There are two major hurdles to pass if you are serious about attracting indy-developers to UDK 4:
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There are too many sources for hi-res character meshes to count on the internet, but none of them are of any use to an indy-developer without some type of decimator, which usually does not quite work (UDK can’t read the exported FBX-file for some reason, which can be either programs fault, but without a descent error message, stating only “error”, there is no way of knowing why. If a descent decimator exists, the main product usually costs too much for an indy developer to purchase. Low-res character meshes found on the internet, usually don’t have morph targets if you want an in-game character creation similar to most RPG’s now a days.
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When creating terrains, most products on the internet costs way too much and are really complex and without descent documentation.
The solution:
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Make a decimator part of UDK, so that you can choose LOD’s and how much it should decimate each level from the original, which can be a 400k mesh, if you wish. Then, when you build your project, the LOD meshes are created.
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You already have a terrain generator within UDK. What is missing, is a node based optional system simular to World Machine, so that you can parameterize terrain generation easily within UDK. That way, developers can randomize level creation in a beatiful way on the fly, that makes the levels look believable and good. The functions should be reachable from the appropriate blueprints.
VERY IMPORTANT!!!
The “import”-function of the content browser should have WAY more verbose error messages if users are to have any chance of knowing why an import failed.