Epic releases free stand-alone U3 engine and tools

[Scott Roberts]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/free-version-of-unreal-engine-3-r...

http://www.udk.com/

[Kieran Nelson]

In other news, www.unity3d.com also a free dev kit! I'm getting both atm, will update with progress! If UDK is anything like the unreal ed we're all in for a treat! Never used Unity but looks good, especially for iphone apps.

[Kalakian]

Hmmm, wonder if Daniel and John can stand in for my lectures for the next month or so :P

[Thee Forsaken One]

I did some research on Unity3D for a job interview. It's nothing like a real game engine. It's more for web and phone games.

[John Sutherland]

Yes, Derek. I can do a great line in my all-time favourite language, Algol:

// the main program (this is a comment)

BEGIN
FILE F (KIND=REMOTE);
EBCDIC ARRAY E [0:11];
REPLACE E BY "HELLO WORLD!";
WHILE TRUE DO
BEGIN
WRITE (F, *, E);
END;
END.

[John Sutherland]

I'd be nit-picky with the use of the word 'real'. In games, as in many fields, there is a 'was', and 'is' and a 'will be'. For example, with MS and Apple going tablet the future may be hand-held, open source, cloud and high-bandwidth streaming. Mebbe ...

Get hold of a copy of the movie Tron and see when everyone thought arcade boxes were the future. I'm not saying C++ and £45 AAA title games are *not* the future. Its more that nobody really knows what the future will be. Keep an open mind.

Thee Forsaken One said:

I did some research on Unity3D for a job interview. It's nothing like a real game engine. It's more for web and phone games.

[Daniel Livingstone]

And MMOs ;-)

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25378

As it happens I know that one of our alumni has been working on a project using Unity for the past few months - and he seems impressed by the rapid development of online multi-user environments that is possible.

Thee Forsaken One said:

I did some research on Unity3D for a job interview. It's nothing like a real game engine. It's more for web and phone games.

As for the Unreal announcement - its a pain in timing. A couple of months earlier, and we could have had the SDK installed in both game labs and saved a load of hassle with buying copies and working round the CD-Key authentication... :-(

I'll see if we can get the Unreal SDK installed in E113d - then we'll be able to compare modding with Unreal 3 (E113c) vs using the SDK (E113d)

[Thee Forsaken One]

It's more its lack of flexibility. Also it only uses scripting rather than actual native code. Web games wise I really think it has amazing potential and is far superior to Flash although sadly I don't see it overtaking simply because of the lack of exposure as compared to Flash. Offline I think C++ and AAA are still going to dominate. Whether Unreal continues to be the dominant middleware is another matter...

[Thee Forsaken One]

I meant to add (Since editing isn't working for me) that as far as I'm aware Unity doesn't support native code although I could be wrong. It is good for iPhone apps though, although you could argue whether they're actually making any reasonable dent in the handheld market (Despite what Steve Jobs says).

Although I'm definitely getting this Unreal 3 engine. That'll look fantastic in my portfolio... once I have job to support myself so I can actually work on it. > <</body>

[Ross Forshaw]

Unity3D supports 3 languages: JavaScript, C#, Boo( python derivative ). Which compiles down to native code. Using the Mono( Open Source .NET ) also makes it cross-platform.

[Thee Forsaken One]

Ah yeah I remember now. > < I've been working a little with python recently. It's quite a nice language. Looking at Lua as well.

[Peter Bloomfield]

If you're used to C-style languages then Lua is quite a weird transition. I imagine experience with Python would help though.

[Thee Forsaken One]

Yeah. Going through the Lua demos that come with the SDK were... interesting.