Hi guys! I am just wondering, are somebody from this forum buyed a "Unreal Engine 2" whose price is 750.000$?! Or somebody attempting to buy new high-tech "Unreal Engine 3" whose price going to be more than 750.000$?! If somebody did, what he can say about it (personal experiance)!? If i buy it, and make a game with it, do i need/how much i need to pay to them?! (like for license...) Thanks in further, as always -Me

http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/licensing/terms.shtml

Royalty-Bearing License - For retail console & PC products

A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.

Custom License Terms - For non-traditional products

The Unreal Engine has been used in the development of many non-traditional products, ranging from mass-market educational games to custom training applications and the non-retail America's Army game developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. For custom applications that only require script access (rather than full C++ source), and only require redistribution to a small set of clients, the Runtime Edition is available and may be more suitable than a full Unreal Engine license. Where full source code and support or widespread redistribution are required, please contact licensing@epicgames.com to discuss custom license terms.

Why do you ask? It's very unlikely that anyone here has bought a license for either one of the engines..

If you're planning on making a 3D game and don't want to rob a bank, there are also free, quite capable 3d engines around. E.g.
www.ogre3d.org
irrlicht.sf.net

(of course nowhere near UE3 or even UE2 quality)

Why is it unlikely anyone here would not be using the unreal engine? We're still game devs!

I'm currently using it and here are a few pros and cons.

Pros: Great tools that help a lot with productivity. Great for a PC FPS game. It's a proven working shipped engine.

Cons: The object hierarchy is a complete mess and the coding style is not that great and is inconsistant (actually non-existant). The classes have to be defined in script rather than in c++ so you're forced to do a lot of work in script land which is sub-optimal. Console support is sketchy and if you're not making an FPS, the engine will still work but is just not set up in a desirable way.

There are many other pros and cons but these are the ones that directly affect me the most.


If you can afford it, I'd evaluate it and see if it will work for your needs. There are probably better solutions out there but it's not a bad way to go.

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Why do you ask? It's very unlikely that anyone here has bought a license for either one of the engines..

So professional game developers don't read game development forums?

not really, many post at gdalg though... many of the people who have written articles for game programming gems regulary post there, including alen ladavac from Croteam. you can get most of the archive here, and if you ask nicely, someone nice like Tom Forsyth might FTP you his archive (which is how i got mines). though now i just use XNews to read gmane.

Quote:Original post by Tylon

Quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
Why do you ask? It's very unlikely that anyone here has bought a license for either one of the engines..

So professional game developers don't read game development forums?

There are some pros that hang around here, yes, but I believe the vast majority of these forums are made up of hobbyist developers.