New (free) toys for game developers
This has been quite a week for game developers, specifically those of the financial constrained type. Two very nice tools have now released in free forms for indie developers:
Unity 3D
http://unity3d.com/
Unity is a great tool. You script in Boo, Javascript, or C# and most of what you do is drag and drop in their full 3D editor view. The free version allows you to make games for PC, Mac, and the web, and you can charge for them. There are some features left out of the free one and if you make more than $100K a year, you have to buy their pro license, but otherwise it’s a solid deal for indie devs.
UDK
http://udk.com/
The UDK is basically Unreal Engine 3, but instead of paying some absurd amount of money, it’s free. From a quick look it claims to have everything the commercial version has except source access and probably a few features here and there. It’s a basic non-commercial license but you can purchase a commercial license for just $99 where you simply pay Epic 25% of profits over your first $5,000. That’s a pretty sweet deal for being able to use bleeding edge technology.
I’ve installed both and hope to find some time to start playing with them. I’ve tinkered with Unity in the past but the UDK is all new to me. Of course, before any of this, I have a few Indie Game ideas and SunBurn to learn about. 
Possibly Related Posts
(Automatically Generated)Deconstructing Echoes+
Learning lambda expressions for XNA GS developers
How To Make A Better Community Game
How To Test If A Player Can Purchase Your Game
Life of an XNA Game
The announcement of UDK has really gotten me excited. I have been playing around with the Unreal Engine 2 Runtime for a few months now, but it isn’t all there.
I checked out Unity a while back when I was considering developing something on the Cocoa Touch platforms and it looked like a really great product as well.
It would be really awesome to see both of these products supported in Xbox Live Indie Games. Shadow Complex really proved that the Unreal Engine 3 is capable of making just about anything you want and doing amazing things with small teams and small budgets is possible with it.
The announcement of UDK has really gotten me excited. I have been playing around with the Unreal Engine 2 Runtime for a few months now, but it isn’t all there.
I checked out Unity a while back when I was considering developing something on the Cocoa Touch platforms and it looked like a really great product as well.
It would be really awesome to see both of these products supported in Xbox Live Indie Games. Shadow Complex really proved that the Unreal Engine 3 is capable of making just about anything you want and doing amazing things with small teams and small budgets is possible with it.