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First Person Shooters (Games) PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Mastering Unreal With Instruction Videos 40

Posted by simoniker from the next-course-on-mastering-prey dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a HomeLan Fed interview with Jason Busby of 3D Buzz, talking about the Mastering Unreal project, an Epic-backed service which releases free, downloadable videos teaching users how to create levels, vehicles, AI, and whole mods for Unreal Tournament 2K3. According to Busby, "Currently, we have 64 videos available for download.. the videos themselves range anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, depending on what is being covered and the amount of information that we must get across to the student." This project is running in conjunction with the Make Something Unreal mod competition we covered a few days ago, and seems like a very positive step to help people get creative and make cool new game mods/assets.
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Mastering Unreal With Instruction Videos More

Mastering Unreal With Instruction Videos

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  • 3DBuzz is great! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    He just recently put out a video series on modelling an entire low polygon character in Maya for use in UT2K3.

    Good stuff.

  • Awww crap... (Score:3, Funny)

    by spumoni_fettuccini ( 668603 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @12:30PM (#6223562) Journal
    You mean all this time I should have taped myself playing video games and sold them as instructional? 'course I would have had to edit out the swear words I suppose. #@%$* campers!!! %$#@$$ where did he come from?!?
  • These videos look promising. Are there any similar instructions for the basic UT, not UT2003?

    I go to a LAN party with a group of friends pretty much every weekend, and play UT, because not all the computers are strong enough to run UT2003. I'd like to try to make a mod/mutator. I'm not sure where to start, when learning about the UT API.

    Anyone have suggestions on a good site I can go to for basic UT modding information? Many UT sites I have seen assume a lot of prior knowledge, or have now became UT20

  • Tax write-off? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:19PM (#6224136)
    Can these be written off on your taxes as an educational expense?

  • THANKS! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by busbyj ( 682260 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:38PM (#6224339)
    Thanks, everyone, for the great comments! And a BIG thanks to Slashdot for posting this and helping to spread the word! We also have tons of other videos over such programs as Maya, 3ds max, MOTIONBUILDER, Houdini, Photoshop, and many more! Remember, the one belief that we rigorously stand behind is that all of this professional-quality education is FREE! BuZZ www.3dbuzz.com www.MasteringUnreal.com
    • Slashdotted, eh? :-) Or did you just notice /. existed? Or...no...

      If this is really you, man, do the rest of the world a favor and use something other than winrar to compress the vids, ok? Better yet, don't compress them.....divx is so compressed you're not saving enough to make it worth it.

      SB
      • Slashdotted? hhhmmmm... not on this end. The site has been running fine all day. Actually, traffic has not been much higher then normal. The only slashdotting we've experienced over the last week was the spot on national television and even then we only lost one server for just a couple of hours.

        Regarding winrar - I have no idea what you are talking about. Perhaps you should do some tests on your end. The training videos I create are not full motion video - this allows winrar to go in and make thin
        • Re the slashdotted comment, I was wondering if you'd noticed a sudden increase in your bandwidth usage :-) but I've noticed you are not slashdotted, which is a good thing. Those vids are great. Most of it I'm already familiar with, but I've learned some new stuff. Thanks :-)

          I commented on winrar mainly because it's not free. It does compress better than standard zip, but a lot of users will only be able to use the demo (as I am) because they are not willing to pay another chunk for another piece of soft
          • Ahhh - yea, I hate that winRAR is not free - that would be the best :) I'm just trying to save every penny I can. As far as bandwidth, it's really not been that much more than usual. Even with being on slashdot, bluesnews, shacknews, and planetunreal today... traffic has only been slightly elevated. Now, TechTV put a hurting on us ;) But we did survive. By the time next winter comes around, I should have about 300 hours of training available... and as always, it will be free :) I hope it can provide s
            • I don't blame you for saving pennies - that was why I don't like winrar.
              Keep it free or easily obtainable, when one can.

              As I mentioned in another post a few minutes ago, I have over 5 grand invested in software on a 900 dollar machine. It's ridiculous, and I try to avoid punting those costs on to other people. I'm glad you didn't take it like another reply to my parent post did. I admire you for that. Especially as busy as you must be at the moment. :)

              TechTV can really put a hurting on people :-) I wat
              • Awesome!! Thank you very much for the offer.

                I am sooo close to having the 3ds max 5 online course ready to go live (free of course!)... I'll be able to take a small breather the moment this is done!

