Recently, Epic released their Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for iOS devices, giving most every developer access to one of the highest quality gaming engines around. What's more, if you're doing educational or non-commercial work, you can use it for absolutely free.
Too good to be true, right? Not so! You only have to pay if you're planning on selling your opus, and even then, the terms were pretty great: Epic charged an upfront fee of $99, plus royalties on any sales above $5,000. Now Epic has raised that to $50,000, which is pretty generous of them, and means that if your game doesn't do as well as you were hoping, you won't be saddled with a making-matters-worse bill.
Once you earn more than $50,000 with your title -- earnings in this context include "sales, services, training, advertisements, sponsorships, endorsements, memberships, subscription fees, rentals and pay-to-play" -- you pay a royalty of 25% of your earnings to Epic. That may seem a bit steep, but it's still a pretty good price for a world-class game engine that powers a noticeable chunk of the world's gaming. (The UDK can be used to create PC, Console and iOS games, and will soon support Android development.)
So what are you waiting for? Download the UDK and get building the next great iOS game!
Via Ars Technica]
Mr. Happypants
February 26, 2011 at 11:32am
From the FAQ on their site:
Q: What operating systems are compatible with UDK?
A: The development environment for UDK runs on Windows PC. It's currently possible to create executables for Windows PC and iOS.
There ya go, create on a Windows install, export to the desired platform. So run it through Parallels or Virtual Box, etc. on your bad mofo Mac.
mc4o1993
February 25, 2011 at 7:28pm
.Net?
hmmmm...
"Recently, Epic released their Unreal Development Kit (UDK) for iOS devices"
mac_daddy
February 25, 2011 at 6:09pm
What a great deal! For PC users... Anyone seeing any Mac support there?
nicvargus
February 25, 2011 at 7:15pm
Looks like it requires .Net framework, so there's no support unless you run that dreadful other OS on your compy. But still, that means better games for us Mac and iOS users, despite what they get developed on.
