Hey everyone,

I figured I would pass on the word in case it wasn't posted here yet.  Epic has released the UDK to the public for free.  You can create complete stand-alone games with it, so players do not need to go buy Unreal to play your homebrew creation.

I think this would be a great environment for people to create various proof of concept demos for MMORPG ideas.  Even if you don't have the time/resources to build an entire MMO yourself, you may be able to express your unique ideas through a tech demo.  This could help the whole MMO genre advance, and who knows, maybe even land you a job at some game company.

Enjoy!   http://www.udk.com/index.html

 Thanks for the info!

I'd call that good news, yes.

The more cheap (or free) tools available to developers, the more viable small niche games will be.

I always thought it would be interesting to try to mimic Star Wars Galaxy's crafting system, complete with variable stat resources if for no other reason than learning how such systems work in games.

Originally posted by MMO_Doubter

I'd call that good news, yes.

The more cheap (or free) tools available to developers, the more viable small niche games will be.

I agree, and I really like that it is targeted for PC games.  I wanted to mess around with Microsoft's game dev tools, but I have no interest in developing for or testing on the 360.

 Its funny that it took them all this time to come out with it for free. anyways...FINALY!!!!

Isn't this why Vanguard was a buggy piece of junk?

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Isn't this why Vanguard was a buggy piece of junk?

How is it the fault of a proven game engine such as Unreal 3, that the developers of Vanguard sucked?  You are aware that the Unreal Engine has been a rock solid environment for a myriad of successful games, right?

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Isn't this why Vanguard was a buggy piece of junk?

 

How is it the fault of a proven game engine such as Unreal 3, that the developers of Vanguard sucked?  You are aware that the Unreal Engine has been a rock solid environment for a myriad of successful games, right?

But what about successful MMORPGs?

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Isn't this why Vanguard was a buggy piece of junk?

 

How is it the fault of a proven game engine such as Unreal 3, that the developers of Vanguard sucked?  You are aware that the Unreal Engine has been a rock solid environment for a myriad of successful games, right?

 

But what about successful MMORPGs?

MMOs are not games then? It's not the fault of the engine that the game had problems, it's the poor coding and design. The engine just does what it's told, and if it is told bad programming, it'll spit out a bad game.

Originally posted by Czargio

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Isn't this why Vanguard was a buggy piece of junk?

 

How is it the fault of a proven game engine such as Unreal 3, that the developers of Vanguard sucked?  You are aware that the Unreal Engine has been a rock solid environment for a myriad of successful games, right?

 

But what about successful MMORPGs?

MMOs are not games then? It's not the fault of the engine that the game had problems, it's the poor coding and design. The engine just does what it's told, and if it is told bad programming, it'll spit out a bad game.

I think it's good for an FPS, not so good for an MMORPG, until I see otherwise.

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Originally posted by MindTrigger

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

Isn't this why Vanguard was a buggy piece of junk?

 

How is it the fault of a proven game engine such as Unreal 3, that the developers of Vanguard sucked?  You are aware that the Unreal Engine has been a rock solid environment for a myriad of successful games, right?

 

But what about successful MMORPGs?

Games that are crap are released as crap, Knowingly released as crap and therfor are crap. It doesn't matter what engine is placed inside of a game that will change it from non crap to pretty crap.

Originally posted by aleos

 Its funny that it took them all this time to come out with it for free. anyways...FINALY!!!!

When you are selling licenses for the engine at 350,000 dollars each... There is a pretty damn good reason it took so long before they starting giving it away for free. :P

Originally posted by Rallycart

Originally posted by aleos

 Its funny that it took them all this time to come out with it for free. anyways...FINALY!!!!

 

When you are selling licenses for the engine at 350,000 dollars each... There is a pretty damn good reason it took so long before they starting giving it away for free. :P

valid statement. 

Kudos Epic, been waiting on this for quite some time.

Extremely glad to see it has finally been released, now to get down to business!

Originally posted by Ihmotepp

I think it's good for an FPS, not so good for an MMORPG, until I see otherwise.

Please do a cursory glance at least of games that used this technology. Assassins Creed, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect, Mirror's Edge, The Last Remnant, Mortal Combat vs DC Universe, and even two other MMOs Global Agenda and DC Universe Online. 

Doesn't have to be just for an FPS.

APB as well.

If your interested in 360 games though i reccomend learning to use XNA but be warned you must have programming knowledge to make a decent game it uses C#. However XNA community is big so there are plenty of resources to get you started.

Also the unreal engine is extremly versatile and i very chuffed that they released it completely free now.

That's pretty cool. Wish I could make some use out of it. Even if I downloaded that, I wouldn't know where to start.

Yeah, so I wrote a pretty long post here. But the forums ate it. I'm getting pretty sick of that. :-/ This is the worst forum design I've ever seen. What's wrong with some vBulletin?

Anyway, good find.