Make Something Unreal - Phase 4 winners

Winners of the last phase of Make Something Unreal are announced. This is the last phase and it concludes 2 years long contest. Here are the categories and the winners.

Best Art in a Game Mod

Airborn by Steffen Unger

Airborn is an action adventure total conversion for Unreal Tournament 3 in a fantastic world on flying islands eons after the world has collapsed from overexploitation.

Best Graphics in a Map

The Haunted Lost Temple by The Haunted Team

This version of TH-Temple is specialized version of the Lost Temple only
available for the MSU contest.

Best Machinima

The Plan by John Beswick

A little animated short about a toy with a plan. 

Best Vehicle Set

Angels Fall First: PlanetStorm Mod by AFF Team

A huge collection of futuristic vehicles are available to pilot in this hybrid
FPS/RTS mod that has 11 unique vehicles from huge space destroyer ships,
versatile space fighters, tanks, and more.

Best Use of Physics

Project Swing by Scott and Aaron Ash

Project Swing is a physics oriented vehicle gametype. Players use a
scavenger-like vehicle equipped with grappling hooks that attach to enemies
(primary fire) and strategically placed grapple points (alt fire) around the
map.

Best FPS Mod
The Ball by Toltec Studios

The Ball offers an adventure that puts you in the boots of an explorer who
gets stuck in a cavern and bumps onto an ancient complex holding a mysterious
ball. While making your way through the internal workings of ancient ziggurats,
golden cities, and huge caverns, your only companion is a giant gold and
metal-shelled ball.

Best non-FPS Mod
The Haunted by Michael Hegemann

The Haunted is a fast paced third-person horror-action game which can be
played in singleplayer against AI monsters or in multiplayer, where one player
is the haunted and the other players control and spawn the enemies.

Best Level for a Mod
Hazard: The Journey of Life by Alexander Bruce

A philosophical single player first person environmental puzzle art game
that will change the way you think about the life. This very non-standard game
was selected as a finalist in the Sense Of Wonder 2009 Experimental Gameplay
project at the Tokyo Game Show.

So these are the winners only of this contest. There are many other entries you should check out if you got bored with standard UT3. This content was always an opportunity and showcase for many modders. Again, I wish Epic or somebody else would make a DVD ISO of all winners (including 2nd, 3rd and 4th place) for all phases so we can get it in one go. I hate getting them down separately from different sites...

Anyway, this should consume another sizeable chunk of your free time. Go and have fun.

Protoss in Wings Of Liberty

There were some questions posted on Battle.Net forum about availability of Protoss missions in upcoming Wings of Liberty game. As usual, there is a number of replies to original post but the most interesting one is from Blizzard RTS community team. Here is his reply:

I won't go into details, since we don't give out information on the campaign of StarCraft 2, but I can confirm that there will be a Protoss mini-campaign that lets you control Protoss units. This part of the campaign mode is of course way shorter than the Terran part, but it is very fun to have a very different playstyle to add even more variety to the game. I am sure every Protoss fan will love this part of the Campaign! 

That being said, the Protoss mini-campaign will not prepare you for the multiplayer as Protoss, you won't be using all units or getting to know buildings and upgrades. In general, even for Terran, it is not the objective of the singleplayer to show how to play the game effectively, it is to tell a story and do a lot of fun things, that would not be possible in multiplayer. The Challenges, mini-missions, that ask you to complete a very specific task, are more suited to give players the opportunity to learn how to use the units and how to play the game.

All we have to do now is wait until Wings Of Liberty is released. I just hope we won't have to wait until Legacy of the Void is released to see any of the Zerg campains, even a mini one.

Blizzard, be nice a add a mini Zerg campain in WOL please.

Happy New Year 2010!

If you read my other blog you know I was away during Christmas break. Now I'm back and slowly catching up with news and events in gaming arena.

It does not seem much was happening in these 10 days.

Here are things I would like to see in this year (it is already 10:25 AM, Jan 1 2010 in Auckland)

• Starcraft II (more than first game)
• Diablo III
• Gran Turismo 5 
• Little Big Planet map packs (if not LBP 2)
• more tables for Zen Pinball
• more games supporting DirectX 11

That's all for now, have a very Happy New Year!

