Whoa, wait. what? Seriously?

Epic Games is giving away the full Unreal 3 engine SDK for free. The entire professional development framework is being offered for free to give users real tools for developing cutting edge games. This is an incredible move by Epic Games. And here we thought they wanted to abandon the PC platform…

Epic has launched a web portal for the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) where you can download the toolset, read documentation on the engine, see examples and showcases, and access the community, among many other things. The UDK comes weighs in at 563MB and comes with… well, everything.

The UDK is meant for non-commercial use, and is aimed at professionals and students alike who don’t have access to high-level game development toolsets. This is music to the ears of anyone who wants to dig into the likes of game development, character animation, digital filmmaking, 3D viz, asset creation, shader programming, and who knows what else—the possibilities are incredible.

If you’ve been wanting to dig into a high-end game engine and learn the trade of video game development, this is an excellent place to start. Everything you need to get started can be found at the portal. Now is your chance to make something Unreal.

GG Epic, GG.

Remember Battlefield 2?  It was a good game put together by Dice and EA.  I loved BF2.  It had a great graphics engine, excellent stat tracking and unlockable weapons system, and an awesome commander mode that let one player control the game like an RTS.  I put many hours into that game the summer it came out, and was thinking just last weekend about how I’d like to reinstall it and give it another go.

Dear readers, I believe I just found my reason for that reinstall.

EA is preparing the release of BF2’s latest patch, version 1.50.  Within will be your standard gamut of bug fixes, balance changes, a new map, and simple additions.  What makes this patch stand out, however, is the fact that EA is including the Euro Force and Armored Fury booster packs in the patch for free.  Two booster packs, and you don’t have to pay a dime for them.  This is a plan I can get behind. (more…)