The Unreal Engine 3 was just released free by Epic games here, they are calling it the UDK. I just thought I'd let everyone know about this cause it's pretty awesome.  I'm just downloading it now and haven't even looked at it yet but what are some thoughts?

My first thought was to check the licensing.

This is a great engine if you only ever plan on making $5000 or less on your games as you wouldn't have to pay epic anything but when you exceed $5000 they want you to pay them a 25% royalty and then enter into a commercial license with them for 2500$ per seat per year (if i'm reading it correctly.)

It's a great opportunity to get to know the unreal engine but I wouldn't really consider it for Indie development (unless you have the cash and don't mind paying out the royalty fee)

I downloaded it and hope to play with that, Unity, and SunBurn soon. Too much awesome stuff to play with.

I do like that you can actually use this commercially as well, for a fee: http://www.udk.com/licensing.html. Looks like $99 up front and then 25% for all money after $5,000, which seems pretty fair for getting to use what is, as far as I can tell, Unreal Engine 3. I haven't fully been able to figure out the licensing, but I'm not worried about it now. Basic moral is that you can actually use this commercially for what seems like a fair price.

Fantasy Software:

... and then enter into a commercial license with them for 2500$ per seat per year (if i'm reading it correctly.)

That's only for internally released apps. Selling games is just 25% after $5K.

tdk08:

I'm just downloading it now and haven't even looked at it yet but what are some thoughts?

My thoughts are "...". I'm sure people will do nice things with it, but I have no interest.

Also, it's kind of a moot point here, as XNA is a small framework with API calls to access hardware with some nice extras on top, and the UDK is a complete engine. Not much to directly compare. UDK will be a great tool for some.

Why are people above me saying it's only great as long as you don't have to pay the royalties? It amazes me how cheap some posters here can be, and they want everything to be free or in their favor. Unreal is not running a charity, and it's a fair rate for using their state of the art engine and tools.

Cheap and Free are an indie developers friend as most people don't have the big bucks to spend on engines for a hobby or for starting a small studio (2-3 people) granted after 1 GOOD release they will have some money to spend on the tech then and I agree it is a decent rate for the engine as i've worked with it in the industry on a couple titles and it can produce some amazing games.

I personally don't see why most of this matters unless your doing straight up windows development as the UDK doesn't target the xbox platform (AFAIK) without actully stepping up to the full UE3 engine and a Developer agreement with microsoft and this is then beyond indie games and steps into the realm of Arcade titles or Retail disc games.

I do Agree that It is a great opertunity for indie developers to get thier hands on the tech that the big boys use and see what the tools are like and take them for a spin and yes maybe even create a next gen title with it and shop it around to some publishers/microsoft and maybe get a dev agreement.

Fantasy Software:

and yes maybe even create a next gen title with it and shop it around to some publishers/microsoft and maybe get a dev agreement.

Personally, I see this as one of the strongest advantages to having the UDK released for free. The other advantage I see is that wannabe game devs can muck around with the Unreal technology and add it to their resumes when trying to break into the industry.

25% really isn't that bad, considering what you get. Writing comparable technology on your own would take a long time.

Too bad that the Xbox 360 and PS/3 versions of the U3 engine aren't part of the UDK, though :-D

jwatte:

25% really isn't that bad, considering what you get. Writing comparable technology on your own would take a long time.

Too bad that the Xbox 360 and PS/3 versions of the U3 engine aren't part of the UDK, though :-D

Well it says to contact them for use on consoles. Does that necessarily mean that console development isn't part of it? Or that there's a separate licensing deal or something?

-Jeremy

J Force Games:

Well it says to contact them for use on consoles. Does that necessarily mean that console development isn't part of it? Or that there's a separate licensing deal or something?

It probably means contact them, and then they'll tell you.

dadoo Games:

J Force Games:

Well it says to contact them for use on consoles. Does that necessarily mean that console development isn't part of it? Or that there's a separate licensing deal or something?

It probably means contact them, and then they'll tell you.

I think the old phrase "If you have to ask..." may apply here. ;)

Interesting. I saw this on another forum too, with a similar reaction.

I have to wonder, with Unity and now this being completely FREE to use, and in some cases commercially as with Unreal, how will smaller game engines fare?

