Epic Releases Free Version of Unreal Engine 217
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."
The game that invented the headshot... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:The game that invented the headshot... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually GoldenEye (N64) invented hit locations, including head shots.
Re:Still behind id (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The game that invented the headshot... (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought we had those in quake (team fortress)...
Re:Windows only.. (Score:2, Interesting)
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).
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.
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.
Re:Nice one editors. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Why I like Unreal (Score:2, Interesting)