To answer the question for the Skookum people, I think the initial release is for late Sept early Oct. And then a full release a month or two later.
I’m sure the Skookum people might want to confirm this, but it’s around these dates 
As Sparven also said - late September or October for early/Beta release of the Standand plug-in.
*We would like to get the plug-in into peoples’ hands as soon as possible.
*
In order to say that the plug-in is fully integrated we will want to have as many UE4 features available from script as possible. Skookum should be able to call or query any Blueprint commands that are available and have them type-checked at compile-time - though we plan to be able to much more.
To give you an idea - when was used on Sleeping Dogs there were around 9000 scripting commands by the time the game shipped. Around 1500 script commands were written in C++ - and these are the commands that we would like to ensure are available in a fully integrated plug-in. Since UE4 is a more mature engine and has around 2500 commands. Lots of these commands will come for free by borrowing from Blueprints though there will likely be more.
The C++ script command bindings will be available to all users of the plug-in so that people can add their own commands and help hook in UE4 commands.
We will update as we get closer to completion and interesting releases to share.
I hope this helps with any planning that teams might be doing.
For the pro version 200 is a nice spot - will we need to renew that once a year? Or more? (Or less)
You will have the Pro version that you purchased for life.
This will include any bug fixes and [most likely] minor version upgrades.
You will have to pay to get new major versions - though we would also like to give existing users an upgrade price with some percentage off.
We plan to also have a subscription price for Pro around $10 USD / month which would allow for the use of the most up-to-date version.
Some of this plan may depend on how the Unreal Online Marketplace is structured. It is also possible that we could offer pricing models that aren’t supported by the Unreal Marketplace on our own site.
As to how frequently we come up with new major versions - it is hard to say. Only when we have new major functionality - new workflow, breaking code changes, neural interfaces, etc. If you think an older version is sufficient to continue an existing project or to start a new project then you can always use that.
Of course new versions will be spectacularly awesome.
Great to hear! Will beta be open to everyone?
Ideally Beta will be open. However we’d like to give great support to anyone using in the Beta so we might close it if a huge number of teams are using it in order to ensure the quality of our support.
Wow very nice
but i have some questions
1_why could I use this tool over blueprint scripting (is there any performance deffernce)
2_is the IDE a standalone app or a tool integrated with UE4
Skookum is lightning fast and has been optimized over many projects and platforms. But the real advantage it provides is boosting your productivity via language features and highly efficient workflows that go way beyond what C++/Blueprints can do.
Skookum makes it easy to write code that can easily be spread over multiple frames so that many script commands don’t add up to much CPU time. So while the commands are fast it is hard to be more optimized than not even needing to be run in a given frame. Whether is more efficient than Blueprints will be difficult to say until they are tested side by side - though the vast majority of time will be spent on low-level Unreal engine commands that are written in C++ for both Skookum and Blueprints. The percentage of time spent on scripting ideally shouldn’t take too large a percentage of a simulation update frame. What will probably be more important is the ease and speed of the workflow. Skookum has evolved a really great workflow - see some testimonials of past users (text and video).
excels at describing time-based logic flow. In Sleeping Dogs each mission scripter often had a few hundred different aspects of the game running simultaneously. Added together there were often on average around 10 to 30 thousand independently running time-overlapped tasks. Most of the scripters weren’t seasoned software engineers though they were able to craft all these simultaneous game events without their heads exploding. Try managing that with Blueprints or any other language for that matter.
Skookum can make gameplay modifications and run quick code snippets in real-time on any platform from PC, mobile to consoles. Skookum scales really well to the size of a team so there are benefits to both large and small projects. In general there are a number of things that are easier using a text-based language - /about/faq/#qst-txt-vs-vis
Here are a few other areas where shines including the possibility of using it for user created content after your project ships - /blog/2014/07-23–and-unreal4/#-fills-the-gap
All this being said however – is not intended to replace Blueprints or C++. There will definitely be times given a particular situation where any of the 3 of them will give superior workflow. We expect that Blueprints will often be used to organize lots of the “big picture” or strategic elements of a game, Skookum will be used as the tactical “stage director” and be used to detail the contents of a Blueprint node, and finally C++ will be used to write lower-level often more information crunching tasks. Ideally any of the 3 could be used to write the entire game from beginning to end though craftspeople use the best tool for a given job. helps complete the game development tool chest.
