Unreal III SDK

Been reading the threads on Minecraft, which I hesitate to download as I fear it'll either suck ass or eat hours of my time. Got me to thinking though, "wonder if there's some sort of high quality sandbox creation software out there." Remembered that Unreal III engine has a free sdk out there, but I'm a little shy of it as I'm wondering if it'll just be way too complex for me to mess with. Kind of hoping its as easy to use as the editor in Far Cry 2, as that was sort of a great middle ground between user friendly with a lot of different options.

So, anyone here ever fuck around with the SDK? What did you make? Was it easy? Can a build a replica of my house and then blow it up?

SDK's usually just mean the full source code when it comes to game engines, so unless you're quite decent at programming I don't think it will get you far.

Word. Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I had a feeling it would be something a bit above my head just from the screenshots. And, yeah, no good w/programming here so would probably be more frustrating than enjoyable.

  On 10/1/2010 at 10:25 PM, impakt said:

SDK's usually just mean the full source code when it comes to game engines, so unless you're quite decent at programming I don't think it will get you far.

it's been a while since I played around with level design, but typically from what i recall the sdk (software dev kit) is not the full source code, but the level editor. At least that was how it worked with Doom 3. So assuming this sdk contains Unreal Ed (or whatever they're calling it now) it should be fine. You should try the Crytek one too, I've watched the guys at my work using it, fun stuff.

Well, it might not be the full source code but it usually is at least the game source(not the engine). If you want to make a map for the game then yeah, find an up-to-date version of unrealED I guess.

Ok, I usually don't bump my own threads after they die this much but wanted to say thanks for the advice. Also, just for context, below are some screens that they have for previews on the Unreal site. Looks about as complex as After Effects/Dreamweaver/Photoshop. Which is to say, probably more complex than I could handle without training, but still something potentially worth fucking around with.

I think it's supposed to be a full fledged designer/editor for machinima/games/video making. Physics engine/AI scripting/pretty much everything. Free to the public to eff around with, though you have to pay if you decide to use it for something commercial. Website if anyone else is interested is here. Less than a gig in size, which is also nice.

Ever check out Garry's Mod for HL2?

  On 10/4/2010 at 9:08 PM, goffer said:

Ever check out Garry's Mod for HL2?

No! But its one of the things I was looking at when contemplating this whole potential foray into level creation/etc.

You ever muck about with it? Looks like fun and not too daunting from a user perspective.

edit: Part of the reason I never checked this out or even thought about it until now is that, up until now, been using an OLD AS SHIT Mac single core G4. And, up until recently, know that the Source stuff wasn't even on Mac (though, even if it was, my old piece of shit couldnt' run it. Nowwwww though - i3 processor w/decent amount of ram, etc. means this whole new world of options has opened up. I mean, that HL mod with the Portal Gun? That'd be worth it right there.