Unreal Development Kit

The Unreal Development Kit (UDK) can be downloaded and used to make games using the Unreal Engine 3. However, there is a licensing fee if you release the games for profit which is supposed to be affordable even for independent developers.

November 5, 2009 - "Epic Games, Inc. announces the launch of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides community access to the award-winning toolset like never before. This software release is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Anyone can start working with the industry-leading Unreal Engine 3 toolset by downloading UDK at www.udk.com, where detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms, support resources and more are also available.

An unprecedented milestone in game development, the release of UDK awards free access to the same world-class tools and technology used by many of the world’s best video game developers and publishers. Unreal Engine 3 is a constantly evolving game engine, and UDK contains all the most recently added features and technological enhancements, including many that have yet to be seen in an Unreal Engine game. Furthermore, Epic Games will release ongoing, upgraded builds of UDK for free.

There is no charge for noncommercial or educational use of UDK. Over 100 academic campuses currently use Unreal Technology as part of teaching game development-related courses, and colleges with plans to incorporate UDK into their curricula include the University of Pennsylvania, North Carolina State University, The Art Institute system of schools, Drexel University, Westwood College, DeVry University and Atlantic College, with many others to be announced.

Individuals and companies wishing to develop software for commercial purposes should refer to licensing terms at www.udk.com/licensing. Commercial terms have been structured to make it easy for independent developers, start-up firms and seasoned professionals to use UDK with minimal financial barrier from concept to deployment. UDK is currently for PC use only, although console support is under consideration. Developers approved to make games for Xbox 360® and PLAYSTATION®3 may inquire for more information by emailing udklicensing@epicgames.com."

[Source: udk.com]

They even have a 74 page PDF document on how they created a simple game called Whizzle (vertical scrolling puzzle game) using only the UDK.

Review: Red Bull Soap Racer

A while back I got demoralized when I saw how Papervision3D slowed down when building complex scenes. After taking a look at this racing game, I realized that's any slowness I noticed previously in other games is due to unoptimized/inefficient use of Papervision3D.

The game is a cartoon-ish kart racer where you can fully customize your kart and then race with other friends online. Even race tracks can be customized too. While the game concept is not new, this may be the first time that it has been done using flash.

Our friends at Less Rain have set once again the benchmark for 3D games in Flash, using the powerful combination of Papervision3D and Box2D. Check out their blog for more info.

[Source: papervision3d.org]

FYI, they used Box2D for physics as Papervision3D does not include physics.


Another thing worth mentioning is that it is brought to us by Red Bull. This is what I call a good advertisement (and something that I will "watch" repeatedly).

Pretty pictures

When making a game, it is always nice to have inspiration to draw on.

One of my interests has always been space ships; and one good site that frequently have new concept art is Concept Ships.

Here's a few to show you what you can find there:

[Artist: Andrew Lee]


[Artist: Mike Doscher]


[Artist: Alfredo Dosztal]

Unity - Game Development Tool

Unity (or "Unity3D" as it was first known as). It is currently at version 2.5.

It is a multi-platform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars.

Besides publishing standalone games, it has its own web player add-in (the download is about 9 MB) for browsers and IPhone publishing (at an additional charge). Currently in two versions: Unity Indie (US$199) and Unity Pro (US$1499).

"Unity supports three scripting languages: JavaScript, C#, and a dialect of Python called Boo. All three are equally fast and interoperate. All three can use the underlying .NET libraries which support databases, regular expressions, XML, file access and networking.

Scripting is frequently thought of as limited and slow. But in Unity your scripts are compiled to native code and run nearly as fast as C++. You get the fast iteration times and ease of use everyone loves about scripting languages."

[Source: Unity3D.com]

That seems very believable after viewing their Tropical Paradise demo.

Also, according to some bloggers, it is apparently easy to convert a game written with Papervision3D (Actionscript) to Unity. Something which they mostly do so as to publish their games to the iPhone.

Something to comeback to once I made something with Flash.



Update:

Here are some reviews/comments on Unity:
DevMaster.net - Engine details of Unity
StackOverflow.com - What’s the best indie game development environment?

Using Actionscript for 3D

Recently, I have toying around with 3D in flash. There are several frameworks to produce 3D graphics (e.g. Papervision 3D, Sandy, Away3D, Yogurt3D, FIVe3D, etc) which you can use together with other frameworks for physics (Wow-Engine, JigLibFlash, box2dflash, APE), object distortion (AS3Dmod), augmented reality (FlarToolKit), etc.

When working, I quickly realized that using primitive shapes to build a 3D scene with ActionScript was only useful to a certain point. To supplement this, some allow the importing of COLLADA models, which is a standard that represents models with an XML file and an image used for texture mapping.

When searching for some models to use in my projects, I stumbled on Google's 3D Warehouse (a place that stores 3D models that people created) and SketchUp (a tool to create 3D models).


[Source: papervision2.com]

Hope you found that interesting.