Soon you’ll be able to get the Standard version of which will be free. Nothing beats trying it out for yourself.
The Skookum IDE is a stand-alone app. It will be connected via TCP/IP to the Unreal editor and the game runtime so that you can make changes to gameplay in real-time and do step-wise debugging, etc. The Skookum IDE can be up and running once and each time the Unreal game editor / runtime is opened it will reconnect.
To ensure a productive workflow we will also be creating some integrations into the Unreal Editor directly so that there will be a few extra UI widgets for common tasks and it will be easy to add and work with embedded scripts.
To clarify - both the Skookum IDE and Unreal Editor can run independently - though both combined will give the best workflow depending on the task at hand.
1.) The Lua plugin appears to only be available at compile time in its current state. Will the Skookum plugin support runtime scripting in its first release?
2.) Given a modding situation where players can use Skookum to create new content, how would modder A allow access to functionality from their own mod to modder B? For example one player adds a creature type, and another adds a new area, how could the new creature type be added to the new area?
thanks a lot for your detailed replay
will definitely support runtime scripting in its first release. You will be able to run the Skookum IDE independent of the Unreal editor and craft gameplay scripts before the game runs and during the game running.
Skookum is specifically designed to be used in teams and to ensure that people can work on sections independently - and this would work to the advantage of modding as well.
There are a number of workflow scenarios that could be used to achieve modding using . The simplest would be to provide all or a subset of the game script files and allow them to be modified or extended.
To aid in organization, Skookum provides: overlays (essentially script libraries), class hierarchies and individual routines for gameplay logic.
Each mod could be put in its own self-contained overlay. All the Skookum overlays that you want to use are merged together essentially like layers in picture editing software and then compiled together into optimized binary files for the game to load. [To ensure that the game is as fast as possible, script text files are never loaded directly by the game runtime - they are always compiled first.]
Skookum uses a class hierarchy and object-oriented programming methodologies to help encapsulate and extend concepts. The script files representing a class hierarchy is mirrored on a hard drive with its folder structure and managed using the Skookum IDE. Modders could derive new sub-classes of common game classes like creature variants, new missions, ambient behaviours, etc. – or they could even modify existing gameplay logic. Individual classes or whole branches of related classes and subclasses can be tagged as “demand-loaded” which allows them to be loaded as needed and creates separate compiled script binaries for them.
Each set of Skookum script commands are written in text files called routines (either methods or coroutines) and each routine is stored in its own file. This provides a lot of flexibility and ensures that scripters are less likely to bump into each other unintentionally.
knows of the existence of all the enabled overlays and their classes and routines. There is no need to do some sort of include / using directive in each script file - let the computer do that sort of book-keeping. So if modder A and modder B additions are both enabled then you can just start writing scripts that use both of their content.
So mods can be swapped around as whole overlays, classes (and subclasses) or individual routines. It is also quite common to trade around little snippets of code to run on the Skookum console to set up scenarios, change settings or to test stuff.
Just like any source code – dealing with the original script files is the most flexible though you can swap around compiled script binaries too. The compiled binary can either be one big file for the whole game or there can be several files of classes and subclass hierarchies of gameplay logic that can be dynamically loaded and unloaded. So either the entire Skookum logic could be updated or just a clearly identified portion of gameplay.
So a new creature type like a Scurrier would probably be a subclass of some existing game class like Creature. This script class (or classes) would be swapped around as a folder with a few script routine files or as entire overlay with a number of folders and files.
The same technique could be used for creating an area / location - though I’d recommend making most location based content in the Unreal Editor rather than in scripts. I realize though that may require special builds or modes of the game runtime and having access to the Unreal Editor and level files and other assets which may be more tricky and require modders to have subscriptions to UE4, etc.
Feel free to ask for any additional clarifications on end user modding if you’d like more detail. We will also be creating more online documentation and plan to make tutorial videos, etc.
Once you get your hands on this should be much more clear.
Hey Noolarch, wanted to check in and see how things are coming. Are you guys still looking at early October for a beta release?
Yes - everything is going smoothly for an early October Beta.
