Epic released Unreal Engine 3, for free! Thread

Title fail. *Epic releaseS*. Sorry for that! I was so excited I didn't proof-read .

Develop-online.net

develop wrote: UE3-powered UDK is 'an unprecedented milestone in game development' studio says

Just a week after Unity announced its engine was now available for free to indie users Epic Games has revealed a free version of its popular Unreal Engine technology.

Called the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), it is a free edition of UE3 that allows community, modder and indie users more access to the engine's features and is available for all.

Epic said game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations plus digital filmmakers can all take advantage of the UDK for non-commercial use.

The UDK can be downloaded at www.udk.com, which also offers detailed product features, technical documentation, commercial licensing terms and support resources.

Basically, you can make standalone games, for non commercial use, using UE3!

Gogogogo!!!

Main news page maybe?

Edited by: M@ty

I just found out about this on the polygon forums, what a thing to see! I just cant wait to see the projects that are coming now, with Unity, UE3 and other great engines!

Indeed. Now that it's been announced, I can finally be cheeky and start getting a commercial development team going

check the EULA, it's only free for non-commercial purposes. They specify that if someone makes $$ off this in any way (even by using to in inhouse training videos that someone gets paid to make), you're a commercial license.

That would mean no "donate!" buttons on mod websites, selling CD/DVD's for cost, etc. If you opt for the cheap license ($99), when you don't want to pay you must stop using what you've made. That would be hard if you distributed it...

Edited by: TheHappyFriar

You can commercially develop without paying a penny until you distribute, after which you pay a heavy royalty.

Edited by: ambershee

after which you pay a heavy royalty.

$2500 a seat?

Edit: whups, that's just what I'd have to pay for my use.

Edited by: Cryrid

That's for closed distribution projects.

TheHappyFriar wrote: If you opt for the cheap license ($99)

99$? Really? Whats that get ya the license to? I assume you mean UE3 but that sounds way too cheap.

Edited by: NGS616

Here's the licensing

Royalty based license=$99!!

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. 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.

Basically, €5,000 and up, Epic take 25% royalties (but you dont pay the first €2,500 until you hit €15k).

... For $99, thats amazing. (Espcially when like me, you know the FULL license cost). It also blows Source's engine cost out the window.

The $2,500 license is for other things, Game developers don't need to worry about that. The UDK is FREE unless you sell your product.

Edited by: M@ty

Amazing! Engines going free are so cool

M@ty wrote: The $2,500 license is for other things, Game developers don't need to worry about that. The UDK is FREE unless you sell your product.

I would worry about anything written in fine print which can get yourself broke when somebody over at Epic coughs. Better than nothing but this license is rather catchy. I would not touch it even with a long stick.

I just posted the news: Moddb.com

This is great news. I've been working with UE3 for a little while now and was actually considering moving my projects over to Unity, because of the licensing and the capabilities of the engine. But now that this has happened i'm most likely going to stick with UE3; either way i want to do some stuff with Unity i'v been playing around with it and it blew my expectations away.

Edited by: NGS616

I don't really understand the difference to before. It's still free for modding and if you develop commercial products you pay EPIC. What's the news? - Okay, it's the vamped up, newest version of Unreal, but that's all the news, or anything else?

The news is, it costs you nothing to do the development with the most up to date engine version

ambershee wrote: The news is, it costs you nothing to do the development with the most up to date engine version

So if I felt like starting an Indie project now using the tool-set, and release it as a free project, I can do that now?
And if I make money off of that, I pay Epic.

Hopefully I'm reading this right?

That's about the short of it, yes.

ambershee wrote: That's about the short of it, yes.

I've been looking for a way to get involved with UE3 for quite some time.
Your going to see me on the UDK forums quite a bit. I already see you there.

Edited by: JustDaveIsFine

Hehe, I'm hanging around to see what contract opportunities may arise for someone with my particular expertise. Failing that, I'll deliberately boot a rapid-turnaround project for-profit.

Indeed, this has changed the game quite a bit, and when something like this happens usually it will force others (i.e. Crytek) to do the same. The winners in this situation are developers and PC gamers. The only people who might be a little disappointed with the news are the teams who chose to make their own engine / tools (i.e. NS2, Overgrowth). Because whilst having your own tools gives you absolute control (i.e. no licensing, no profit split, can re-licence to mod devs etc) is the time / risk worth it when you now have a proven engine available, with all the tools already built. Sure they may not operate as you like, but editing existing code is easier than working from scratch, especially when you consider what people expect of todays game engines. Now these devs which once had their engine as a competitive advantage no longer have that with many indies most likely now working with UE3.

I'd be interested to hear their response, can you justify building your own engine anymore? I guess if your game is a success you are MUCH MUCH better off with your own engine to do as you please, but the extra risk vs. everyone rapidly prototyping UE3 / Unity / etc etc games.

And to think we were going to offer engines as a MOTY prize, I'm not sure that is good enough anymore.

Well, you can justify it. At the end of the day - you still only have script level access. This means you're still as limited as you were when modding (well, a little more so). With that in mind, you may just find that what you want to achieve may still not be possible.

This is really an excellent news for the community, but I think that INtense! looks into wrong direction. Many devs who sell small-ish amount of copies prefer their own/free engine ( e.g. Cliffski: Kudos1&2, Democracy, Gratuitous Space Battles) and some ( I look at you again Cliffski) refuse to distribute trough digital distribution, because the service ( Steam, Impulse, D2D &c) will take their cut. Just to calculate the numbers: If you sell your game made on UE3 and you recieve more than $5000 and you distribute it through digital distribution (fair assumption I guess) - you'll pay a lot of money to Epic and DDService - in fact you'll probably pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30% of income to DDService and than 25% to epic which will leave you with 52.5% of your selling price - i.e. if you'll sell your game for $20 you'll get $10,5 and than you'll have to pay whatever taxes you're inclined to pay. No buying ferraries here children

MrTambourineMan wrote: No buying ferraries here children

Not unless you shift around fifty thousand copies xD

Now - another thing I ask myself. Does this not mean that people don't need to posess Unreal any more in order to play Unreal mods? Or will it be missing libraries or why wouldn't this download work for playing mods, too?

INtense! wrote: I'd be interested to hear their response, can you justify building your own engine anymore? I guess if your game is a success you are MUCH MUCH better off with your own engine to do as you please, but the extra risk vs. everyone rapidly prototyping UE3 / Unity / etc etc games.

- No source code access, only scripting access ( you're practically just modding )
- No Linux support ( UE3 Linux is a disaster, see Phoronix )
- License issues ( "not commercial" is a tricky beast and not as simple from a legal point of view as many want it to be )

First point is the biggest issue as hacking around limitations can be as time costly as making a proper solution by hand ( either modifying a free software engine or building one tailored for your needs ). I'm sure there are other points but the biggest issue for me would be the lack of certain features which I could only add using direct code access ( and even then it's difficult to modify highly optimized, foreign code ).