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[Triplefox]

The royalty fee is hard to swallow, and making content for UE3 that properly uses the engine's features is still going to be an expensive proposition. But this could be another good way to prototype. And it signals a shift in market structure to more aggressively target the "shoestring budget." A price war wouldn't be a bad thing...

[Farbs]

Oh I get it now. It's a free blank Unreal game and a rather nice license agreement. Initially I thought they were sharing source, which seemed a little crazy-go-nuts.

It's a shame they haven't configured this into a web player. I'd be tempted to make little freeware titles with it if each game didn't require a massive download.

[Chris Z]

The 25% in itself isn't too bad considering the toolset, features, and performance you get with UE.  As indie-friendly as Unity is I dont think they can compare there.  However, when you combine that 25% with the 33% or whatever Valve/D2D or another distributor would take off for themselves then you really have to think about it.

At first I thought this was a direct response to the Unity news, but unless Epic was hyper-fast in repackaging the engine for full public use, putting together all those marketing materials (trailers, websites, etc) then maybe it's just coincidence?  Or maybe they knew what Unity was planning somehow?  In any case, it's still awesome news for indies.  Maybe with this and Unity, the rest of you will start making and respecting more 3D games.  

[Don Andy]

I think it's a coincidence, but it's definitely a nice coincidence that might motivate others to follow the trend.

[Eclipse]

The 25% in itself isn't too bad considering the toolset, features, and performance you get with UE.  As indie-friendly as Unity is I dont think they can compare there.  However, when you combine that 25% with the 33% or whatever Valve/D2D or another distributor would take off for themselves then you really have to think about it.

At first I thought this was a direct response to the Unity news, but unless Epic was hyper-fast in repackaging the engine for full public use, putting together all those marketing materials (trailers, websites, etc) then maybe it's just coincidence?  Or maybe they knew what Unity was planning somehow?  In any case, it's still awesome news for indies.  Maybe with this and Unity, the rest of you will start making and respecting more 3D games.  

frankly i think that Epic doesn't give a shit about Unity


anyway, i tried this UDK and sadly it just allows to code in UnrealScript, this means that's great if you're an U3 modder and you already know all the tricks to make a "custom" game, if you're a proper coder... not much, you can't mess with the rendering pipeline, you just can't do things that are lower level than entities, lights and stuff like that.

So it's fascinating to see but not very useful for me

[Farbs]

You can do a lot in Unrealscript, though it's clearly easier to make an FPS. Also the material editor can do some quite amazing things if used creatively. It's not the same as having source, but it's still cool.

Anyone interested in machinima should check out the UE3 Matinee system.

It's a shame they didn't do this back in 2000 when I worked on the student game Mortifera (based on Unreal tech). It was pretty rough, but it would have been cool to have released it.

[___]

You can do a lot in Unrealscript, though it's clearly easier to make an FPS. Also the material editor can do some quite amazing things if used creatively. It's not the same as having source, but it's still cool.

Anyone interested in machinima should check out the UE3 Matinee system.

It's a shame they didn't do this back in 2000 when I worked on the student game Mortifera (based on Unreal tech). It was pretty rough, but it would have been cool to have released it.

Yeah they should've released Unreal 3 engine for free back in 2000, that would've been awesome.

[piyush86]

Unreal engine 3 is really powerful...too powerful for indie teams of few ppl or one to do something commercial with it....on the other hand Unity is aimed at small dev teams and simple graphics configurations (Intel GMA ranks high on their stats list)...IMHO games that can be played on simpler configurations will reach the masses more than hi-def awesome game...

[Mike Lee]

Unreal engine 3 is really powerful...too powerful for indie teams of few ppl or one to do something commercial with it....on the other hand Unity is aimed at small dev teams and simple graphics configurations (Intel GMA ranks high on their stats list)...IMHO games that can be played on simpler configurations will reach the masses more than hi-def awesome game...

That's generally my opinion also. This is great for people who need Unreal for academic research projects or want to learn the skills to join a big-name developer, but it's going to be hard for a indie team on a shoestring budget to assemble the high-fidelity content necessary for the Unreal engine.

[Farbs]

Yeah they should've released Unreal 3 engine for free back in 2000, that would've been awesome.

Quiet you.

[moi]

Yeah it's going to be difficult creating something that doesn't look like shit looks professional if you don't have an army of modellers/animators with you.
Even if you make a game that looks like Quake 2 technology, it will be a crazy work creating all the assets and textures and anims if you're alone.
Most modmakers rely on ressources provided by the game they're modding, imagine making a UT mod without all the assets present in the game (player models, anims, weapons, etc...)
That said, unrealed, unrealscript, the material editor, the network code, are all kind of awesome.(but be warned: network coding and all the replication stuff can become awfully complex)

[Jolli]

hmm cant find help on this thing...
ill try again later

[Kekskiller]

The GUI is driving me nuts. Any possibilities to use the engine with text files only? I guess not. What a person I must be.

[slimehunter]

I think it's a step in the right direction.
However, like some people already mentioned, 25% of lifetime sales is a lot.

Wasn't it something outrageous, though, like $250,000 for a professional UE3 license?
Looking at it that way, I'd rather have them take a 25% cut of my lifetime sales than paying $250k up front. Then again, I'm not a professional game studio wanting to license the UE3 engine.

Edit:

A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.

[Hideous]

It's a shame the editor for UE3 is so weird and complicated. If only it was more like Hammer.

EDIT: The level editor, I mean.

[Eclipse]

tried: it's a bit shitty, or better, is a sort of stand-alone modding tool.
as the documentation states coding in UnrealScript is 20x times slower than C++.

 "UnrealScript as a Gameplay-oriented language; you should write code that is designed to be idle when not reacting to any event; keep in mind that UnrealScript yields 20X the performance hit of C++"

Now, they allow to use only UnrealScript. And you can't code something designed to be idle when all the game relies on your scripted code imo.

Soooooo, having the editor and speedtree and shit is great but at 25% royalties and not having the possibility to use a proper programming language? no thank you...

Afaik it runs only on windows too.

[Kekskiller]

Now, they allow to use only UnrealScript. And you can't code something designed to be idle when all the game relies on your scripted code imo.

A reason to drop to it.

[Danmark]

Yeah I poked around the doco for a while and it seems you're tied to UnrealScript- if this wasn't the case I'd probably jump aboard. And the editor is pretty esoteric. From what I've seen so far Unity beats the living shit out of this, even if it wasn't used for every other massive budget game from the last few years.

[___]

Quick, someone port Unity to Unreal 3.

[moi]

tried: it's a bit shitty, or better, is a sort of stand-alone modding tool.
as the documentation states coding in UnrealScript is 20x times slower than C++.

 "UnrealScript as a Gameplay-oriented language; you should write code that is designed to be idle when not reacting to any event; keep in mind that UnrealScript yields 20X the performance hit of C++"

Now, they allow to use only UnrealScript. And you can't code something designed to be idle when all the game relies on your scripted code imo.

Soooooo, having the editor and speedtree and shit is great but at 25% royalties and not having the possibility to use a proper programming language? no thank you...

Afaik it runs only on windows too.

Yeah lookat all the crap games done with that shit engine! Nothing good, I'm back to using SDL!!!!!!!!111111

*All my posts must be read with the voice of PeeWee herman*