Unreal Engine 4 now free and open source

Muzozavr · Post by **Muzozavr** » Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:16 pm

THE WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL GAME PROGRAMMING HAS JUST BEEN SET ON FIRE I AM NOT EVEN A PROGRAMMER BUT MY MIND IS BLOWN AWAY IN A TORNADO.

https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4

It is official. UE4 is now free and open source. All of it. For commercially released content, Epic charges 5% royalties or something (it's complicated, I don't speak legalese) but you still don't pay anything upfront and it's COMPLETELY free for non-commercial use.

Qloof234 · Post by **Qloof234** » Tue Mar 10, 2015 11:36 pm

For that matter, in similar news, Valve officially announced their new Source 2 engine. It's going to be free for developers to use, not sure about open-source though.

garirry · Post by **garirry** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 3:32 am

Being a future programmer, I am interested in knowing what is so particular with this engine (what game was it used for, for example).

Muzozavr · Post by **Muzozavr** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:01 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Un ... gine_games

From version 1 to version 4. Most of the games using 4 are yet to be released, actually, but you can see a lot of modern, high-profile games using version 3.

Basically, they made a free release of the tech that can potentially power the gaming equivalent of Hollywood blockbusters. In filmmaking, the equivalent would be getting all the professional studio equipment for free.

garirry · Post by **garirry** » Sat Mar 14, 2015 3:53 pm

Oh, I have heard of some of these games, like Mass Effect and Borderlands, but I'm particularly surprised that Mighty No. 9 also used this engine. Thanks for the info.

Technos72 · Post by **Technos72** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 2:34 pm

Wow, what an amazing free game program. I think I should make the switch to this seeing how I'm worried about using GM8 any more. It's going to act jerky when I get a Windows 8 laptop with GM8. I don't like GMS at all so I won't use it. Also I haven't done any game programming for three months. I'll try this out one day.

garirry · Post by **garirry** » Sun Mar 22, 2015 4:17 pm

Technos72 wrote:Wow, what an amazing free game program. I think I should make the switch to this seeing how I'm worried about using GM8 any more. It's going to act jerky when I get a Windows 8 laptop with GM8. I don't like GMS at all so I won't use it. Also I haven't done any game programming for three months. I'll try this out one day.

It's not a game making software like GM8, it's an engine; I don't recommend switching to this from Game Maker, it requires a lot of knowledge and experience with 3D and programming. I'd always recommend to anyone to start with 2D games before touching 3D.