Make Something Unreal Phase 4 finalists

Finalists for "Best use of Physics" for Phase 4 are announced on Unreal Tournament forum. The finalists are:

• The Ball http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-ball
• Crucible http://www.runestorm.com
• PlanetStorm http://www.moddb.com/mods/angels-fall-first-planetstorm
• Steam Racers http://www.moddb.com/mods/steam-racers
• Project Swing http://www.moddb.com/mods/projectswing
• XS Vehicles http://www.fileplanet.com/204529/200...---XS-Vehicles
• DM-RB-Derelict http://www.fileplanet.com/204340/200...DM-RB-Derelict
• DM-RB-Mayhem http://www.fileplanet.com/204334/200...--DM-RB-Mayhem
• DM-RB-Wasteland-SE http://www.fileplanet.com/204332/200...B-Wasteland-SE
• DM-RB-ZeroG http://www.fileplanet.com/204342/200...--DM-RB-Zero-G
• Robo Coop http://www.fileplanet.com/204330/200...Robo-CO-OP-Mod
• CarBall 3 http://www.carball.net/
• Takeshi Gladiators http://www.fileplanet.com/204749/200...9;s-Gladiators
• VCTF-RumplesRaceway_Twisted http://www.fileplanet.com/204531/200...aceway_Twisted

Even these are not finalists following got Honorable Mentions:

• XS Prototypes
• MillagunUT2D
• UnWheel 2
• Snarf Vehicles
• DM-NewHorizon
• VCTF-Electro
• UT2D Killing Time
• Cubes of Serenity
• TRE - Last Life
• DM-RB-Labyrinth 

Here are few examples of finalist's work.

There are many other contestants and it is worthwhile to have a look at other entries. If you have some spare time head to Make something Unreal site and start downloading.

UDK released!

After a long wait Epic Games has finally released UDK – Unreal Development Kit. If you haven’t heard of it before, UDK is complete development environment for Unreal 3 engine. Of course there are some restrictions – it is free for non commercial use only. There were lots of examples for use of UDK in past like VRND – Notre Dame visualization demo and others.

Epic has excellent reputation when it comes to supporting user community. We all know about Make something Unreal contest with $1,000,000 prize pool and EDK equivalent for older versions (Unreal Engine Runtime, etc)

UDK content

Like with UT UDK comes with famous UnrealEd. In its own UnrealEd is very powerful editor and it may take a while to master it. If you do invest time and learn it rewards are great. Just look for custom maps for UT3, check out Community Bonus Packs for maps made by users.  If you are very new to UnrealEd check out videos at 3D Buzz.

Apart from editor you also get all components of Unreal 3 engine:

• Unreal Matinee – for creating cinematic
• UnrealScript – build prototypes and add gameplay elements
• PhysX support and PhAT physics editor
• Lightmass – lighting and shadowing engine
• Terrain editor
• LAN and direct IP support
• Ogg Vorbis audio support
• AI with crowd behaviour
• Swarm – distributed computing support for increased performance
• Destructible environments
• SpeedTree editor
• FaceFX facial animation

This list is not complete but gives you an idea what to expect. The UDK is used by Epic and other game developers to create games like Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War, BioShock, Borderlands and many more. For complete list of feature go here.

 

Support content

Just looking at the list of features makes you realize that making something useful is not an easy task. Even with all videos available it is not that simple. Epic is very much aware of that and they have provided some content to help you to get things rolling.

There are 7 maps you can butcher, I mean open, explore and customize. The list includes famous DM-Deck, DM-Sanctuary, VCTF-Necropolis and VCTF-Sandstorm.

There is also a simple ExampleMap if you find others too complex to start with (I would recommend you to start with this Example Map). There is lot of other content provided like vehicles, characters, weapons, textures, etc.

 

Separate UDK downloads

If all of the sample content is not enough there are 3 showcase applications you can download:

• Whizzle – 2D platform game developed in UDK by Psyonix
• The Ball – entry for Make Something Unreal content
• UT3 demo

On-line documentation is available but I haven’t checked it out yet. If it is anything like in the past there will be plenty resources for you.

Starcraft II Battle report IV

A few days ago Blizzard has released a new video - Battle report number four. This time it was a battle between Protoss and Terran.

This is another interesting video showing lots of possibilities of Starcraft II and several nice strategic moves. Video is similar length to other battle reports - 19 minutes.

Due to other engagements I don't have time to write up comments until the mid November. Then I will post more about this report. Until then go and get it from Startcraft II page.

GT 5 high resolution screenshots Ferrai Enzo and Lamborghini Gallarado

Just after my yesterday's post some high resolution scrennshots of Ferrari Enzo and Lamborghini Gallarado LP 560 have emerged. Here is just a selected few of them to showcase the beauty and level of details Polyphony Digital is building into the game.