Unreal Dev Kit free for non-commercial use.

#1 If your game is a smash hit, it is tremendously expensive compared to some options. If your goal is to just make games for fun and build a portfolio, considering the popularity of Unreal in many studios, it is a great opportunity to show your talent.

#2 wow, how'd they get a three-letter domain ?

#3 @Jason

That's if you just use the UDK and take the license as is.

#4 Well there is one thing you can do is go and build your game till its finished on UDK. If you think your game is real real good go to a invester that likes your game then buy the engine and release your game. If its a game that you think is not very good then just release it with UDK.

I will stay here at torque though as i don't care if my game is good or bad i don't like big money huggers getting the money.

#5 If you want to get into a real good discussion about this topic, I invite you to join us in our IRC channel.

Server: irc.maxgaming.net/GarageGames
Channel: #GarageGames

I'm mperry in the channel, and I'm more than willing to talk to you about this matter.

@Jeremy - You and I can even have a private discussion if you desire.

#6 This must upset all the developers who paid 350 000 to use this software. I can't believe this just happened.

#7 Don't be melodramatic. You're not getting the full C++ source code, console rights, support, etc. This is very similar to what you get when you buy UT3 - it's just more explicitly targeted for game creators vs. modders.

However, it is great PR on Epic's part!

#8 The skakeup on this should be very interesting. It even includes SpeedTree and FaceFX as part of the package. The royalties are a bit of a hit, but considering it doesn't kick in till $5000 it has a low barrier of entry.

#9 The $2500 annual license is for internal application development and usage (the example of a warehouse is used on the licensing page). It is $2500 per developer seat per year for internal use.

From the licensing page, it is unclear exactly what the $99 is since it notes that you can create a commercial game for up to $5000 with zero up-front cost and then royalties from there. I probably missed it, though.

#10 I don't get the "$99 royalty-bearing" either. Might be a mistake from the webmonkey. The big wall of text explains it more in detail, though. Sell for a million, pay a quarter million in royalties. It's light on information about support, too.

#11 As far as I know, content providers like steam and XBLA like to take 25-30%. So with the royalties you may only get 45% of the total price.

#12 Nod, sorry redid my post after I read the $2500 and what it applied to (still a bit of a mystery if you aren't making money on it, but I guess the thought is it is somehow related). Was more surprised SpeedTree was included than anything else. Going to be very hard to get it out of the EDU sector now as that was probably the core target.

#13 Has anyone looked into whether there is something in the agreement that allows them rights to your first born and your game-IP ? They are not the easiest company to deal with from what I have read over the years..."vampire lawyers" comes to mind.

#14 I think more than for Indie Developers, this is really a boon for UT/GOW Mod Makers, like "The Ball" already is using UDK. Guys who are already working on Unreal based stuff, but never would have been able to afford to release their game as anything more than a Mod (and don't have the programming know-how to port it to something else), it benefits them. Since Mod makers are the ones who use Scripting in the Unreal Engine exclusively anyway.

#15 I read some posts on unitys forum they think that all these companys are following them. I think they are following UDK bet they got some insider news about them releasing UDK so they tryed to get there engines on the free market befor UDK release.

#16 I think this is brilliant and will really give a lot of options to people. So many people already use the Unreal engine for modding and now they'll easy be able to create games and sell them.

Also there is a lot of content creation already for Unreal. And the modeling format etc is very good.

This is an interesting option indeed. Especially when you look at the list of features that seriously are lacking in other engines that are open to indie development such as AI etc.

It's just amazing! I'm very excited and going to have to look in to using UDK over T3D, just because of the feature set that UDK provides!

%25 royalties isn't too much of a concern to me. It's only when I release the game and if I make over $5,000 so I'd be happy. With the features you get, it's a little to pay.

#17 Once that navmesh project finish up around here there should be some decent AI options stemming from that. Wouldn't hurt to look at including that down the line at the next for cost upgrade though as having some built in AI into the core engine would be nice.

The move to using deferred lighting is looking pretty nice now though as that is one of the major features that T3D has that other engines beyond Crytek does not.

#18 T3D needs to release the AI options, and include them in the engine price, period. Too many engines have some of that critical portion included already. With the varied platform support T3D has, it will remain competitive.
With too many basic features being sold as add-ons, it's losing it's initial value.

Adding features that are becoming expected in any professional 3D engine in this price range, and then charging for them is not really a good way to go.

From a product perspective, feature addition within 1 year of the purchase is usually free, from a normal software industry standard.

UDK is feature fantastic and includes all the things you'd want.
It also is very limited on the HW and platforms it can run on ( I tested many and it failed to run on many)...so there's a trade off, but also a big Head's-Up to you guys at GG, for what this engine should evolve to...

#19 AI is a pretty per-game related functionality. Unreal, like Quake/CoD are fairly genre specfic (shooters - though I believe UT3 has been used non-FPS games - though I don't know what).

Problem with having any sort of indepth stock AI is that it's unlikely to meet the needs of a wide range of gaming genre. It'd probably be the first thing I'd rip out (though of course there is now the Empty starting project which is nice).

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@Joshua below -- cos I'm having posting problems

Quote:graphical tool to plot out some AI features would be nice

Does the GMK have something a bit like that?

#20 Having some kind of graphical tool to plot out some AI features would be nice even if it was just to dump it back into a .cs file. Navmesh is really going to help a lot and getting some basic tools in place to easily allow individuals to work on basic AI and then move deeper into it from there via script would be a good start. It will also be interesting to watch the race between the comanies moving up to DX11 as well. Either way, should be good for us consumers as the compitition should drive development even further. Poor developers, going to feel like the weeks before the T3D release forever :-(.