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Geek Culture / Unreal Engine 3 is now free to use!

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Jeku
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 18:17 Edited at: 5th Nov 2009 18:18
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http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2009/11/epic_offers_free_unreal_engine.html

This is kind of big news. You can now make a UE3 game and not pay a dime, as long as it's not commercial, and you do not need an Unreal powered game to use the engine. This is for complete, standalone games.

It should be great for the indie scene, and I can't wait to see what people do with it


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Sid Sinister
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 18:23 Edited at: 5th Nov 2009 18:25
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I guess I didn't look hard enough when I just created my thread. I'll transfer over what I said there to here.
Quote: "
Quote: "the license terms for this arrangement are $0 (zero) up-front, and a 0% royalty on you or your company's first $5,000 (US) in UDK related revenue, and a 25% royalty on UDK related revenue above $5,000 (US). UDK related revenue includes, but is not limited to, monies earned from: sales, services, training, advertisements, sponsorships, endorsements, memberships, subscription fees, rentals and pay-to-play.""


Not bad for indie developers!

There have been some AWESOME improvements and new features added to the engine as well in October. (Sorry, this forums poor linking ability doesn't allow this): http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitBuildUpgradeNotes.html#October%202009

Here are two good books on using the Unreal Engine 3 that I highly recommend:

Book 1

Book 2

Also, there are some really good video tutorials Epic put together that I was trained on. Hopefully this download link works, if not, google it for another source: (same thing here) http://www.syix.com/elmer/Unreal_Engine_3%20_Video_Tutorials.html

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Isaac Newton
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Jeku
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 18:37
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Quote: "I guess I didn't look hard enough when I just created my thread."


I only beat you by a minute or two, no damage done I'll lock the other thread.


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Benjamin
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 18:50
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This is pretty awesome. I experimented with UE 2.5 some time ago and I really liked how it works.
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 18:53
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Hahaha, I bet my college's finance committee is currently punching themselves for buying 35 copies of UT3 just eight months ago.

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puppyofkosh
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 18:54
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Sweet, all of these engines are being released for free at the same time.
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Sid Sinister
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 19:11
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Quote: "I only beat you by a minute or two, no damage done I'll lock the other thread."


Thanks

Quote: "This is pretty awesome. I experimented with UE 2.5 some time ago and I really liked how it works. "


Kismet is awesome. If you haven't had the privileged to use it yet, it will rock your world. At least it did for me.

Quote: "my college's finance committee is currently punching themselves for buying 35 copies of UT3 just eight months ago."


Lol, exactly. I just emailed me old professor about this and told them to stop!

Be warned though guys, if you're looking to make anything other than a deathmatch, it's going to be difficult. Seriously, I'm speaking from 10 weeks of experience here. You'll have to dig down into the code to really tweak it for anything else. Even Kismet is geared towards deathmatch. If you'd like me to go into more detail on what I was doing and what I found out, just ask. It's a bit of typing.

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Sasuke
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 20:42
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I once tried to make a mod for Unreal Tournament called Arena Shift. The idea being every so often or the user defined time the arena would shift about adding a new layer to the custom map I had to make so this was possible. Think of a multi level building, when it shifts random parts of the map move up and down levels or even spin around etc... I thought it would be funny to watch people going for there favourite gun to find it's not there any more.

Oh yeah, this is pretty cool.

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Phaelax
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 21:23
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Oooo, when I saw this earlier, I thought it was the first Unreal engine. But the Unreal 3 engine? Oooooo, I think I should go learn C++ again.

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 21:27
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You don't need to. 99% of the engine is totally rewritable without knowing a line of C/++. There's an internal OOP implementation similar to C++ but a bit more abstracted relying on .uc scripts.

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Cash Curtis II
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:44
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Is there any disadvantage to this? This seems too good to be true.


Download the game!
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BearCDP
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:46
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Ooooh, does this mean we don't have to pay to play around with Wwise in Unreal 3 either? UnrealEd has its own audio system, but the latest news was the licensable engine offered integrated Wwise, amirite?

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:49 Edited at: 5th Nov 2009 23:50
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Quote: "Is there any disadvantage to this? This seems too good to be true."


Yes, extreme memory usage and loading times long enough to take a dump in. Especially on the 360, waiting for Mirror's Edge is like waiting for your beard to grow.

