Need UDK to mature to a Game Engine...

[NothAU]

I'm not suggesting the UDK doesn't get improved, infact earlier on in the thread I said I'd be all for a Project Manager.

It's been stated that it's not a necessity, no reason for a Developer vs Designer war to start up

[MasonThird]

I don't know how to say this, but I think current versions of UDK is more like a Mod Kit than a full fledged Game Engine. Because,

1. It has no Project Manager. We have to manually edit ini strings to get our things running. Which looks & feels more of a Mod Kit than a Professional Game Engine.

2. Why do we have a use UTGame Folder in our Games? If Epic is charging 25% for the released Games, it should make UDK to have more features of a Professional Game Engine than that of a Mod Kit for UT3.

etc etc..

There are a lot of features currently in UDK which dictates that we are using a Mod Kit. I & many of us here in the forums would like Epic to transform UDK into a more mature Game Engine in the coming days.

At least that's what i am looking forward to.

I believe that you should start playing with 3D Game Maker and FPS Creator...

[UnspoiledWalnut]

The GameCreators.com... full game development tools for ten year olds. What do you expect for fifty dollars? I've used some of their stuff that wasn't too bad given how cheap it is, the X-Quad editor is kinda fun to use.

[Solid Snake]

The problem is that writing a project management program that you'd probably only use once per project simply isn't worth the time effort involved for the benefit you get out of it.

In this case, having to alter the ini files is a trivial task for a human to do. Opening up an ini file, look for the appropriate variable line you need to alter and then adding the changes.

While an application can exist to do this task for you, the time it takes to write an application is probably going to be much more than you'd expect. Also the actual gain from it so minimal that there is little point.

About the UTGame directory; this is also another trivial matter. Borderlands has "WillowGame" and a few other Unreal based games often have "project nameGame". Does this actually matter at all? Do users even care? There is quite a bit of change involved with changing that directory name actually, and the changes involve a recompile of the engine. It may seem trivial to you, but like most things ... the devil is in the details.

What Epic doing now is more sane and beneficial to developers in that they are patching the engine for stability, usability and extending its feature set. After all, what would you rather have? A neat program you'd use only once to start up a new project or a new feature?

[Blade[UG]]

Comparing UDK to Unity is like comparing a Ferrari to a Focus. Sure, ok, maybe you can figure it out because you're not a programmer. Now, try to get a programmer to figure something out. Your favorite toolset was written on Macs, by Mac users, for Mac Users.

[UnspoiledWalnut]

Game design is not programming. Don't confuse game design with a production skill. Programming is just a means to it. In fact the less need to do it, the more non-programmer types (they are involved in game development) will be invited in, and the more diversity there will be in games that are made in the future.

There are, by the way, game designers who aren't programmers. They are researchers, mechanics and balance designers. I designed a pretty big serious game about disaster response and the programmers were just f*cking lost without me doing the subject-matter research with the client and writing the design doc so they (the programmers) could then interpret it in code.

But this evades the central issue, which is that fundamentally an application handles stuff like this. This is exactly what Unity does. It arranges this stuff in a front-end interface. Making a "point" that we "should" be able to handle this stuff is lack of attention to detail. It's making excuses.

That is possibly the stupidest, most close minded and narcissistic statement I have read on this forum. Including the ones I post.

So go use Unity, not an engine made for teams who are expected to have programmers. In as much I also imagine you would be ****ing lost without the programmers, since you seem so against the idea of editing an ini file. And no, programmers will ALWAYS be necessary, you can't write a program without programmers. Regardless of what you're using, you'll need them. Even if the entire engine, in the unfortunate case, is completely GUI with no option to program or script in events manually, you still need to make models which usually will use scripts and plugins, which a programmer will have to make, custom filetypes a lot of the time, a SDK if you're including mods, a programmer to work on the source if it needs to be changed which a lot of times it does, or else no one would ever buy an engine with the source, making an inhouse engine, codecs for video playback, and a lot of other things.

Why would Epic waste their time on developing something completely unnecessary because you CAN easily do it yourself, especially when they're making for the most part no money on it right now, when they can work more on stabilizing everything and other projects that they get 30+ grand contracts from?

[fdslk]

I've reading this for a while, and all I can think is that this guy is looking something similar to the Sandbox Editor in Crysis that is incredible easy to use in the UDK.

I agree with everybody, programming knowledge it's a top-notch.

[Anslem]

The problem is that writing a project management program that you'd probably only use once per project simply isn't worth the time effort involved for the benefit you get out of it.

A project manager is a standard function for any game engine, period.

You might not mind editing ini's and so on, but the fact remains is that it's simply not user friendly, and honestly, it's a little odd and nonsensical having to do it in the first place. If users can't even set up a blank project right off the bat without having to come here to find out how to do it well, that's a serious issue.

They'll add one soon, they're not idiots. This is a beta after all.

[Blade[UG]]

why would that be a standard function for any game engine, when you're generally dealing with exactly one game?

not saying that it shouldn't be improved. There's a guy named Nemesis around these forums that has something decent going, I hear.

[ambershee]

They'll add one soon, they're not idiots. This is a beta after all.

They've had more than a decade to add one to the Unreal Engine. I also can't name any other engine that has this by default, with the notable apparent exception of Unity? Nothing I've worked with has these sorts of setups.

[Blade[UG]]

Well, Unity comes from a Mac background, where things work differently, I guess (since I've never been able to figure out how to -use- a Mac to do anything .. likewise, I couldn't figure out how to make Unity do anything either, other than modding the example game that came with it.. much like vocal people here complain about a lot)

Unity basically stores each "game" in a seperate folder from each other, and allows you to switch back and forth between different games without closing the editor. It also has a "New Game" button somewhere in one of the menus, that creates a whole new folder and starts you from scratch.

You don't need a "front end", you don't need a menu, and when you hit "Build Game", you get a single EXE (or a single web-browser-plugin) that contains the entire thing.

[UnspoiledWalnut]

I got a Mac to turn on once.

[Blade[UG]]

I locked 30 Macs up at the same time once, by trying to use one in a network.

[Hboybowen]

Well if UDK was a true game engine it would be blank aka API and you would have to add everything they already gave you that you take for granted.I just think once a or some projects appear that competes on the AAA marketplace and isnt a small demo or test but a full blown title then its matured.But shouldnt be to long before that happens

[UnspoiledWalnut]

I have no idea what you're saying in that, it made no sense.