Standalone, downloadable "Unreal Developement Kit" that contains all the engine tools and 3 example demos. Everything needed to make a standalone game for non-commercial distribution.

http://www.udk.com/

http://www.moddb.com/engines/unreal-eng ... -to-indies

I know where I'll be going if id decides not to release the source code.

This is truly great news.

Now if only all the games that run on the Unreal 3 engine wouldn't crash at random moments on all of the machines that I've tried those games on. That would be really cool.

If you're looking for an alternative, Unity engine also now has a free development kit...

http://unity3d.com/

double check the license: it's not for indies/non-profit PROJECTS, it's for non-pay projects. IE I can't make a game & sell it, I can't make a game & give it away if I was paid to do it.

Basically, it's UE3 for modding but with a little bit more restrictions. vs if you bought a copy of Unreal 3.

EDIT: Unity 3D went free a few days ago too. There's a pay version too. Also the UDK has some really cheap license options too ($99 for yearly royalties but when you want to stop paying royalties you must eliminate use of the product, $2500 for royalties & no need to stop distributing)

Unity 3D's only two restrictions are: if you (or your organization) make $100k+ a year you need a pay license, you need to include the splash screen. Besides that it's free for non-commercial & commercial use w/o payment.

rich_is_bored wrote:

f you're looking for an alternative, Unity engine also now has a free development kit...

http://unity3d.com/

Thanks. I can't actually code though

I just enjoy being able to make my levels standalone, with 100% custom content. Abandoning id modding would be a matter of principal though, because Carmack pretty much promised the engine would be open source at some point.

I'm waiting for someone to start an open source project after (if?) the source code is released, like openarena, or failing that, just a simple standalone map viewer. The Dark Mod or Hexen would be great if they could go standalone.

@Friar: Yeah, but you can still make a game in your spare time with a team over the internet and distribute it for free, or at least thats how I interpreted it?

whitewolf wrote:

The Dark Mod or Hexen would be great if they could go standalone.

Considering we use nothing of the original Doom 3 assets we are closely watching a source code release. If the source is released then we would certainly invest time in trying to port all of the assets to a standalone version. This all depends on the GPL and EULA though.

Don't you still use some limited stuff like the skeleton model and the doomguy hands to hold the weapons?

whitewolf wrote:

Don't you still use some limited stuff like the skeleton model and the doomguy hands to hold the weapons?

No. In fact we have added all original DECL files in our build, but emptied them. This means no assets are available to us.

whitewolf wrote:

Thanks. I can't actually code though

the free unity doesn't need code. Looks a lot like Torque's TGE engine. I've been looking @ unity since I saw it was free, pretty neat!

Quote:

@Friar: Yeah, but you can still make a game in your spare time with a team over the internet and distribute it for free, or at least thats how I interpreted it?

That's what it looks like, but the license looks more limited then a mod license. IE it looks like you can get $$ for any reason, if you do you need the other license. I'd assume that includes "donations", being paid by someone to make a mod (like how Splash Damage got started), etc. So the $$ you make can't be directly related to that engine use.

BloodRayne wrote:

Considering we use nothing of the original Doom 3 assets we are closely watching a source code release. If the source is released then we would certainly invest time in trying to port all of the assets to a standalone version. This all depends on the GPL and EULA though.

If it's under GPL it shouldn't be an issue. Unless, of course, it's like doom 1/2's release & certain code isn't included.

Out of curiosity, what's stopping you guys from releasing your Hexen mod (or the Dark mod guys) under Darkplaces Quake 1, Q2's upgraded engine (forget the name but it's mentioned here) or Q3A's X-Real? Those engine mods seem to make them pretty compatible with D3 assets.

I don't know what user license you read, but the one I read stated that if a team wanted to create a commercial game from the start of their work, no license fee or downpayment is required. You only have to pay 25% of your earnings after the first $5k and a $99.99 royalty fee after you release.

From the UDK licensing page:

Quote:

A team creates a game with UDK that they intend to sell. After six months of development, they release the game through digital distribution and they earn €15,000 in the first calendar quarter after release. Their use of UDK during development requires no fee. Upon release they would pay US $99.99 for a Royalty Bearing license. After earning €15,000, they would be required to pay Epic €2,500 (€0 on the first €5,000 in revenue, and €2,500 on the next €10,000 in revenue). On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.

The Happy Friar wrote:

Out of curiosity, what's stopping you guys from releasing your Hexen mod (or the Dark mod guys) under Darkplaces Quake 1, Q2's upgraded engine (forget the name but it's mentioned here) or Q3A's X-Real?

The mindbogglingly huge amount of work.

But that sort of prospect becomes practical if the source ends up not getting released.

all this depending on the source, seriously what could ID lose if they do release it as open source?