There are still a few unknowns - though there haven’t been any show stoppers yet. For example there are a couple of Unreal 4 code changes that we will need to submit in order to get some cool deep functionality. It might take a bit of lead time before those are fully added to the official UE4 source. We might be able to send them separately as a local patch.
Rest assured that the Beta will have lots of features, great performance and good workflow. Our only worry is can we have all the features that we want hooked up on day 1 and aspects of visual polish.
Soon.
Nice to have some (good) news!
Some news related to .
Triad Wars - an open world MMO is being written with by United Front Games and has just announced that it is in Beta.
is hooked up to UFG’s own custom engine though the features and development tools will be the same (actually newer) for the UE4 plug-in.
http://www.unitedfrontgames.com/games/triad-wars/
=jQn4OvRrK0A
You can see the icon in the YouTube video above at the 1:52 and 3:23 minute marks.
Also note that the UFG developers tend to have multiple monitors. It is convenient to have the game on one monitor and on a second monitor. This isn’t necessary though it makes it nice to make real-time changes without having to swap away from the game.
200 Dollars Is a drop in the bucket for something like this!
What does the 200.00 pro license get me in terms of support?
Are there any royalties for the Pro license?
Do I have access to future Major Version builds free of charge? Yes? No?
EDIT: Consider Updating your Post info with the Pricing terms as I had to dig a bit to find it
That said - Look forward to seeing and Using this plugin
Thanks! We were initially thinking >$50K per project - maybe around $15K for a smaller indie project. After lots of thinking though we decided that we wanted it to be a no-brainer for adoption so Standard $0!!! and Pro$200. If lots of people use the Pro version then we can stick with the low price for future major versions.
We will do all we can in the early days to give as much support as possible. However $200 is pretty inexpensive so support will be mostly on a and tapping into the community. You will be able to buy dedicated support packs if you need it for your project - for hooking up to your code, trouble-shooting or prioritized new features.
United Front Games was able to develop the open-world massively multi-player Triad Wars using and their own engine with zero support. [Granted they already know from using it to develop Sleeping Dogs.]
The runtime for Standard and Pro is expected to be the same so probably no. We are also thinking of a “Studio Bundle” for bigger projects that may have some sliver of a royalty. We will find out what people want - less up front with royalty or more up front, etc. It also potentially depends on the mechanisms supplied by Epic Games and the Unreal Marketplace.
It makes sense that we get compensated differently for a massive project as compared to a small one. Though again - we want to make things easy - especially early on.
Any agreement now for this version won’t change “under your feet”. You can keep on using it and the terms that go with it. We might adapt our agreement for future new major versions. Though you will be able to use any older versions under their terms for as long as you like.
New major versions you will have to pay for - at an “upgrade” price. Minor versions will be free.
Will do. I’ll move it to the first post when I get a .
Hey,
Thanks for the quick replies. 
Got a few more Questions -
I am targeting Android Media Boxes (Android TV, Fire TV, etc.) and PC (Windows at first and Linux / MacOSX Later).
Will there be support for Android at launch of the Skookum Script Plugin / IDE?
Also will there be any form of financial limitations for the free version? If so can you go into detail?
We will try to support as many platforms as possible for the launch - including Android. should work on any platform that has a C++ compiler - which is pretty much everything. We will try to build for each platform that Unreal 4 targets.
If we don’t get all the platforms at day 1 of the launch we will be working hard to do so in the days that follow.
We plan to support just PC For Beta in a couple of weeks for people to try things out.
Nope - no expected financial limitations for Standard. [We need to see the terms for the Unreal Marketplace for plug-ins before we can say 100%.]
Go wild - give it to your friends and get your users to use Skookum Standard to make custom content.
will need to be appropriately credited in your project of course - though that shouldn’t cost anything.
If your project does really well then it would be nice if you got Pro versions for doing bug fixes, add-ons, updates, etc. Hopefully it would make sense for you to get Pro versions to do any new projects too.
In general Pro will make things easier and faster for debugging, teams and larger projects like console titles.
Great to hear that everything is coming along great. Can’t wait to give it a spin when we get access to it!
Have you worked something out with Epic regarding the payments through Marketplace?
Was mostly thinking about the ability to charge /month etc.