                In regards to software - I hear ya! I've invested a pretty penny over my days... even spent $7,500 on Maya Complete before the price change just to do VTMs for people... so happy to see prices dropping :)

                Well... I guess I better get my butt back to work ;)

                Thanks again!

                BuZZ
      • Do the rest of the world a favor, eh?

        Of all of the narrow minded replies the world has ever known, this one must set some kind of record. First of all, you obviously don't know what WinRAR even IS, or you'd know that it DOES INDEED make a significant compression change, even with DivX. Perhaps not as much as other video formats, but the difference can be staggering when you're talking bandwidth. Get the facts, man. Busbyj already explained the math behind this one succinctly, so I won't repeat him.
        • You make good points, which I was already aware of. I was not inviting flamebait, nor trying to troll.

          However, winrar is NOT FREE. To those of us who can't afford to buy every little piece of software on the market, it's a significant cost.

          Lots of great levels for UT2003 have been created by people who could not afford to spend $30 here, $20 there on software to (for example) just to unzip a file. That was my point. Jebus, I have over $5000 in software on this machine....and the hardware cost me about 900

  • Confession (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Universal Nerd ( 579391 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @01:39PM (#6224349)
    I only buy games from community-friendly companies.

    Since buying software is my way of showing my pathetic and near-worthless support for companies I only dish out money to software houses that, IMHO, deserve a cent - Bioware and Maxis are my favorite game companies (Epic and Id are cool too, but mostly because of UT and Quake). I'll dish out money happily to buy the originals.

    Saying that, I'm gonna go buy a copy of UT 2k3 just because they're cool, they deserve my hard-earned cash.

    BTW, I know it's just "business" for them and that they're not trying to be cool for free, but confess, that's a pretty nice gesture from Epic, supporting the Mod community by increasing their proficiency.

  • Interesting to watch the changing dynamics... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Pvt_Waldo ( 459439 ) on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @02:07PM (#6224602)
    It's interesting to see the changing styles of game companies as they begin to view their community as a resource for continuing the viability of their games. Can you imagine a company creating a computer language and then making themselves the only source of applications written in this language? Possible, but pretty foolish in this day and age.

    Valve Software [valvesoftware.com] started it early on with Half-Life [sierra.com], creating and releasing editing tools, an SDK, and more importantly a real community [valve-erc.com] for the development of mods and conversions to their game Half-Life. Valve's been by far the most successfull company at leveraging this to their advantage. I dare say they would not be the same company at all if it were not for the popularity of Half-Life mods such as Counter Strike [counter-strike.net], Team Fortress Classic [sierra.com] and Day of Defeat [dayofdefeat.com].

    It's great to see other companies getting on the ball to continue this trend.

  • good guy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigbigbison ( 104532 ) * on Tuesday June 17, 2003 @02:32PM (#6224855) Homepage

    this guy was on techtv [techtv.com] a little while ago. He does tons of these videotaped tutorials all for free. If you don't have braodband he will burn a copy for you and mailit to you for free. An amazing ammount of work that he is doing all for free.

    • I can only concur. 3dbuzz.com is an amazing site and what Jason Busby does is pretty unique. I've been a member for over a year and got five CDs shipped all the way to Denmark. For free.

      If you're interested in 3D, his site (and the huge community built around it) is a good place to start.

  • good (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Flunitrazepam ( 664690 )
    After hearing how great the engine is for making mods, I really expected some kick-ass work to be out there by this point... I hope this jump-starts the process. Maybe if someone recoded CS using this engine we could finally get the vast gaming majority to convince their mom's to upgrade their computers beyond pentium 400's

  • The Future (Score:2, Offtopic)

    by Schezar ( 249629 )
    Some day, people will pay "Counterstrike 3" instructors the rates they pay golf instructors today, only adding kills instead of shaving strokes.

    We'll see video games on television alongside real sports.

    We'll see kids passing up college for professional gaming contracts with the big teams.

    Now, not any time soon, mind you ;^) But think about how much has changed in the gaming industry in the past 20 years. Imagine how much it will change in the next 80. Our grandkids will look at what we play today the
  • there's some courses that they have where you can sign up... but there's no mention to price... is it free?

    • Re:I dont get it (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yes. All are free. 100% free. Except for the Maya Technical Director course.
  • Too bad this isn't for UT. I played UT2k3 for an hour and was fed up with the poor feel. It felt more like playing on the Xbox. So far, I haven't seen any PC game that beats the feel of UT.

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