The UDK is nice.....

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=706175

Quick First MoD
Unreal Script
Setup for a GameType/HUD/Pawn/Player Classes.

I'm loving this wave of free high quality game engines. Unity, Unreal... I truely hope this becomes an industry standard. It's a blessing for indy developers everywhere.

Yea... Unity is pretty much a toy compared to Unreal. Go Epic!

It doesn't have to be Unity against Unreal. Both have their strengths.

Admittedly Unreal wins out for big-ass shooters with lots of combat and so on.

But what makes Unity great is that it's so user-friendly and flexible.

Unity is also a heckuva lot cheaper. I mean, how much does it cost to release a game on Unreal. I heard you need to pay Epic a 25% royalty! (If someone has more accurate info, please post.) Whatever it is, it's expensive. Between Unity and Unreal, Unity wins hands down on that count.

@Tim -
As far as I remember, the deal with Unreal is that 25% of all profits after the first 5000$ go to Epic.
Good deal for such a good engine, but I'll just stick with Unity because UDK refuses to install on my machine. :(

Quote: "Yea... Unity is pretty much a toy compared to Unreal. Go Epic!"
- so true, John Hodge.

@Tim Carter: Unity is fine for casual and web based but try to make a real game and you come up against a lot of serious challenges.

For such an Unreal engine UDK is a sweet deal! ;)

John: Toys are fun -- you do want development to be fun, don't you?

Unity = Games for Mac, Windows and Browsers.

UDK = Games for Windows

While UDK is more powerful from a technical standpoint, if you don't mind the sacrifice in graphics, Unity provides are larger potential player base.

Another great point is that Unity is relatively cheap for commercial licenses for iPhone and Wii. Compare that to 25% profits and the other plans that Epic offers.

Its amazing to see what the word "free" can do.

But UDK is a great tool, free or not.

Epic decision! Thanks :)

Did anyone tried to do anything (not-fps or 3rd person-character) with Unreal Yet?

I mean... Where's the money for indie?

Erick, plenty of people have done non-fps and third person character things with Unreal (and other Engines). They're called mods, and they've existed for well over a decade.

If you're asking whether people have done anything significant with the UDK yet, no, not really, as it was just released.

Those of you who think Unity is just a "toy" for casual games should check out Tiger Woods Online, Fusion Fall, and the Avert Fate demo to see what Unity can do. Graphically, Unreal may be marginally superior but not by much. A capable development team would have no problem creating the identical game with both tools. Of course when I personally choose a development tool I create my prototype with all the tools on the table. That's the only way to really know if an engine's right for your project.

I don't think the two engines are direct competitors and just because one is technically more powerful than the other doesn't mean that they both aren't capable of AAA quality. It all depends on the team using it. An experienced team with solid art direction can still make a polished title with a 'weaker' engine. There are plenty of games out right now using Unreal 3 technology that look like crap and Unreal has some serious drawbacks when it comes to its terrain tools. I haven't had a chance to really dive in to Unity yet but I like what I see concerning their steady improvement of light maps and interface, it seems to be constantly evolving.

@Alexander Bruce
I know what a mod is... What I asked was if anybody has released any relevant mod apart from FPS ones.

I see a lot of narrow comments about UDK being "far" superior to Unity, but I don't see the technical features to support it. Besides, with the simple comment abou money I just wanted to remember this point:
- What's your goal with game development:
1 - Develop "clones" of your favorite (hardcore) games? (possibly with a team of 300 friends from Sparta)
2 - Create polished and fun casual/smaller games in a more productive manner (productivity is an important "technical" feature as well);

That said, I've been using both

@Erick:
What i could say is that the UDK comes with a bunch of useful tools (you can see whats included here http://udk.com/features.html) which improves the productivity alot. Importing meshes from 3DS Max, Maya, XSI or Blender is pretty easy and you are able to "edit" them inside UnrealED. Importing Textures is easy too and the internal Material Editor gives you tones of capabilities to edit them in the way you want. Besides that you have a Animation, Physics or Particle Editor and a pretty easy to learn Visual-script Editor. See link from above ;) to much to count them all here.
You are able to create any type of game that you want, but you or your team definitely needs some time to get familiar with the system, but its similar (in severity) to Unity.

But theres a big plus for Unity!
The UDK is still in Beta which means not all features are implemented yet or at least they are not stable enough. But if you know the rules then you are on the safe side ;). I personally wouldn't say that Unity is for childs and UDK is for pros both of them are milestones in their very own way, all depends on what you plan to do with it. I personally prefer the UDK because i've worked for a long time with UnrealED so i know what i can do and how i can achieve it but i'm sure Unity3D is worth a comparison.

Hope it helps.
Best regards
-Chris R

If you are interested into making headways dev-wise I set up a small Isometric tutorial that covers camera, player control, inputs and pathfinding whitout the use of Kismet, but rather the use of visual studio and Nfringe : http://x9productions.com/blog/?p=558