Quote: "licensable engine offered integrated Wwise"


It has just about everything licenced. I really don't think beyond their little scripting engine and a media manager they wrote anything.

Quote: "Nvidia PhysX[8]
OC3 Entertainment FaceFX[9]
RAD Game Tools' Bink Video
DivX, Inc.'s DivX
Quazal Technologies's Rendez-Vous and Spark [10]
Fonix Speech's VoiceIn and DecTalk [11]
Autodesk's Kynapse A.I. [12]
A.I. Implant for games[13]
IDV's SpeedTreeRT [14]
Pixel Mine Games's nFringe[15]
Autodesk's HumanIK[16]
Vivox's Precision Studio SDK[17] EAX 5.0
Digimask's Diskmask SDK
Geomerics's Enlighten [18]
Allegorithmic's ProFX [19]
PhaseSpace's Motion Capture [20]
IGN's GameSpy [21]
Umbra Software's Umbra, dPVS, sPVS.[22]
Illuminate Labs's Beast[23]
NaturalMotion's Morpheme[24]
Scaleform GFx[25] Flash UI and Video
MÄK Technologies's Game-Link[26]
Audiokinetic's Wwise – WaveWorks Interactive Sound Engine[27]"


~Wikipedia

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Jeku
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:51 Edited at: 5th Nov 2009 23:52
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The disadvantage is you can't make a commercial game with it, unless you pay royalties. They don't take royalties until your first $5k, but their share is 25%, which is quite a bit. I can see a lot of indies trying their luck with this, as there's nothing to lose.

EDIT:

Quote: "Especially on the 360, waiting for Mirror's Edge is like waiting for your beard to grow."


You blamed this "phenomenon" on OO programming in another thread. You clearly don't know what you're talking about

I've played simple UE3 games made by indies that didn't have long load times.


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RedneckRambo
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:51
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Oh no! I just started getting the hang of Unity. Oh well. Guess I'll start learning all over again lol.

Signature's are stupid.
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Jeku
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:53 Edited at: 5th Nov 2009 23:54
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Quote: "I really don't think beyond their little scripting engine and a media manager they wrote anything."


Are you really that clueless? I don't mean to be rude, but those statements make you look like a fool. UE3 was several years in development, over 5 if I remember correct. But since they barely wrote anything, according to you, you should give it a try and make a UE beater.


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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 5th Nov 2009 23:58 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:03
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They outsourced for AI, physics, FX, sound, skeletal animation, UI engine, speech, lightmapping, and in part core graphics. It's a nice engine. It's just that beyond a framework to plug everything in, some CSG commands and the scripting, what is there left? UT 2004 on the other hand was done completely in-house from physics to graphics to online matchmaking. I don't know what they spent five years doing. I really can't think of anything. I can't beat UT and I'm not saying it's a bad engine. It's a really good engine in a lot of ways. It's that it uses so many externally developed libraries for gameplay-centric functions that you can't count them on your fingers. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

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David R
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:06 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:10
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Quote: "They outsourced for AI, physics, FX, sound, skeletal animation, UI engine, speech, and in part graphics. It's a nice engine. It's just that beyond a framework to plug everything in, some CSG commands and the scripting, what is there left?"


Err... right. I think you might want to read up on how UT/UE works. Yes, at a fundamental level everything works like a plugin by the way it's designed, but using middleware is not just a case of dumping it in and hoping it works (also, you're conveniently ignoring rendering which is the real 'meat' of an engine like UE. They may be using a graphics API like DX or whatnot but that is not the end of the story)

Quite surprised to hear this kind of rubbish from a programmer... or at least, who I thought was a programmer

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ionstream
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:14
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Yeah seriously Nex.

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:17 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:19
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Quote: "or at least, who I thought was a programmer"


Not a serious programmer. I write junk in my spare time in C. I never took A-level math so there's little point in trying to get into the industry.

Quote: "you're conveniently ignoring rendering"


It takes some models, puts them through an outsourced skeletal animator, applies some materials (the material editor is nice, almost a slight evolution of what came before in UT2/Q3) and then chucks depth of field over it. It's not easy, it's not exactly groundbreaking either.

