I really like the fact that the engine is free for many non-commercial purposes.

I think the indie game scene in particular, which often releases their titles for free, can benefit tremendously from having these tools available.

Yeah no kidding. I believe the UE3 engine costs somewhere around $350k to license. In the past, I don't think you could get non-commercial access to mess around with. That said, this is pretty huge for indie developers.

I grew up playing UT99, UT2k*... UT3 was a tragedy on the PC but nevertheless, Unreal Tournament was the reason I got into my first startup. We licensed our tech to Quake Live but yeah... there's a reason we died, Oracle is too expensive for game developers given all the other costs associated to development.

Why did you use Oracle in the first place?

You're asking the wrong person. I was the creative/mkting director... but also, the startup began in 2005 and died in late 2007-ish. AFAIK, there were not very many scalable solutions for a gaming platform when we first started. But again, I'm not the right person to ask about this. :)

That is new to me, where does it say that?

All the info is on their Licensing page: http://udk.com/licensing.html

As long as you're not using a UDK app to generate revenue, it's free.

And don't worry about the bit saying "[you'll need to buy a commercial license to] distribute an application you've created using UDK", it was cleared up by Epic shortly after: http://www.shacknews.com/laryn.x?id=21329409#itemanchor_2132...

Ha ha. I'm in the middle of a class where we make an environment for UT3. Everyone gripes and complains about how limited we are, because we're only using the level/script editor that comes bundled in with the game, and that you need the super expensive license in order to make anything that deviates too much from the third/first person shooter formula.

This changes a lot of things. I know there will be a lot more interesting output from my school now that Unity3D and the UDK are free.

This has no C++ support, it's the same SDK you get buying UT3 plus the ability to make a standalone binary that doesn't require UT3 installed.

I'm a little confused by this... so the Unreal Engine 3 (included in the UDK)... isn't the same as what's being distributed to the big-time game development studios?

I haven't played at all with UE3, but if it's anything like UE2 you get a tremendous amount of power with UScript alone. C++ access would be nice, but you're not too severely restricted by not having it.

Oh. Dang.

This is probably the first time in six years that I wished I had a Windows machine or image laying around.

IIRC Unreal (the game) does work on Linux. Too bad UDK doesn't seem to work on Linux. OTOH I do have a dual boot machine with Win XP (though I haven't booted into windows in years now).....

unreal the original has a linux port I think, but this udk is for unreal 3, which I don't think does.

From what I know, Ryan (icculus) Gordon is still working on it. But that might be my memory mixing that up with another game that took ages and I was not remotely interested in.

Make sure you get your updates!

Did UnrealEd ever work on Linux? Or just the game?

UnrealEd 3 is based on wxWindows and is theoretically portable to linux and MacOSX. When I was working there a few years back, however, it wasn't actively compiled on any platform other than Windows.

Anyone know if Blender works with UDK beyond static meshes? I don't have any modelling package and the pro ones seem to cost around $3K. Thats alot of money for just messing around.

It does. You need a certain Python script to get Blender to export *.ase meshes: http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tools_utilities.htm#ase

Thank you. One more question from complete Blender ignorance - can you create models with animation in Blender and still export to .ase or only static meshes?

For animated models you need the psk/psa exporter, on the same page:

   http://www.katsbits.com/htm/tools_utilities.htm#unreal

This is amazing. Sure, it's not a lib access SDK like you'd get with full license, but with UScript and engine behind it you can do A LOT - and leveraging on devteam from Epic for 25% of royalties after initial 5000$ are made is a great deal.

No source? I'll try it out anyway, but if I don't have the ability to plug in my awesome new untested rendering techniques I doubt I will do anything with it at all... id Tech 3 still looks better from that perspective.

Wow the world just changed today. You can have the best 3d engine on the market with no upfront costs ;) Interesting startup possiblities

For certain values of "best", yes. It's completely unsuited for many game types, but what it does it does really well.

Yay for playing The Ball without owning UT3!

As well as Whizzle, including source code and developer notes...this is quite a throwdown against Valve. Should get interesting!

This is likely a response to the recent announcement that Unity3D is now free to download and use for individuals as well as companies that make less than 100K per year.

video for "Whizzle" and "UT Demo" aren't playing for me on linux (but "UT demo" and "" videos do work).

I think we'll see a lot of casual games with amazing graphics.

BTW: their commercial licensing for redistribution is great: $99 + 25% after the first $5,000