Welcome to the inside!

[weephun]

Unreal Engine 3 is the leading triple-A game engine used by many of the world’s top developers on some of the world’s best games. As you probably know, we used it ourselves to create the games in the Gears of War franchise and just last week Microsoft announced the Gears of War franchise has crossed a billion dollars in sales – yes, a BILLION dollars. We’re very proud of the success of this series and hearing these sales numbers got me thinking about the overall economic impact of Unreal Engine technology and what that means to the game industry.

The three Gears of War games alone may already eclipse the combined economic impact of every other game engine you can license today. But, if you were to also take into account the amazing economic impact of the many games created by our licensees the numbers would be astronomical.

Last week we also hit another major milestone. The Unreal Development Kit has now surpassed 1,000,000 unique installs. Yes, that’s ONE MILLION unique installs. This isn’t a download count nor does it count users who installed a new version of UDK over an old version, or reinstalls. This means there are more than one million different computers on to which the UDK has been installed. With this massive install base there are countless stories to tell about what those developers are doing with the technology.

In this blog we hope to tell you some of the stories from the unique perspective of the people behind the Unreal Engine.

Be sure to check the blog again later today and follow Unreal Engine on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve got some exciting announcements!

Mark Rein,
Vice President, Epic Games.
Canadian-born Mark Rein is vice president and co-founder of Epic Games based in Cary, NC. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 has won Game Developer magazine’s Best Engine Front Line Award five times along with entry into the Hall of Fame. UE3 has won three consecutive Develop Industry Excellence Awards. Epic is the creator of the mega-hit “Unreal” series of games and the blockbuster “Gears of War” franchise. Follow @MarkRein on Twitter.



What kind of stories would you like to hear?

[seenooh]

Exciting! Looking forward to the first blog!

[Xendance]

What kind of stories would you like to hear?

Dev stories about UE 4, such as what kind of an approach will it have when it comes to lighting and shadows for example :P

[chester1997]

..........

[Archerx]

I would like to be informed in the direction the mobile side is going.

[seenooh]

^

+1. I'm interested in knowing that too. Roadmap or something.

[flota113]

Something to make people strong... To make them feel that they can do everything with UDK, they just have to want . f.e. about teams which sucessed without expierence or sth like that.

[JUGGERNUT]

The story of how the Unreal Engine came about, how it was shaped and formed, the big changes over the past 3 years, and where it will be improved most in the future.

[piotrO]

I'd like to see how the big studios are using the Unreal Engine and all the tools we have in the UDK. Something like success stories from unrealengine.com but in greater detail.

[frostymoss]

From a business (and nostalgic) prospective, I'd be interested in reading about your reflections on embracing the Unreal mod community, how you came about marketing third-party development as a game feature, and objective reflections from the Make Something Unreal Contests (good & bad).

edit: i mean bad as in lessons learned, and how you responded to a dwindling user-base near the end. You guys have obviously been trend setters in the games industry (look at Valve & Crysis -- it always seems like they're standing in your footprints), and more recently you've dominated the mobile platform before the rest. Do you have any plans on supporting the same kinds of user-level third-party modification/dev features in your mobile applications as you did a decade ago (e.g. InfBlade Level Editor -- I'm imagining as a selling point; it would be an in-game tool for mobile use rather than a standalone application).

[samuraiwu]

Unreal is the real!Epic is epic!

[neurosys]

What kind of stories would you like to hear?

I'm one of those 'Serious Games" enthusiasts, I know UDK is/was firstly for games (of a rather specific genre) and I know that genre barrier has been broken down in UDK successfully by others. We usually fall a bit short in areas needed to consider something simulation quality but I think UDK has the potential and flexibility to overcome that (and perhaps dominate there as well). Its a nice big emerging scene and I intend to use UDK (primarily) to try and breathe some new life into 'serious gaming/training/sims/etc'. Also its my major in college, so I'd be really interested to know what the folks @ epic think of serious games and possible roles for UDK in that area. As far as I am concerned, I've not found anything yet that I can (reasonably) create that UDK couldn't handle beautifully. Obviously flying sims require more terrain area but things are getting pretty massive so I think we are close. Ok enough rambling, I'd like to hear more about udk being used by simulator junkies like me and epic's view on that sort of stuff.

