I would like to know that too. And, i dont see what's new. UDK has been available for a while now. What is new, does UDK natively export to iphone now? UDK runs on windows, like it's been said here too. And making all the assets for a complete game with UDK is a big task.
Warning: A lot of what I'm about to say is guesswork based on talking to game developers in the pub who have been working with Unreal and may be wrong but I'm guessing it's right. Unreal has an awesomely powerful scripting language. So powerful that you could write a lot of great games without even touching C/C++. The UDK is a way of developing games where you can only use the scripting language. Think of it as like modding Quake in the old days. Most games written with Unreal are done with a mix of C/C++ and scripting, the same is true of other Engines like Unity. What Epic have done is make the bold move of creating the UDK so that people who might otherwise have learned to program games on Flash can now write games in the Unreal Scripting langauge while taking advantage of their great tool pipeline. Presumably there is or will be somewhere online where people can 'publish' UDK games but I suspect (and this is where it goes into guesswork) they have to be free. I'm guessing that what Epic want is for the people who want to get their UDK games on platforms other that the PC to buy some form of proper Unreal licence. Presumably it will be relatively easy to turn a UDK app into a proper Unreal app from where developers can do whatever they want with it, add a little c/c++, port it to iPhone, Xbox, PS3... What I'm saying is that I suspect, for now at least, that the existence of the UDK and the fact that the Unreal engine is coming to iPhone are unrelated. This may change but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for an 'export to iPhone' button given Apple's rules.
We are an official partner with Epic with our nFringe tool which allows script debugging via Dev Studio. You can use if free for non-commercial titles. Here is the link: http://pixelminegames.com/nfringe/
Well, if totally twisting my words and then putting a winking smiley after to pretend you're not being a jerk is your thing, then by all means... It doesn't matter whether it compiles down to C++. All that matters is Apple's approval. They recently added this condition that lets them do whatever they please as long as they give approval:
Well there you go then, it's obvious that Epic doesn't break any of Apple's rules... Hey that's what winking smileys are all about, so fair enough. Perhaps we can agree that we're a couple of smiley-winking-jerks-that-can-agree-to-disagree ?
Well, actually, lots of people were breaking Apple's rules with Apple turning a blind eye. Then when that was pointed out publicly, Apple added the "notwithstanding" clause. So now they get to "cockblock" Adobe as Eli put it, and they don't have to explain themselves. Seems about right to me.
It's free to use until you reach a certain amount of benefit. From this point, they take a percentage over it.
Epic increased the Royalty limit to 50,000. Any takers now, or is it still not worth it? http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=764485
We're all for it, switching one of our projects to UDK already The way I see it, earning sales of anywhere close to $50K is unlikely on the AppStore for small indie developers like us, unless the game happens to become extremely successful overnight. The 25% royalty cost isn't much worse than what the big iOS publishers would charge anyway, so having a $50K royalty-free buffer is worth the time and effort involved, in certain cases only ofcourse and certainly not for all developers and projects Just my two cents
Sounds like it's time for me to learn the tools. My idea for a cyberpunk open world RPG may see the light of day after all...
Keep in mind that having "Utilizes Unreal Engine 3" in your thread title and app description will draw more interest.
