Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Thanks to those readers who pointed out that The Ball, an Unreal Tournament 3 mod that’s featured heavily in the current Make Something Unreal competition, is now set to be released as a commercial product in Spring 2010, according to the official site. Presumably Toltec Studios are now taking advantage of the new UDK stuff (judging by this UDK demo), and working the mod into a standalone game over the coming months. A new “combat focused” version of the mod has just been released, and that’s going to be the last version of the previously puzzle-led mod before it’s available as a full game.

When Unity 3D went free a friend of mine started playing around with it and voiced the opinion that mods would now increasingly become free or indie games, because here was a 3D engine that was so easy to use, and so straightforward to port assets into. Then we had the UDK announcement, which gave us modder’s favourite, the Unreal Engine, as a free platform. So what does that mean for the future of modding?
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Just noticed this over on Bluesnews, and it is one of the first fruits of the recent announcement of UDK, Unreal’s free-to-use engine package: the standalone version of rather clever spatial/time puzzle mod, Prometheus. Get it here, it’s just 321mb, no Unreal games necessary. And no, we won’t be announcing every UDK thing that comes along, it’s just that this something actually worth spending some time with. Give it a whirl, there’s some brains in them there bits.

Interesting times indeed. Following the news that Unity3D went free for its indie package, Epic announce that you can now use the Unreal Development kit for non-commercial uses. Crikey. Reading the licentiate details, if you actually want to go commercial it’s in exchange for a 25% of revenue after your first $5000. Which is a hefty slice, of course… but considering how much an actual full licence for Unreal is, it’s still has to be tempting. Examples of how this could change stuff? Obvious stuff: mods for Unreal no longer would require you to buy a game. As long as a team makes everything, you can just distribute them… and you have to wonder whether now because they can do it, they’ll try to monetize them. Other random prediction: teams trying to remake classics like Deus Ex. Which will never be completed, but the thought’s there.