PS: When the blog is live.. please put URL in big bold italicized letters lol... or email us, srsly epic is like the one 'update/news' email I am always happy to get

[TheWarlord25]

So if I'm extremely lenient and cut One Billion in half for the cost of manufacturing, equipment, and advertising, every employee at Epic should be a millionare! Great job Epic!

[Boshko Savich]

Stories,,, dont give us stories man, all of us here know very well what is the story behind great game, its hours of work and plenty of talents, army of people ,imaginations, acknowledge and work,work,work. I dont know for other but i know for me, when some of mine friends come to me im very proud when i can show demo of Samaritian and say "In same software I work", or " Hey! Look this guy r made this game by himself with UDK! Congra on make 1 billion dollars of course, but let me ask you weephun, how much u will have bucks if every of us who r install and use UDK make his own game? Im pretty tired right now to calculate but i believe that will be much much more than billion, am i right?
And now we comming to the point of this mine story.
Great u made a great money, i believe now its time to invest in your children, and who is the Unreals childrens ? Look at this forum, man, we are all children of UDK, we all believe in you and in your guidance across World of Unreal. What u need to invest ? Your acknowledge. What you will get? More acknowledge (AMUGTMUG), more users (every of us will bring at last 10 new users) more games what will be maded by Unreal engine, and after all much more money than is one billion if u look @ the future. Invest in one server with just 1 terabite HD space and push this ppl who is around you to make video tutorials to share their acknowledge about every single piece of UDK or of other programs what u use to make this great games. Teach us and we will bring you real reason to be proud! What is money? Today r there tomorrow r not. But respect, love, followers, children, Growing World of Unreal,,, this, let me say things, u cant buy with money. Yes i know there is a lot of tutorials maded by enthusiasts who r like me believers,hard workers, sometime more than 15 hours per day so we can see our hands job finished, but this, all video tutorials on one place, all this great forums, all of this great ppl who are here in one place,all of you who r made this ideals what we trying to catch,,. Well maybe im visionar (or how u say this) but that will be one real -World of Unreal- on what you will can be really proud .
Cheers for everyone and Happy New Year!

[STAR.S]

I have a suggestion to improve the UDK.
I propose in the next release of UDK, add ready-to-use small arms. I think it will be enough of any pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle. I myself have been doing in the UDK for several months, but even those who have learned on the Internet do not give a complete picture of how to make realistic weapons. Edit mesh, animation and sound is easy. Difficulties arise when it is necessary to reload weapons, Shell (shot) for the shotgun, sniper rifle scope for using the zoom. Tutorials that are on the Internet may not always help. As with every new release of the UDК, the structure of scripts and the scripts that were previously developed for new releases UDК is no longer applicable. If the UDК put multiple instances of ready realistic weapons, it will greatly help beginners to learn UDК.

У меня есть предложение по улучшению УДК.
Предлагаю в следующий релиз УДК, добавить готовое к использованию стрелковое оружие. Думаю достаточно будет любого пистолета, дробовика, снайперской винтовки. Я сам занимаюсь в УДК уже несколько месяцев, но даже те уроки которые есть в Интернете не дают полного представления как делать реалистичное оружие. Изменить меш, анимацию и звук не составляет труда. Сложности возникают когда нужно сделать перезарядку оружия, дробь для дробовика, прицел для снайперской винтовки с использованием увеличения.
Туториалы которые есть в интернете не всегда могут помочь. Так как с каждым новым релизом УДК, меняется структура скриптов и те скрипты которые были ранее разработаны к новым релизам УДК уже не применимы. Если в УДК вложить несколько экземпляров готового реалистичного оружия, то это очень сильно поможет новичкам в освоении УДК.