Free Unreal Engine Release Planned

Thanks to Beyond Unreal for pointing to an article revealing that Epic are planning a standalone, non-commercial release of the Unreal Engine. The previously un-noticed September email from Epic's Mark Rein reveals "...a free version of UT2003 but without any of the gaming content or code" is in the works, including a standalone executable and a full release of Epic's Unreal toolset. According to Rein, "The runtime will be a free download, and free to use for non-commercial and educational use", and commercial licenses for this forthcoming release are also possible, with limited Epic support, and "...will [cost] considerably less than the US$350,000+ we charge for [an Unreal engine license]."

Wow, useful.

[I(rispee_I(reme]

This is clearly a shoddy attempt to compete with id's opensource tactics. I doubt it will be met with much fanfare.

"Wow, useful" is right.

[mcasaday]

No. This is clearly an attempt to compete with companies like GarageGames [garagegames.com]. I'm guessing that it will be met with a bit of fanfare. I can already see the ears perking and tongues lolling at the prospect of publishing a game using the Unreal Engine. This is tech that is largely out of reach for indie developers looking to sell their games due to the high price for a commercial license and now all of a sudden it's within reach.

"Wow, useful" is right, minus the cynicism.

Re:"Wow, useful" is right.

[mcasaday]

Oops. I should prolly RFTA, eh?

"We're creating a version of our engine which can be licensed for non-gaming use"

This isn't as useful to indie game developers (looking to publish games commercially) as I at first thought. :)

Re:"Wow, useful" is right.

[Rick the Red]

No, but it opens up interesting possiblities in other areas, such as 3D CAD or even other interactive entertainment (think movie, not game)

Hmmm, would a 3D interactive movie qualify as a game? If you could interact with The Matrix and change the outcome of the storyline, would that count as a game?

Re:"Wow, useful" is right.

[sahala]

Considering that so many games market themselves as interactive movies I would think that an interactive movie would be classified as a game.

mmm, nice

[SmallFurryCreature]

A response to the Half-Life 2 farce or something that has been cooking for longer?

They don't stand to loose much as 2003 is already an "old" engine. On the other hand if lots and lots of excellent fanmade material is made freely available then will people still buy the latest offcial engine/game just because it sports a few more polys?

/me slaps himself. Silly of course they will.

For modders does this however make any difference? After all they only get the engine NOT the code to the engine so they can't made supermods. So all this really means is that they can release standalone mods. No requirement for people to own the game. Good for players.

Considering there is no obvious money angle that I can see I can only say that this is incredibly nice of them to do. Perhaps they want to create more content creators so they can then hire the best for commercial games?

Re:mmm, nice

[GoatPigSheep]

unreal 2003 might be an "old" engine, but engines can have a long lifetime... The original half-life is still popular, thanks to counter-strike, and it is based on the quake 1 engine.

The unreal 2003 engine is also pretty advanced, and could surely be pushed to the limits of today's hardware if someone wanted to.

Could be very nice

[op51n]

It is an outdated game, but it is still one of the nicer engines around at the moment. I mean when we have HL2 and Doom3 released it won't be able to hold up quite so well, but with the engine source released surely someones going to update it to compare.
I look forward to seeing if someone can do something nice with this. And, if only I could get a team together any time soon I'd make use of this!

Why so cynical?

[DrJAKing]

God what a load of moaning minnies. Some people are only able to interpret anything in terms of how it relates to Open source. Ever heard of orthogonality?

Many people use the Unreal engine for non-gaming purposes - the scripting language that comes with it is about the best around and having a version without the game-specific content will be really useful.

The "get the gamers onside" model has been around for years, now Epic are doing the same with the architects, scientists, designers and so on. Good on em, I hope the miserable competition get off their butts and make something a bit better than feggin' Superscape. And maybe a few projects will save a bit of money they might have unwittingly blown on SGI.

Unreal 2K3 engine

[BrookHarty]

Wouldnt an opensource engine be better for non-educational engines? Just wondering if someone should use a commerical engine with all the ties to the license. How does it compare to Crystal Space which runs on many platforms, and has a large amount of developers?

Havnt read the guidelines, just the little article, but wonder what restrictions could make a difference. Maybe you might want to take the game retail later, do you then need to spring 350,000 bux for a license?

Re:Unreal 2K3 engine

[damiam]

How does it compare to Crystal Space which runs on many platforms, and has a large amount of developers?

Unreal also runs on many platforms and has many developers, plus it actually looks half-decent, has good physics, nice scripting, and powerful dev utils.

Deus Ex

[mraymer]

I think Deus Ex was the best use of the Unreal engine. Despite the engine's flaws (favoring Glide over D3D/OpenGL) they did some incredible things.

On my GeForce3, the game chokes in certain parts... Which is ironic, since it always ran smooth on my Voodoo2. Sadly, I have no idea where that is right now. Heh.

Re:Deus Ex

[mraymer]

Replying to my own post to include my page of screenshots [centurytel.net] for Deus Ex. Doesn't look to bad for 3 years old.

Re:Deus Ex

[WWWWolf]

Heh. I got Deus Ex some time ago. Out of Some Experience with 3D Shooters, I automatically picked OpenGL and played through a few missions. Then I noted how wonky some things actually looked. I switched to Direct3D and noted that no, everyone is not wearing pink glasses and guns don't have targeting rectangles. =)

I wish Loki would have lived through the Deus Ex Linux port, maybe that would have meant some strategic fixes to the OpenGL side...

Re:Deus Ex

[mraymer]

Heh, yeah, the funny thing is last time I checked the Loki site was still up and said the Deus Ex port was coming soon. Hah... not likely.

It's just kind of frustrating that the Unreal engine favors 3dfx cards so much... had they used quake2/3 engine, that game would run insanely fast today. Like 200 FPS probably, heh. But as it is now my GeForce3 barely chugs along in the game, while my lost voodoo2 ran it perfectly.

At least DX2 should actaully perform better on my current system. That's funny.

Re:Deus Ex

[mraymer]

What sort of FPS rate does it get? Now it'd be really ironic if Wine would run it faster than D3D in Windows.

Re:NON GAMING USE ONLY

[Kyouryuu]

Indeed, and I think this is definitely worth pointing out. The license makes it clear that they are only licensing the free runtime of the engine for NON GAMING USES. I suppose their intent is to have it exist for simulations, walkthroughs and whatnot. But, it's really meaningless as far as fan game creation goes, sad to say.