How flexible is UDK?

[VZdemon]

Hi, i've been programming for about 3 years now in many languages and in the past year i've been doing a lot of work in a game engine called unity3d. it's completely flexible and has many many tools which is what i love about it but i'm thinking of moving to UDK because the graphics are wayyyy better and also it seems more professional, plus unity only offers the full engine for a **** load of money per year. but still my question is: can i make my completely own game in UDK with full flexibility and with out any of the Unreal Tournament features in my game, meaning assigning my own input keys, my own player models and animations, my own player programming and basicly, every thing from scratch and not form Unreal tournament, because from what i've seem so far UDK is only for creating copies of Unreal tournament with different models (or only shooters). so if those are my requirements should i get in to UDK or not because it's a very comfortable environment and the graphical abilities amaze me.

thanks for reading and sorry for the long message i just tried to sum up a lot of questions in one post.

[darthviper107]

Yes, you can.

Take for instance this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPwDyUp0YAc

As for games, check out the showcases on the UDK site. There's stuff like The Ball and Dungeon Defenders. Hawken is also a game that got started on UDK.

There are some limitations, but you can do quite a lot. Only limitation is you don't have access to source code, only Unrealscript. But unrealscript allows you to do so much there's only a few special cases where you might have wanted to have source code access so it's not a big deal.

[Henrik]

If everything you've seen on UDK looks like UT you haven't seen many videos of it.

[VZdemon]

I'm looking to make a game similar to Prince Of Persia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPFQqRrboMA) not exactly because i'm not where near that good of a programmer.but say i have all the assets, can you point me to some tutorial or a place to start?

[Spoof]

This was also done in UDK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H62p7QSFo5Q

Hmm, the irony of Prince of Persia is that it looks more like Unreal Tournament than any of the games I've seen in production for UDK lol. The answer is yes, you can do all that in UDK.

[darthviper107]

Not done with UDK but with UE3 was the X-Men Wolverine game.

[VZdemon]

Isn't Unreal Engine and Unreal Development Kit the same thing?

[Graylord]

No.

UDK uses the Unreal Engine, but it isn't Unreal Engine.

UDK is the tools we can use for free or a cheap buck to create a game using the Unreal Engine.
Unreal Engine is the base Engine that several AAA games use, and a license for it can be bought for many, many bolts of cash.
With UDK you only get the tools. With UE3 you get full access to the engine itself, and can change how the engine itself works (physics, rendering, various specific technology, etc) and create your own tools.

[VZdemon]

So you need to buy a licence to make a game that's actually your own? because i'm currently trying to make program the player using kismet but i'm not even near beginning, all i see in it is modding tools but not any option for making my own stuff, or even player programming all i know is that i click play and he spawns but where exactly can i see what he's made of. Is kismet the right place to look or do i need to look somewhere else?

[Aldaron07]

So you need to buy a licence to make a game that's actually your own?

No, you can make practically any game you desire in the Unreal Development Kit. Others have made games in genres completely different than a first-person shooter.

The Unreal Tournament 3 assets are included as a demonstration of what the UDK can do. While Epic Games does allow you to use everything they have provided already (with the exception of skeletal meshes), you are encouraged to use your own assets.

[darthviper107]

So you need to buy a licence to make a game that's actually your own? because i'm currently trying to make program the player using kismet but i'm not even near beginning, all i see in it is modding tools but not any option for making my own stuff, or even player programming all i know is that i click play and he spawns but where exactly can i see what he's made of. Is kismet the right place to look or do i need to look somewhere else?

You can release any game for free with UDK, for $99 you can release your game commercially.

Kismet is for like triggered sequences, cinematics, opening doors, things like that. Most gameplay is done with Unrealscript. Unrealscript sets up how all weapons work and things like your default camera.

[VZdemon]

Well then big thanks everyone for this useful info it really helped me, and so I've decided to dig into UDK.