Regardless, I really need to invent a device that adds more hours to the day. At this rate I'll never have enough time to mess around with the deluge of AAA quality tech that keeps getting handed out like candy. :D

UberGeekGames:

Regardless, I really need to invent a device that adds more hours to the day.

Now THAT would be an application I would support on XBLIG, though don't forget to add a massage and screen saver function too - everyone knows you can't sell an app unless it has those.

See, if I take the "flashlight" concept and add the ability to change the colors based on music, and I only allow the genres "classical" and "new age," would it then be a "moodlight" application instead? And, more importantly, would it still be as useless as the flashlight?

Seriously, though -- the problem with U3 on Xbox is that there's no way you can currently deploy, ship or sell without an  agreement with Microsoft. Even if you had a finished game, you'd have to get them to tell you the time of day, and then you'd have to pay them to test your game, then you'd have to fix all the problems they find (repeat as needed), and then maybe you could ship. If they liked your idea enough to let you pay them, that is.

With Kismet scripting and the data driven tools and shaders, it would probably be possible to create an XNA-like "safe environment" within Unreal Engine 3. That would be pretty cool! If a lot of smart people decided to do the poor have-nots of game developers in the world a favor, and spent a lot of engineering, project and business cycles on it, that might happen. Oh, and I might win the lottery, too :-)

Will cheaper game engines go away? I don't think so. With something like C4 Engine, you get the source, which at times is worth a lot. Neither Unity nor Unreal lets you within a hundred yards of the source code while you're on the free license...

I'm honestly shocked at how good the licensing sounds, but I'm going to have to look at the papers a bit more.  Having worked for Epic in the past, some with the Unreal engine, I can't believe what an amazing opportunity this is.

The ZMan:

Now THAT would be an application I would support on XBLIG, though don't forget to add a massage and screen saver function too - everyone knows you can't sell an app unless it has those.

Well overloading the Xbox's CPU to create a localized ripple in the space time continuum won't be a problem (I mean, everyone did that right after Hello World, right?), but it would probably fail peer review due to overriding the trial time limit with non-linear passage of time. Then there's the temporal prime directive to worry about, which would necessitate more additions to the Evil Checklist... ;)

Back on topic: I wonder if there's any possibility of them ever porting it to XNA? UDK is built on unmanaged code, which would make it nearly impossible, isn't it?

UberGeekGames:

I wonder if there's any possibility of them ever porting it to XNA?

Name one good reason they would ever do that?

This is great news for mod teams that have spent years working on UT3 mods. It gives them the chance to reach a much wider audience (since you don't need to own UT3 then to run their game).

Very interesting. My complete lack of 3D modeling skills though makes my likelyhood of using this very unlikely. For Epic (I think someone here already said this), this is likely more about getting the tools into the hands of more people than making any profits. This would give them not only a larger pool of talent to draw on for their own employees but improve the mod community for their games too.

Nick Gravelyn:

I downloaded it and hope to play with that, Unity, and SunBurn soon. Too much awesome stuff to play with.

Ditto.

For those who asked, UDK is targeted for PC, only. If you have a game that you want to deploy to other platforms, you'll have to call them and do the usual talks for a commercial license for each platform/console (and for the PC is explained on the license page); and form there, the process follows as usual for "pro" titles: finding a (strong) publisher, being accepted as a dev for that platform/console (not for the PC), QA, etc..

I wonder how hard/easy would it be in export assets created in UDK for use in XNA. Anyone have any thoughts?

Not particularly easy really. This new UDK probably isn't much different than the mod SDK that mod developers use already so the level and model formats are well known and are made to work specifically with that engine. You'd be better off just sticking with a standard 3D modelling app like XSI or Max for creating your XNA game assets.

UberGeekGames:

I wonder if there's any possibility of them ever porting it to XNA?

The probability of that happening is "No ± Don't Hold Your Breath"

BShields:

UberGeekGames:

I wonder if there's any possibility of them ever porting it to XNA?

The probability of that happening is "No ± Don't Hold Your Breath"

I agree. There's no incentive for them to do so. They're already giving the community a metric ton of stuff for nothing.

Just wishful thinking on my part. :)

Over the weekend I tried it. This is some very, very cool tech. It's pretty easy to get a basic scene up and running, and the samples they include are just amazing in terms of them being a small example of what's possible with the engine.