Epic releases Unreal Development Kit for UE3

whoa! that's pretty heavy. cant say i like their licensing, but might be fun to play with.

thanks, ben

They've got a new asset browser with tagging and collections. It's designed after Lightroom if you've ever used that. It's pretty nice. In the past 6 months they've made some pretty big improvements all over the board. Lightmass (new lighting system) is wonderful, I've been wanting them to do GI lightmaps for a long time. Source always had great lighting. The major advantage to Unreal is the tools. Source has some pretty nice stuff, but I always hated having to compile my map into a playable state and couldn't preview my lighting until I compiled and ran the game. Also, I love the material editor. It's node based so you'll feel at home. For every visual component of a game there is a decent (if not pretty damn nice IMO) tool for artists to get the job done. The final major advantage (for aspiring developers anyway) is UE3's market saturation. There's high demand for good UE3 developers.

I can't comment much on the programmers side, I've heard many complaints, but from the same people I've also heard a lot of praise. In UDK's case, you only get script access so complaints may be justified. But with a license, you get native anyway so it doesn't seem too bad.

Nice looking game Ben

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any good 'getting started' tuts you know of, ben?

Here's a page on how UE3's BSP brushes work.

https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UsingBspBrushes

This is one area where source is better. Where in Source and Quake you immediately have geometry when you create a brush, in Unreal you have a builder brush. This is not geometry but potential geometry. You can than use it to create Additive and Subtractive primitives. The subtracting part is nice which is absent in other engines. The downside to it all is that when you want to update a brush that's been added you have to rebuild geometry. When you right click on a surface you'll get a context menu with lots of options for adding Actors (Entities) such as lights.

Also you should know that by default the perspective view is in Lit mode so because you have no lights it will be pitch black and you wont see your geometry unless you go into Unlit (Full Bright) mode. On the top of the perspective viewport click the white cube (there are a bunch of others there that represent different view modes). Once you've added a light you can go back to Lit. This is where Source died for me I think, I just can't stand not seeing my level in the same form that the player sees it in game, and the comic represent it well. For the best starter lighting, I would look into adding a SkyLight and a DirectionalLight. You'll find them in the Actor Class browser (it's a tab in the Content Browser). For GI lighting, you'll need to rebuild the lighting, unbuilt lighting will give a good approximation of redius and color, but GI of course will look wonderful.

Here're some good places for tutorials/reference:

http://www.hourences.com/book/tutorialsindex.htm

Hourences is an old school LD, been around for a long time, has written a few books too.

https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKContentCreationHome

This is a great reference directly from Epic, in many cases it might not be as friendly as Hourences' tutorials, but should have just about everything covored.

If you've got any more questions, let me know! It has it's quirks which can be frustrating, I'd like to help if you run into anything that kills it.

heh... all i get on that first link is an apache login window. so, i guess you have to be registered. maybe later

the hourence one works, though, but the last one also just gives an apache login

nonetheless, thanks ben

nope, those both require the apache login, too. no sweat. i probably wont get to most of this anyways for a year i'm kind of backed up on studies right now. but again, thanks

Oh man I'm an idiot, I forgot to make it http rather than https. Here are the first 2 again.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UsingBspBrushes

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UDKContentCreationHome

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Id be interested to know how good you are ben Let me see those screenies.

lol, well I wish I could post screens of my current project but I can't

What team are you on if your restricted from showing work? I assume you have a moddb page? I WANNA KNOW!

Holy crap, you aint indie 0,o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBiqynBtq1M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x9EVeFDYDM

These are two of my first maps ever made. At the time I made them there was a lack of understanding. That is to say the editor was foreign to me, and I wouldent look into optimization. I assume you know the editor has no draws to keep the player from loading usless textures, that is the easiest thing to do when making a map, even then I wasnt using it. Thats my first two weeks of work, im much better now, but I still have that map =D.

pretty cool, cystic. you made those with the Unreal development kit?

The dark gallery isnt as dark as it looks =S. Its hard to explain. It's a CSS map, that offers night vision, after you use night-vision for 1-2 rounds it never seems dark. However the orignal intent for the level was to offer players cover via shadows and conventional game tactics. Its entertaining to run down a hallway that seems surprisingly empty and then all the shadows light up with gunfire and "mow" down teamates. Plus there are a lot of creepy portraits =S.

Sorry Krae, didnt see you there, its using the source engine in hammer, I tested it with CSS, because I find the game to be stable, however I wish I could find an animator to make my own mod =S