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Unreal Development Kit - March Beta Available NOW

by Rainier on March 9, 2011 @ 10:07 a.m. PST

Epic Games launched the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3, providing the community access to the toolset like never before, and has now released an updated version, including iOS support.

UPDATE: Some missing functionality was discovered by the community, and id Software has now released an update/proper version.

Get the Unreal Development Kit March 2011 Beta off WP (1.2GB)

Extensive UDK technical documentation is available at the Unreal Developer Network, and community members can share ideas, show off projects and learn from UDK developers like Psyonix and The Prometheus Team.

3D Buzz will soon release dozens of free video tutorials specific to UDK to complement the company’s existing Unreal Engine 3 video training modules. Over 100 Unreal Technology videos are viewable at the 3D Buzz web site free of charge.

Individuals and companies wishing to develop software for commercial purposes should refer to licensing terms. Commercial terms have been structured to make it easy for independent developers, start-up firms and seasoned professionals to use UDK with minimal financial barrier from concept to deployment.

Are you working on something you want the world to see? Display your work in the Project Show-Off forums.

Don’t forget, you can now purchase a commercial UDK license over the web. It’s easy and secure.

Upgrade Notes

PhysX is now enabled for iOS development!

Rendering

  • There is a new Colorize post process.
  • You can now force depth of field.

The new Min Blur Amount post process setting can be used to force in-focus pixels to be blurred.

  • Various image reflection quality and performance improvements have been made.
  • Optimizations have been made to particle emitters, as well as memory improvements.

Mobile

  • PhysX is now supported on iOS.

Rigid body physics, fracturable meshes and ragdolls are among supported features.
Note: Cloth, fluids and soft bodies remain disabled on iOS for performance reasons.

  • Upgraded to iOS SDK 4.2
  • The latest version of UDK Remote supports ping functionality, so it knows when it is talking to a PC.
  • The latest version of UDK Remote's text entry box has been fixed on older versions of iOS.

Unreal Editor

  • UDK now has a mesh selection preview.
  • You can now highlight sections of a mesh simply by selecting the corresponding material property.
  • UDK now supports editor map favorites.
  • You can now star maps that you work with frequently and they'll persist in the editor's toolbar.
  • Move to End of Track has been added to Unreal Matinee.
  • The functionality of the individual translation and rotation track selections in the Matinee curve editor has been improved.

A box for selecting subgroups within the matinee curve editor was added.

  • The rotation widget now draws how many degrees have been rotated in the viewport.
  • Kismet undo is now able to undo shortcut key-inserted sequence actions.
  • An option to preserve degenerate triangles has been added to the FBX importer.
  • Various fixes were made to the FBX importer, including rotations in Matinee, LODs, lightmaps, tangents on movement curves and auto tangents on cameras.
  • When importing atop an existing object in an unloaded package, there will now be a confirmation screen instead of clobbering the existing object.
  • The AnimSet Searcher now searches all AnimSets that are currently loaded.
  • You can now double click on colors in the material editor to open a color picker.
  • The new Align to Floor editor lets you snap actors using their pivot point.
  • There is now a map check warning for combat volumes and triggers that aren’t referenced.
  • You can now re-order properties in the favorites panel.
  • A confirmation dialog is now displayed when baking instanced mesh paint data back to the mesh asset.
  • The group selection dialog now defaults to listing just the groups in the current package.
  • Properties for Location, Rotation and Scale3D are now displayed in real time in the property windows when objects are modified outside of them.
  • Ctrl-Shift-A can now be used to select all Kismet actions.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

  • Various improvements were made to Unreal Frontendincluding key bindings, map sorting and new cook/make buttons.
  • The Bink player has been upgraded to version 1.99a.
  • A new network profiling tool captures server information primarily for outgoing bandwidth as it relates to data transmission and network events.

The network profiler takes into account all actors types, RPCs and properties that are replicated during a data stream and then summarizes replication counts and sizes.

Included Content:

UDK ships with "UT Demo," which is demo content from "Unreal Tournament 3" consisting of four maps: Deck, Necropolis, Sanctuary, and Sandstorm; with deathmatch, team deathmatch, and vehicle capture the flag gametypes. Assets include one robot character, three weapons and four vehicles.

In "UT Demo," blood, gore and human opponents have been removed. Levels have been enhanced to showcase recent upgrades to UE3 technology. See udk.com/showcase-ut-game.html for comparison screenshots.

The "Unreal Tournament 3" Unreal Editor is widely used for learning UE3, and now UDK provides all of its game creation tools in addition to high-level engine features developed since the game?s release. "UT Demo" is an excellent starting point to explore UDK?s capabilities, especially for those looking to develop their own first-person shooter experience.

System requirements

Minimum:

  • Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
  • 2.0+ GHz processor
  • 2 GB system RAM
  • SM3-compatible video card
  • 3 GB Free hard drive space
Recommended for Content Development:
  • Windows Vista 64 SP2
  • 2.0+ GHz multi-core processor
  • 8 GB System RAM
  • NVIDIA 8000 series or higher graphics card
  • Plenty of HDD space
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