Sounds very tempting

Sounds extremely fair as most indies wouldn't mind paying 2.500$ to earn 12.500$.

And many people starting with game dev probably won't even make the 5000$ mark.

Now the question is just,
what is really required for
the worklow,
and does it have a good documentation

(plus, it probably sounds cooler
when gooing to a publisher, and say: I use the
Unreal engine, instead of: I use a 3D!GameStudio )

I'm downloading now. Unfortunately the SDK won't run on my laptop (first minus ) but I'll check this weekend whether I like it or not.

And depending ont hat I'll see which tool to take.

I did some testing with the Unreal engine a few months ago. The work-flow is ok, but you have to learn it. Some options are a bit hidden. The model import is not very fast. You have to import the mesh, create materials, apply materials. It is not an automatic process. UE3 handles shading very exactly. A completely smoothed model looks ugly in UE3. You have to carefully check hard edges and smoothing groups.
But if you do all this then you can create beautiful sceneries.

The level editor is not that different compared to WED. You can use cg brushes, booleans, automatic texturing. But you can also use static meshes with thousands of polygons and static shadows are still very good. The level and lighting compilers work fast and reliable. It is really fun if you once worked with WED.

I am not sure about scripting and programming. It looks like there is a graphical and a text based scripting language (object oriented approach). I did not find any hints about a C++ API.

I was shocked about the fact that there is everything included, AI and even SpeedTree. How can indie engines survive this?

But at Dexsoft we are really happy. A lot of new game developers can start this hobby now. Many modders will start commercial projects. It will be a great time.

Good.
Maybe you can offer Unreal-Adapted versions of your models then,
so you can quickly service the new UDK developers needs.

but weren't older versions of the unreal engine also free already for non-commercial use? i remember some free unreal engine 2 runtime which was quite popular in the mod community.

Weren't those releases tied to Unreal?
Don't know.

I remember downloading the UE2 runtime, but I think it was only intended for evaluation of the engine's abilities and it had a very limited set of features.

i don't think so. they were standalone engines without any game content. i think the unreal tournament 2003 engine also got offered this way.

so this isn't really anything new. just a lot more publicity now...


i think the engines had the full features. i am not sure if they came with editors but unrealed was available with some games anyway. they even offered very cheap (compared to the $350000 or whatever it normally costs) commercial licenses for successful indie projects.