It's an engine I'm using every day at college so I can appreciate some of the nicer features. I suppose I should have included the pretty darn good automatic convex collision body generator.

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Jeku
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:19 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:22
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Quote: "(also, you're conveniently ignoring rendering which is the real 'meat' of an engine like UE. They may be using a graphics API like DX or whatnot but that is not the end of the story)"


Can't believe I missed that, but you're right. The rendering, which UE3 is known for, is not listed as a license. That's arguably where most of gaming's largest achievements and milestones are made


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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:19 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:21
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Quote: ". Especially on the 360, waiting for Mirror's Edge is like waiting for your beard to grow."


Oh good - I'm trying to grow some facial hair - it's not going well, but with those loading times I'm sure to have some no time!

Though this is cool - there's a lot of Unreal documentation available, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem to learn. Also, I like the new licenses - it definitely makes Unreal accessible to indies.

http://www.udk.com/licensing

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:21 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:21
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Yeah, I suppose it is very nice that they now provide the engine free. It should be good to see what the indie world can do with it.

Enough with the programming discussion... I know nothing about "real programming", we know that now, it's over.

Shadow Complex, I seem to remember, was made in it.

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Jeku
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:23 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:26
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Quote: "It's not easy, it's not exactly groundbreaking either."


I'm floored. Gears of War and UT3 were major leaps in graphics tech in 2006. I guess you're just jaded, and assume game technology writes itself.. in some way....

EDIT:

Quote: "Enough with the programming discussion... I know nothing about "real programming", we know that now, it's over."


No harm in that, just as much as I wouldn't step into an artist forum and argue about paintbrushes and canvases, either


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David R
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:27 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:32
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Quote: "I never took A-level math so there's little point in trying to get into the industry."


Think you've given up too easily - neither did I and I'm at Durham (UK) studying software engineering (I chose Durham because the SE degree is identical to CS except for the last year).

Get a decent personal statement together and relevant work experience, and you can barge yourself into some university A-level or no A-level

Granted uni is just one step toward the industry but it helps a lot

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:32 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 00:33
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Quote: "Think you've given up too easily"


Already two years into an unrelated course. I have no work experience, full stop. Think I don't want to work in SE anyway. You get a lot of abuse from idiots like me who just don't understand. I came from a BASIC background, couldn't understand why C software crashed so often (at the time) in comparison with no discernable error message...

Now I do.

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David R
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:34
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Sorry wasn't aware you were already at uni / further educ. - what course are you doing at the moment?

But seriously, anything is salvageable you just need to work out what you need to do

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:36
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It's an umbrella course for everything media based... games design, concept art, 3D modelling, interface design, web design, photography, graphic design, film editing, sound engineering. For people who don't have a clue what they want to do but know it's vaguely to do with computers and it isn't IT.

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YavinB
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:53
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Is it like click here to download? Or do i have to subscribe and pay?

If involves money I'm in. (only if it Benefits me)
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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 00:58
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I guess?

So annoyed now that I actually went out and bought it when all I use it for is to continue what I do at college.

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 01:04
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It's 'click here to download' - completely free. The only time you'll need to pay is if you want to sell anything you can either pay in royalties or take a single user license, which is priced fairly for low budget indies.

Downloads:

http://www.udk.com/download.html


I've downloaded and installed it - played with the test map - seems pretty awesome, I'm sure it shouldn't be too difficult to learn, my housemate last year was using Unreal 3 a lot as part of his course, he kept obsessing about it and show me some stuff he had done with it and he's an idiot, so I can imagine what we smart people can do - with a bit of guidance of course.

Though sadly, my laptop is having over-heating problems at the moment - I think it's just having trouble with the heat sync, but I'm not tech savvy. So Unreal has problems running after a while...then again so does Half Life 2 and most of my games. I might ask for a couple of books for Christmas and properly try it out.

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greenlig
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 01:05
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Lol @ Nex for the rendering stuff. Creating an engine like this is a mammoth task, and linking in all those plugins is more about compatibility and getting the best product out there integrated. The rendering pipeline would have taken a long time to do. Seeing low-level rendering code quite frequently has given me a real respect for graphics programmers. The amount of maths they cover is astounding.

