
Re:Still behind id (Score:4, Funny)
I found a screenshot of Doom 5 [e-try.com].
Parent
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I found a screenshot of Doom 5 [e-try.com]
Nice. Putting those pixel shaders to heavy use I see.
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Oh, clearly you misunderstand this screen shot. Our hell spawn battling protagonist is getting ready to shoot something and as an enhancement for Doom 5, he not only puts down his flashlight but now also closes his eyes too. It's all very atmospheric...
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Didn't you notice the "sudo mod me up" at the end?
Now make me a sandwich.
No?
sudo make me a sandwich
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Still behind id software and their GPL releases of the game engines.
Please point me to GPL'ed sources of ID software engine technology equivalent to the technology described in TFA. Thanks.
Xreal, evolution Q3, etc... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please point me to GPL'ed sources of ID software engine technology equivalent to the technology described in TFA. Thanks.
Xreal [xreal-project.net]
Heavily improved version of the (GPLed) Id Tech 3 engine. Includes features such as shadow mapping, per pixel lightning, etc... bringing the whole project visually closer to what's available in modern engines.
Other questions ?
----
More seriously :
Giving away free (gratis) access to some proprietary technology is nothing more than a complex marketing ploy to try to attract more commercial licensee in the long term, by gaining more fans and hackers in the short term. The basic idea is "let the Indie market play around with the engine, and if some group emerge with a new killer-app, they'll have to license our engine".
Whereas giving complete freedom to tinker with the GPL is the most community enabling. Granted, id Tech 5 is not in the GPL now. But on the other hand, the full freedom offered by the GPL has enabled heavy customisation such as the above and many other. And in the long term, are much more valuable for creativity.
Parent
Re:Xreal, evolution Q3, etc... (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving away free (gratis) access to some proprietary technology is nothing more than a complex marketing ploy to try to attract more commercial licensee in the long term, by gaining more fans and hackers in the short term. The basic idea is "let the Indie market play around with the engine, and if some group emerge with a new killer-app, they'll have to license our engine".
Oh noes! Epic actually wants people to use their technology and make money from it! The horror! The horror!
Parent
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...the full freedom offered by the GPL
The GPL does not offer full freedom. Public domain offers full freedom.
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http://xreal-project.net/ [xreal-project.net]
You are delusional if you think quake3 engine (id tech 3) is anywhere near UE3.
Behind ID? (Score:4, Informative)
Well I guess if your goal is to GPL engine then ok. However in general that isn't the goal of a company, they want to make money so they can do things like pay their employees to develop more software. So how have licensing the engines gone? Well Unreal Engine 3, which was released after iD Tech 4, has about 150 games out using it. iD Tech 4? 7 games.
So I'd say Epic has been pretty successful at their primary goal of making a good engine that people wish to license for designing games.
Parent
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Frankly, I have no problem with that model to help indie and poorer developers make their mark. It improves the field by keeping companies on their toes constantly improving and allows people with little/no upstart cost get a foot in the door.
Re:Behind ID? (Score:5, Informative)
John Carmack specifically told he did not want to be like Epic. They had (relatively) huge success with Quake 3 engine sales, however he had to spend lots of time for technical support of engine licensees, while he could've spend those times on this on games.
Please look at this:
http://kotaku.com/5339057/john-carmack-ok-with-id-not-becoming-an-epic-or-valve [kotaku.com]
Parent
Re:Behind ID? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, his stirring, creative games that would be amazing even without a nice set of graphics tech running them. I know the first time I killed the Cyberdemon in Doom I nearly wept, it was like a modern re-imagining of a Greek tragedy.
Okay, that's getting pretty thick there but lets get one thing out of the way: Id's claim to fame has been sweet tech demos, they've yet to make some kind of interesting innovation that isn't a technical one.
Parent
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Still behind id software and their GPL releases of the game engines.
What a troll. id releases its old generation engines as GPL, not the current or even last-generation engines. Unreal Engine 3 is not comparable to the Quake 3 engine, it's more like the id Tech 5 engine, which certainly isn't available for free licensing let alone GPL distribution.
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GPL is a terrible license for a game engine if you plan to have a multi-player mode, because releasing the code to your game makes it really easy to make cheats.
No. Bad design makes it really easy to make cheats. A server naive enough to trust the clients makes it really easy to make cheats. A well designed multiplayer game is no easier to cheat in with or without the source code. If releasing the source code makes it easier to cheat, the game was poorly designed. Conversely, if a developer knows the source code will be available, they may be motivated to do the job right. Since people can make cheats for a poorly designed game anyway, regardless of whether y
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No. Bad design makes it really easy to make cheats. A server naive enough to trust the clients makes it really easy to make cheats. A well designed multiplayer game is no easier to cheat in with or without the source code. If releasing the source code makes it easier to cheat, the game was poorly designed. Conversely, if a developer knows the source code will be available, they may be motivated to do the job right. Since people can make cheats for a poorly designed game anyway, regardless of whether you release the source code or not, a game that releases the source code and is designed to be secure anyway is certainly going to be harder to make cheats for than games which mistakenly think if they don't release the source code, their game will be more secure, a fact proven wrong again and again and again.
The same thing was said by open source supporters when Quake 1 source code was released and cheating went rampant. It's, of course, absolutely true, if you desing so that automating your input doesn't give you an advantage, and so that having the information that your RAM hides doesn't give you an advantage, then there's no cheating problem! The catch? This involves adding auto aim into a FPS game and not hiding players behind walls, which would make them flicker on sight, degrading severely the gaming expe
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Actually GoldenEye (N64) invented hit locations, including head shots.
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I thought we had those in quake (team fortress)...
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You're all wrong (Score:3, Funny)
Mario Brothers was the originator even if they didn't have a booming voice letting everyone know about it.
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AC, I think you might be right. I remember SiN and Soldier of Fortune both having location-based damage modifiers, but SoF was released in 2000 and SiN was 1998.
Re:The game that invented the headshot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The game that invented the headshot... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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Unreal Tournament may not have invented the head shot, but it did invent the neck shot. Sadly the ripper was dropped after the first game in the series. An unwieldy weapon that was just fun to use.
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Actually it was just a less cool version of the Razorjack.
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It was ported to Linux 2 years ago(right after the windows release) but it was never released.
Re:Windows only.. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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The Unity engine also mentioned in the caption (which is now also free, and even lets you make money with it) has always had a mac version (it actually used to be mac-only for content generation until earlier this year).
Re:Man's gotta eat (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Man's gotta eat (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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My guess would be they are about to announce UE4 and trying to get people onboard with the UE3 would be the best way to get them to upgrade in the future.
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I'm doubting there is much engine source included with this release.
Some UnrealScript/Kismet stuff sure, but no engine source.
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The engine is without a doubt -THE- hardest part of development. I myself have only ever hacked together Frankenstein Engines using bits from everywhere, and never really added my own component (why write your own when someone else already has). With the engine out of the way, a feature Length Game can be done in as little as 6 months*, tested, released, and on the shelf in about a year.
*This is assuming you've got one guy with the ideas who fleshes out a story, 1 guy who does the artwork (both concept and
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Sure they would. If somebody uses the GPL version, they have to include the source code of their game with it along with a license that says anybody can copy or modify it for free! That is a pretty big limitation on any business model for a game company. They could however pay Epic for a different license to the code that would allow them to release closed source or otherwise limit what end users can do with the software.