Unreal Engine Development Kit Now Available To The Public

12 Comments Posted November 5, 2009 - By Jake Gaskill

Unreal Development Kit Launch Trailer »

Good news for all you budding game developers out there. Epic Games has made its acclaimed development software, Unreal Engine 3, available to the public free of charge. Epic’s engine has been used to power some of this generation’s biggest titles including Gears of War, BioShock, and Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect and many more. The only difference between the free Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and the one that professional developers use is the lack of access to the Unreal Engine 3 C++ source code.

Now, as long as you use the engine for noncommercial or educational purposes, the UDK is free to use, and you will not be required to fork over cash for a licensing fee. However, if you intend to use the software to create any kind of game, movie, demo, whatever, and then sell that creation, then you’ll have to throw down cash to do so. You can find out more about all the legal issues that come from using the UDK in commercial projects over at the UDK’s official site.

Anyone thinking about trying their hand at creating something with the UDK? Any programmers out there care to explain what the exclusion of C++ source code access means in terms of what people will be capable of creating with the free UDK?

Tags: PC Gaming, Tech, Videogames

Comments

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Displaying 1–12 of 12

jerewrig

The exclusion of the source code means that programmers can't mess with the things that the designers originally created. This doesn't mean you still can't use it to make kick ass products yourself, it just means that you have to play by their rules.

Posted: November 5, 2009 10:01 AM | Reply | Report

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Socalmic47

Hell. YES! Best engine ever.

Posted: November 5, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Report

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AwayFromKeyboard

Incoming hi-res nude models.

Posted: November 5, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Report

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JohnnyBuku

No source code means you can't recompile, which means you can't tweak effects, or behaviors or add new features to the existing code. This would actually be a blessing to amateurs since modifying the base code would make updating to new versions of the engine a major headache.

Posted: November 5, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Report

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Anthoni

Not having the C++ Source mean's you can't edit components such as which physics engine, Networking Engine, Rendering Engine, etc that the game engine uses.

Posted: November 5, 2009 10:53 AM | Reply | Report

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mortalhuman

Yes, I will download plz. :o

Posted: November 5, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Report

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Kimyumoto

Well my VG instructor at Westwood College is going crazy over this, which means we're gonna be doing some pretty cool projects in the once we figure out how to use it and I can't wait.

Posted: November 5, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Report

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rayken15

oh HELL yes!

Posted: November 5, 2009 11:09 AM | Reply | Report

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komradkyle

I've used the Unreal Editor 3 in class to make a level from scratch, so I'm interested to see what the entire engine is.

Posted: November 5, 2009 1:19 PM | Reply | Report

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1 Reply
cakefreak

nice! should probably tell my friends about this since their making a game right now.

Posted: November 5, 2009 2:13 PM | Reply | Report

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bigmonstefan

I'm sure Dennis Dyack is ecstatic. Yeah, I went there.

Posted: November 5, 2009 3:26 PM | Reply | Report

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SteveKB

well at least I'll be able to mess around with it

Posted: November 5, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Report

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