Quote:

seriously what could ID lose if they do release it as open source?

You are mistaken. id software no longer owns anything and as such have no right to release anything. They need to convince Zenimax to do that.

idTech...who?

Seriously, this is huge news. As much as I like idTech3 and 4, with JC mentioning before that they will not be putting in as much effort in making Rage as "mod friendly" as previous titles, and some companies talking about dropping mod-ability completely for future games so that they can sell Downloadable Content, this is a really smart move on Epic's part.

Of course, they've been golden ever since they decided to seriously pursue the engine licensing part of the business, but this move proves that they like their position as king of the hill, and want to keep it that way. Bad news for their competitors, but awesome news for, well, just about everyone else.

I downloaded the UDK and enjoy it. I will likely drop idtech and goto UE3 unless xreal can implement physics soon.

Hmmm I heard it was said in the UDK that you could sell your game by contacting them, they won't charge you anything for the first 10,000$ something like that? and 25% of your profit after, but believe nothing of what I just said. Its purely a rumor, I never verified the actual thing yet.

Edit : Ohh I didnt notice that Deadite4 mentionned it over here too.

But yeah... it's unreal.... this engine is so annoying. Everything has been made to be "user-friendly" but this is so god damn slow to implement new stuff when I compare it with the id Engines. Hell, almost everything can be added in matter of second within notepad.

I will eventually need to force myself and learn it tough..... after Im finish with my small little projects on Id Tech 4...... unless Id Tech 5 arrive until then ! I doubt I will be able to resist studying this new engine instead of learning that unreal engine filled with texture streaming issues.

Probably the best thing about UE3 is how easy it is for artists/level designers to prototype their own things. Our lead artist is ridiculously good with kismet and the material editor and can get a rough concept prototype done for a completely new game in just a weekend.

Deadite4 wrote:

Quote:

seriously what could ID lose if they do release it as open source?

You are mistaken. id software no longer owns anything and as such have no right to release anything. They need to convince Zenimax to do that.

Fair Enough. But who will do the convincing if no one convinces the convincer?

ShaZe wrote:

Hmmm I heard it was said in the UDK that you could sell your game by contacting them, they won't charge you anything for the first 10,000$ something like that? and 25% of your profit after, but believe nothing of what I just said. Its purely a rumor, I never verified the actual thing yet.

Edit : Ohh I didnt notice that Deadite4 mentionned it over here too.

But yeah... it's unreal.... this engine is so annoying. Everything has been made to be "user-friendly" but this is so god damn slow to implement new stuff when I compare it with the id Engines. Hell, almost everything can be added in matter of second within notepad.

I will eventually need to force myself and learn it tough..... after Im finish with my small little projects on Id Tech 4...... unless Id Tech 5 arrive until then ! I doubt I will be able to resist studying this new engine instead of learning that unreal engine filled with texture streaming issues.

Yes, you can sell your created standalone games. It's just a 99$ payment and NO royalties for the first 5000$ in revenue from your game. Sounds like a great deal. I'm considering switching to UE3.5 modding now. :mrgreen:

There is a small chance this could convince zenimax more. They really have nothing to loose now because the competition's newer engine is now out in the wild.

how the UDK is setup with an example game assets is how I hoped doom3 source would be released. But id's modding support is poop compared to epic, valve, crytec, or bioware.

any doom3 modder should really think hard before jumping the shark on this one.

Pros of UDK: Larger community, new tech, more documentation, more help, more support, ability to sell or create a stand alone game now.

Cons: You will have to pay the man if you plan to go commercial. After this console cycle, the engine will look outdated. If you have dollar signs in your head looking at it, you have to create something which will be finished in less than 2-3 years.

Pros of Doom3: You've been working with this game for years, you already know your way around it. If it goes open source, there will be no royalty payments. You'll also have access to upgrade the visuals and physics more than udk.

Cons: Theres no garuntee it will go gpl. Smaller community. If it goes gpl, you'll have more work on your hands upgrading the visuals.

Like BloodRayne said, porting your current big time mod to another engine so late in development is a huge task and suicidal to the project. If I were to start a new project now which could finished or prototyped in a year, then I'd go udk. Otherwise I'm sticking with doom3.

rich_is_bored wrote:

But that sort of prospect becomes practical if the source ends up not getting released.

No it really doesn't. There's just too many issues. We've tried a jump to Q4 midway project and were stalled heavily due to incompatibilities even between such similar engines. E.g. we had to redo all of our particles and material definitions. That alone is months of work. In the end we had to throw out nearly 4 months of work because we couldn't continue the work on the Q4 engine (lack of coders and dedicated people back then).

