Now, before everyone jumps up and down over the title, this is NOT a question about a comparison between the two engines.
So, up until now, I have been studying a degree (just finished) and fiddling around idly with Unity. So now that I’ve gotten to a stage where I have more time on my hands… I’ve looked over at UE and found that WOW! It is suddenly affordable and even more awesome than ever. I HAVE played with UDK before, but it was many many moons ago with perhaps a few festive seasons in-between, and as such, I’ve pretty much forgotten the few minor things that I had learnt.
Now, I’ve signed up for a diploma… all about game design and creation. Awesome and moving in the right path. I’ve jumped in excitedly and thrown down my deposit on UE4 and right now it’s happily coming down into my hard drive. But there is one caveat. The course I am doing will be using UDK and not UE4. So surely you can see my dilemma and why I have some simple question.
I want to play with UE4 until my course starts mid-August. How confusing is it to switch between the two?
Is UE4 capable of saving in a .udk file format? It seems that submissions will be needed in that format and if I can make that in UE4, then it will make me smile no-end.
Blueprint Vs. Code. I have no experience with C++ at all. If I make something in Blueprint, will I be able to open it up as code to study it and tweak it?
I cannot seem to find any information in regards to the usage of assets provided with the engine and sample projects? I’m not sure if I’m searching wrong or something?
materials, particles, landscape tool, foliage tool and other stuff is nearly the same in UDK -> so it will be easy for you to jump over to UDK when you have UE4 experience
no
you can use them for your projects
Why dont you just use UDK? -> it’s for free and then you will be prepared for the course
I studied UnrealScript for four months when I was a kid and hated it. It was never long and I was never fully dedicated.
I studied TorqueScript for a month when I was a kid and hated it. Because I can’t pay for the engine (BACK THEN!) glad they went Open Source.
I discovered Ogre3D and OpenGL and learned about C++ programming and that’s when I fell in loved.
I later discovered Unreal Engine 4 and then fell in love because of C++ and now I am a proud owner of 4.3 ver. plus all those source codes including the older versions.
I’m not saying its bad; it is good even to this day and there are plenty of games that still use UDK and triple-A companies making games like Batman: Arkham series. The only reason I switched is because of OpenGL now since I’m too lazy I decide to just go with UE4 and that I just program do little bit of modelling and let the engine do all my work or until I find a team of UE4 developers online.
The only thing I would say about UDK is that since you have to use it for your class, it will be fairly easy to learn how to use UnrealScript considering the abundance of information available about it online. I myself learned how to do some cool things in UDK originally through the online resources and reading Rachel Cordone’s book on UDK (primarily focused on teaching how to code with UnrealScript). As far as switching between using UE4 and UDK, the editor interface holds many similarities and the only noticeable difference would be in the the coding (syntax, not logic). Also, with UnrealScript you will likely need to get a few applications like Notepad++ and UnCodeX to effectively code.
Thanks guys. Much appreciated. Ultimately I want to use UE4 of course as it is a much more polished project, just that UDK is the diploma’s requirement. I’m glad to hear that a lot of the tools are still similar, so at least the learning will go towards UE4 as well and I can benefit from it much more than I would if I were planning on using Unity.
When it comes to those assets, I’m allowed to use them in projects, but what about commercial releases? It is my dream to be a successful game dev and build a career from it, so I intend to step beyond the bounds of hobbyist eventually.