As for the free release, it's pretty cool to see a lot of companies doing this. TGC have done a good thing by jumping on board with it. I wonder, where did this all start? First, we have Unity released, a week or so later, DBpro gets free, and now Unreal...fingers crossed that Porsche is next

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 07:20
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I almost had this licensed when it first came out, had the publisher but they backed out, I say backed out, what happens is they make an offer, you are busy in talks with other publishers, you want the best deal, right, you come back to accept the initial deal, as you have decided either, one, its the best deal, or two, no one else was prepared to stand up the development money required, only, guess what, the original publisher is now completely silent, dead to the world, well to you anyway.

For those that are ever in this boat, and are wondering why the silence, and not a, not for us, sorry we have changed our mind, its so if down the road you game develops into the sexiest guy at the prom, the prom queen will be ready to date you, its to cover themselves, so they are not seen as rejecting the project, and, leaving a door open, so they can sneak in, why fancy bumping into you, how I have missed you, why my lord, haven't you grown into a fine young gentlemen.

Anyway, just how much was that licensing deal back when the third installment of this engine first came out, why a whopping 1.25 million USD, for a couple of years after that game went no place Id tell people how much the license of that technology was, no one would ever believe me, well yes, infact it was priced at that. It seems laughable now that they could ever of had the front to ask that price with so many great engines available today.

By the way, on this new licensing deal, does it come with the ability to port to the other platforms that the engine did in the full license, or is this just for the PC?

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BearCDP
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 07:30 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 07:32
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I think it's PC-only. I'll bet they're making most of their money in console licensing.


@greenlig
Did you mean Torque? If not, what is this Porsche?

I wonder how GarageGames feels about this--weren't they advertising Torque3d as the "Unreal-quality engine for an Indie price"?

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Seppuku Arts
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 07:42
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According to the website:

Quote: "Will my UDK program run on Mac, iPhone, PS3 or Xbox 360?
As of right now, UDK is a Windows-only program. Please see our licensing page if you would like to discuss using UDK for cross-platform use."


So, Windows-only.

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 07:45
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Quote: "I wonder, where did this all start? First, we have Unity released, a week or so later, DBpro gets free, and now Unreal..."


There are a lot more than that coming out as free at the moment, many of them absolute must bees.

Quite the coincidence isn't it

conspiracy theorist, or coincidence theorist, which path do you lead or follow.
Its a great time to play with your selves. If only Rome had of had computers and the internet, so much so free to pleasure oneself with, those circuses was rather expensive you know, but at least plenty of bread was available in those times. as my Roman ancestors would say - panem et circenses.

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 07:46 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 07:51
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Quote: "So, Windows-only."

waste of time then for a serious indie, but still mod makers can get in on it and make a few bucks, and good for them, they deserve it.
But take note, the benevolent Carmack releases his engines under General Public License

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Benjamin
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 07:51 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 07:53
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Quote: "You don't need to. 99% of the engine is totally rewritable without knowing a line of C/++. There's an internal OOP implementation similar to C++ but a bit more abstracted relying on .uc scripts."


Yeah, UnrealScript is awesome. Check out the language reference for UE2 here. It's like a simplified object-oriented language and it works really well.

[edit] Wait, the UE3 language reference is now available here.
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greenlig
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 09:05
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@ BearCDP2 - I want a 911 GT2 for free

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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 09:19 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 09:21
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Quote: "waste of time then for a serious indie, but still mod makers can get in on it and make a few bucks, and good for them, they deserve it."


Why? I think this is kind of a stupid statement, to be perfectly honest. The Windows platform has about 92% (!) of the market share. Support in general is more work than it's worth -- the term "indie" should mean that you can make experimental gameplay because you're independent from a publisher. Not that you have to support Linux or OSX...

http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8


Anyway. Unreal 3 is great news! If nothing else, then for anyone who wants to get into the industry, as it's widely used and often something that's attractive to have in your resume.

