udk + educational licenses?

[Johnny5]

Recently asked at the uni I am attending why they were using torque rather than udk now that it is free and was told that it was due to them not being able to access the source code in the free version and they couldn't afford the hundreds of thousands of Dollars it would cost to purchase the full package where the source could be accessed. So the question I have are there any plans to license the full version to educational establishments at a lower price? This surely would have a couple of benefits for the devs? for one it would potentially give them some sales they otherwise wouldn't have? along with allowing more people to be trained with unreal technology, who when they enter the workplace would be more likely to lean towards working with the udk rather than some of it's competitors?

[Angel_Mapper]

You guys doing a lot of engine programming at uni? If it's just gameplay programming UnrealScript is all you need to make any game you want, and the UDK comes with all of the souce code for that.

[Johnny5]

Personally I'm only a first year student at the moment so I'm only just learning C#,C++ and some scripting with torque. but in the second years we move on to doing ogl programming, some network programming.....along with further scripting. But as i said above surely it's in the dev's interest to get to get people "Hooked"? and if they can catch them whilst they are learning would this not be a way of doing this?

[Sir. Polaris]

Lock your C# time into XNA and your C++ time into OOP practices and basic windows and text based functionality. You can sink your C++ teeth into DX/OpenGL later

UnrealScript is not a good place to start - learn your fundamentals before coming here

LUA and python I highly recommend if your looking into scripting.

UDK is really in my books and end game platform for getting mods to market and showcasing community level power in UDK. It's not a full featured engine (access wise) like OGRE.

Your institution unless it's looking to level design can take a pass on UDK until say 3rd year final projects. I would recommend UT3 for Level Design just because there is more free content.

[ambershee]

UDK isn't really all that useful for teaching games programming, since most of the important things are abstracted outwards and simplified. To be honest, I wouldn't teach using Torque either.

[GamerKnight]

very very good point Johnny5

it would help a lot of people out, and teach student real games development not all this scripting rubbish most unis teach

[ambershee]

working with Unreal's UDK is 'that scripting rubbish' most unis teach.

[elmuerte]

UDK isn't really all that useful for teaching games programming, since most of the important things are abstracted outwards and simplified. To be honest, I wouldn't teach using Torque either.

I don't agree.
UDK is quite well for teaching game programming, it comes with all required parts to create a game, and thus its quite easy kick off prototyping of game concepts.
UDK isn't quite well for game engine programming.

[ambershee]

It's only useful for programming game agents/actors and their associated behaviours. If that's all your school is teaching, then they're doing something very wrong. If you're teaching fundamentals, then chances are your students are still picking up programming languages, in which case UnrealScript has some awkward behaviours versus (the industry standard) C++ - and it's useless to know outside of Unreal. It's also unlikely you'd ever get a games programming position without anything other than Unrealscripting, because it's not a strongly desireable skill.

Most game actors and agent behaviours also often rely on manipulation of certain techniques (such as timers, states and lists), which are an example of something abstracted away from the programmer. In Unreal, they're too trivial compared to 'real-world' programming.

[Blades]

I really don't think Epic will open an Educational License beyond what is already available with the UDK. They are stern when it comes to their source code. In case you couldn't tell.

[Hibame]

My school is attempting to add the UDK to their system image that is distributed on the computers. The main problem they come against is that parts of the UDK require admin privileges to run.