Here's my 2 cents for any modder: Choose an engine, define your mod, stick with it and most of all don't fret over the fact that it will become 'old' or the tech will be outdated, trust in your own capability to create a great game. And trust in the fact that people will like your game regardless of whether the latest tech has been used. The first thing we 'modders' should start learning is that we are not competing with the game industry. We have our own little niche that they simply won't be able to touch. That's what makes us Indy: We do not have time constraints or other worries like that. Our engines don't need to be the latest and greatest. The modding community for HL2 is still at large, not because source is such a great engine with great visuals.....that also counts for older games like 'Rune' which is still played to day, and Doom1 etc..etc..

People won't download your mods for the graphic goodies (unless you made a gfx goodies mod), if they wanted graphic goodies they'd buy the latest games from Epic and ID. People who download your mod will download your mod because they are interested in it and the niche that you have to offer that the industry can't.

Hmmm this UDK does not have source code included. Next...

People keep confusing a toolset with a sourcecode while stressing their profound knowledge on anything software, corporate policies, fortune telling, mergers and acquisition, palm reading, evolution or the universally bible proven lack thereof...

Can D3W please sort of switch back to discuss which graphics card is better and interpretation of white papers dealing with the implementation of interesting features.

It's a waste of time watching others wasting their time.

BNA! wrote:

People keep confusing a toolset with a sourcecode while stressing their profound knowledge on anything software, corporate policies, fortune telling, mergers and acquisition, palm reading, evolution or the universally bible proven lack thereof...

Can D3W please sort of switch back to discuss which graphics card is better and interpretation of white papers dealing with the implementation of interesting features.

It's a waste of time watching others wasting their time.

Chill bro. UDK = unreal developing kit sounds like software developing kit. Seriously, I'd rather stay with a working game, src code and assets [CE2] than a god knows what release useless hype machine.

Hostyle wrote:

Hmmm this UDK does not have source code included. Next...

It includes the .uc files, it's the gameplay code. It's not in standard C/C++ it's all unreal script.

D3 (idtech4) vs ETQW (idtech4) vs FFOW (UE3) | netcode | Server Coverage

I just thought I would share my experience with setting up servers for each game taking playercount and maximum distance from the server (located in London) before gameplay starts to become laggy/jerky/unplayable.

Doom 3 (idtech4) | Maximum Player Slots=4

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (idtech4) | Maximum Player Slots=24

Frontlines: Fuel of War (UE3) | Maximum Player Slots=64

As you see at the graphics .. FFOW still is playable even at pings 400+ ms enabling basically anyone to connect from anywhere experiencing a smooth gameplay with a total of 64 players indicating a superior netcode.

i never had any problems playing on your D3 servers hosted in London. Or was it Germany? Either way, it wasn't any worse for me then servers on the east coast USA.

So I downloaded it today, played the ut3 demo, opened the editor. Most here have probably played a UE3 game, but for the 1% that havn't: my thoughts on the engine so far.

Visually, it just looks better than Doom 3, that being mostly due to the increased poly/texture budget and postprocess effects. That said, there are still a number of advantages doom 3 enjoys over UE3 imho.

Specularity: doom 3 just looks better in this department. The specularity in the ue3 demo is very faint, on the weapons especially. The result is that the proper visual cues for 3 dimensionality are not given, and they end up looking flat. Doom 3 just does that metallic sheen better, and for that reason I think the weapons have the potential to look better in doom 3.

Contrast: Doom 3 has a specific high contrast style that owes much to the stencil shadows. Once again, the geometry in UE3 all seems to meld together. There is far less contrast between the areas in shadow and out of shadow. All shadows are more diffuse, and being primarily lightmap based, the shadows for small, fine geometry are just not there. This is a style thing, really, but in reality, everything casts a shadow, no matter how small. I just find myself thinking, "why is that pipe not casting a shadow?"

Realtime shadows: Where are they? When a rocket explodes, the light really should caste shadows from the surrounding geometry. The fact that a dark area wont even light up when a rocket explodes there is unacceptable. Also, some stuff just needs to be realtime, like a weapon rotating in mid air. Doom 3 wins hands down in this department, obviously. Maybe its just my settings though, which brings me to the next point:

I can't access any video options! I dont know if they did this on purpose for the (crippled?) UDK version of the demo, but its just_not_there. I had to dig through config files to enable fps, change resolution etc. Maybe I'm missing something really obvious.

Hostyle wrote:

Chill bro.

You're not my brother.

BNA! wrote:

Hostyle wrote:

Chill bro.

You're not my brother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5uzJVkeaUI

Jack Rammsdell wrote:

BNA! wrote:

Hostyle wrote:

Chill bro.

You're not my brother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5uzJVkeaUI

And yeah, this is some GREAT news!