Ever since the first Unreal Tournament was released back in 1999 Epic has helped shape the modern gaming community, especially when it comes to player made content and mods. Unreal Engine has become somewhat of a synonym for Customizable content. It has been and continues to be a powerful platform for making games, available to other developers for a fee. Their third iteration of this behemoth of a game engine is probably the most popular one yet, as we can see developers using it to create games from every genre. In fact their engine is so versatile that it’s being used for more then just games, it can provide you with fast way to create animated film, visual arts, simulation or training applications and more. Unfortunately up till now the price for a license to use the engine in commercial projects has been a bit too high for the average mod maker or small development team.
To give individuals and small developers a chance to create something with the Unreal Engine, Epic has now released a free version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). You’re free to use this for non-commercial use and if you decide you want to make some money out of your creation, Epic offers reasonable prices that even an individual developer can afford.
The UDK is a slightly updated version of the editor you get with Unreal Tournament 3. It comes with a few example maps from UT3 and a new Example map that demonstrates the tools available in the editor. I have personally worked on a mod for UT3 so I’ve spent my fair amount of time in the editor and I have to say it’s a lot fun to use. The biggest problem with it, as with pretty much all editors, is that it can be unstable and crash more often then not. Hopefully Epic has addressed many of these instabilities and bugs now that the editor is released as a standalone application. I’m sure time will tell.
You can grab UDK and find a ton of useful links over at UDK.com
Impen is a 24 year old student who spends his days avoiding work and pondering the meaning of life. He enjoys food, philosophy and "Married with children". He currently holds a minor crush on Joseph Campbell, the author. 