Topic: Unreal Development Kit released, free for non-commercial use

[idolminds]

Thats...wow.

Free for non commercial use, and obviously they will have the option to license your game if you wish to sell it. But this means modders and indie devs can make stand along games with Unreal Engine 3.

This is HUGE.

EDIT
Figured I'd add links in here for Whizzle and The Ball. Two playable demos made with UDK, the first appears to be original and The Ball is a port of the UT3 mod that anyone can just download and play without needing UT3 itself.

[MysterD]

Awesome.

[gpw11]

Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pumped about this.

[idolminds]

Also something to mention, the actual UDK download contains a sort of "new demo" for UT3. Four levels, three weapons, four vehicles and one robot character. Its supposed to look even better than the actual UT3 game since this engine has been updated with new lighting and such that was never added to UT3 itself. Plus it gives a starting point for people to mod the engine, so thats nice.

I would love to see The Haunted become a standalone game with this. That mod is fun as hell.

[MysterD]

I really can't wait to see what non-commercial games wind-up created because of the public free release of this engine.

[idolminds]

Or even commercial. I've been reading around and it appears that its completely free for non-commercial. If you do sell it, then you can make up to $5,000 before you have to pay Epic anything. After $5,000 Epic charges a 25% royalty rate on your profits. Which is steep until you figure you got to use a top tier engine without paying the massive up front licensing fee of several hundred thousand dollars.

[Ghandi]

This is an awesome move by Epic. I'm impressed. And I can't wait to see what comes of it.

[Quemaqua]

Very cool indeed.  Epic gets points for this in my book.  And they've lost a lot of points lately, so that's a good thing.

[idolminds]

Prometheus demo released

Another UT3 mod port, Prometheus is all about time travel. Sort of. Its like a puzzle game where you need to get to certain places to make things happen, then rewind and do it all again. The trick is you need to use your past selves to solve puzzles, or more accurately, as you play you need to plan what your future self is going to need you to do.

Every time you rewind and restart, the game creates another clone of you. All your previous clones replay themselves and make all the same moves you did when they were created. So for example you start out and find a locked door and a switch to stand on, but getting off the switch causes the door to slam shut before you can walk through. So you go over and stand on the switch for a few seconds holding it open. Rewind and now your past self is holding the door open for you to continue.

[Quemaqua]

That sounds pretty sweet.

[idolminds]

In more awesome news, The Haunted will be going standalone!

The Haunted v3 will mark the last big release as UT3 mod before we port it to UDK. The goal of this Pre-Release is to get a last bunch of feedback and bug reports, before we submit the finished v3 build to Epic next friday for the MSUC Grand Finals.

[Quemaqua]

Weee!

[Xessive]

Sexy.

[MysterD]

Scaleform middleware is being added to even the free-version of UDK.

[Xessive]

That fantastic news especially for the indie-games and mod community!

Think of Scaleform as vector graphics elements for 3D objects. So no more UI elements that don't scale well on higher resolutions.

[Cobra951]

Did you mean 2D objects?  3D (as in what we're used to) is already vector graphics by default.

[Xessive]

Did you mean 2D objects?  3D (as in what we're used to) is already vector graphics by default.

Oh yeah  know, but Scaleform allows 2D vector graphics to places on 3D objects and in 3D-affected UI elements. So, I guess it's pseudo-3D, technically.

Mirror's Edge was one game that put Scaleform to some very interesting use. I believe Splinter Cell Conviction also uses it for the objectives and memories being shed on the environment instead of directly being on the HUD.