I have UDK, I've browsed around in it a bit, but haven't really used it for anything yet. If anyone ever gets seriously interested in it, as in ready to put the time and effort into making a serious game, let me know, and we can either work together, or just work separately on individual projects, but ask each other questions. I have my own game idea, but I'm not really going to take the enormous time required to make it in UDK unless there is some additional form of motivation.
To everyone thinking about using UDK: you have no idea how much work it requires. You need expert coding skills, modeling skills, and an advanced knowledge of 3D environments and effects.
I have tried it out just a little bit. It's really a massive system. I have worked with OGRE and OGRE is quite big, but UDK seems massive even compared to OGRE. It's just way too much for my current needs. xD
Yeah, 'massive' is a good way of putting it. I'm pretty sure that > 99% of indie projects using UDK fail, which is why serious is the key word here. Probably years of development time.
UDK had a strict non-commercial license, right? I think you have to pay a nice sum in order to be able to use a UDK made game commerically.
Right, if you use it commercially (http://udk.com/licensing.html), you have to pay $99 dollars for the initial license, and a 25% royalty on all revenue exceeding $50,000.
Still better than paying $100000 for the full UT engine license. #_#
That depends on how big your game is. If you use it to make the next Halo and sell a million copies, then the 100000 is a better idea. Ideally, your game using UDK will never break 250000.
But when I said make a serious game, I said nothing about selling it. For my personal project idea, even though the quality would be comparable to a $60 game, the most I would do would be to put it on steam for $5. I'd probably just release it for free.