I'd also speculate that Epic will launch their next generation of engine and that this heralds that engine. Stuff is usually not free when they can still make money from it.
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David R
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 09:27 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 09:28
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Quote: "Why? I think this is kind of a stupid statement, to be perfectly honest. The Windows platform has about 92% (!) of the market share"


It isn't a stupid statement. Fringe platforms account for a lot of users and hence a lot of potential buyers. For a small developer the more audience = more £££. Big publishers can get away with just focusing on Windows, but that 8% (which I'm fairly certain is now a lot bigger these days) is a lot of potential players. Why lose them by choosing platform-specific tech? (When you can expand your audience for free by just choosing the right tools and libraries)

It makes good business sense to be platform neutral

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 09:51
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To go with this deal and a publisher, wait for the flak when you say 25% goes to Epic, also publishers Ive spoken to didnt like games that went only to the PC market, they would really bang on about needing a console market for the game. So make of it what you will, I'm looking at it from experiance rather than some post on the net by some 'person' or 'agency' about market shares etc. This suits more online sales really, but the positives is the editor is fantastic, and you can draw on a lot of users to contract work to.

Blummin Pervert http://www.avantivitastudios.com/
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xplosys
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 15:33
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I could not get this to install in W7, even trying different compatibility modes. If anyone else has it figured out, please post.

I can always install in XP, but I'd rather just use the one OS whenever possible.

Brian.

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 15:49
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Quote: ""the license terms for this arrangement are $0 (zero) up-front, and a 0% royalty on you or your company's first $5,000 (US) in UDK related revenue, and a 25% royalty on UDK related revenue above $5,000 (US). UDK related revenue includes, but is not limited to, monies earned from: sales, services, training, advertisements, sponsorships, endorsements, memberships, subscription fees, rentals and pay-to-play."""


Also 25% of what, 25% of the gross of the sales, or 25% of what 'you' recieve.

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xplosys
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 15:54
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Quote: "monies earned from"


This seems to refer to gross reciepts and is normally the way it works. Otherwise, we could create enough expenses to show no profit for either of us.

Brian.

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 16:13
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If it was from what you recieve from the sales, ignoring any costs, so regardless, Epic want 25% of what you recieve, then you have to sell 33% more copies to break even, ie, example if you made 100 pound on your own, here you would need to sell to still make 100 pounds, 133 pounds, so if you think the engine can give you 33% extra in sales over other choices in engine, then its an advantage. If its total from the total gross of the sales, and an external publisher is involved, with costs for development plus the publisher taking a cut, just forget about it, you will end up oweing Epic money.

And yes I know Epic let you have the first 3k USD for free, the 100 quid is just an example.

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NeX the Fairly Fast Ferret
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 17:37
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But, remember, to licence a lot of the libraries and subengines would cost a lot, too. It's fairly good value for money without the interfacing and "renderer pipeline". (whatever that is)

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Air cooled, total cost £160
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BearCDP
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 17:56 Edited at: 6th Nov 2009 17:59
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@greenlig
Hell yeah! Me too!

Quote: "Why? I think this is kind of a stupid statement, to be perfectly honest. The Windows platform has about 92% (!) of the market share. Support in general is more work than it's worth -- the term "indie" should mean that you can make experimental gameplay because you're independent from a publisher. Not that you have to support Linux or OSX..."


It would make sense to me though that the demographic of people who pay money for indie games contains a slightly more even spread among the 3 OS's than the actual market share shows. A lot of Mac users are stereotypically into the whole hipster/underground & indie music thing, and thus would probably be more likely to pay for an Indie game to support the underdog developers. And, if you're supporting Windows and OS X, then chances are the tools you're using also support Linux, so you might as well include that user base.

Also, how much of that site's statistics are skewed by businesses that mass order from Dell?

--------------------

If Unreal licensed so many nice tools, would we need to pay licensing fees to anybody, like Audiokinetic, if we go with UDK?

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fallen one
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 18:21
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Quote: "But, remember, to licence a lot of the libraries and subengines would cost a lot, too"

I dont think you get all them in this version, see features here
http://www.udk.com/features.html
It doesnt mention the full list we have on page one of this thread. I think you have to license (pay) for them yourself.

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dark coder
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Posted: 6th Nov 2009 18:32
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Quote: "But, remember, to licence a lot of the libraries and subengines would cost a lot, too."


No. Read the EULA, it states the other terms and conditions for the middleware it uses has been woven into their licence and no where in that does it say you have to pay anything to make a commercial game.

Did Epic Games spit in your soup or something? You seem to be on a crusade to say anything and everything about how bad their software is, even though all of your points are totally wrong.

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