Matty

Literally just about to get on. Installing the game first cause I had to wipe my HD a little while back and the whir of the disk drive is starting to get to me. Will Skype you when I'm about to get online, k? Shouldn't be more than 5/10 mins.

the .exe is for the PC platform. All you do it open it, install it, and play! Its the "Executable" file that enables you to play the game. The last steap when you are ready to publish whatever game you have created using UDK (known as packaging)

Nah as I said, I am not picky on the envornment I design in. So long as its something cool. I can make any game concept and design.

for instance, a King of the hill game on a tropical island. You have multiple outside tiny islands that players spawn in, before the reach the mid main island they haft to complete a small obstacle course, where then they hit a launch pad that sends them flying into the arena area, to fight for the hill.

or perhaps you are on mars researching the sudden exposure of an alien structure. Where you find out that Mars is actually home of an older human race that tried to accomplish the exact same feat as your race is doing. Trying to escape and warn your superiors, the structure seems to try and "force" you to stay.

Nope, but as I said previously. I have a .exe of a map we build using UDK in a previous project development class in the fall semester. If you want I can send that to you. everything mapping wise was custom, the only that that wasn't was the HUD, Weapons, and characters.

But I do not really get picky at environments. If it fits the art style the team wants to do, I can build any game idea you have to it. :D

UDK has their own "Bot" Character by default. nothing special about him. BUt if you wish to have your own characters, you would need to create them, bone them, socket, them then animate them. Same thing goes for custom weapons and flags. It gets REALLY technical when you want to customize things, you will also need to unreal Script thease custom items too, so the engine knows what to do with it.

As far as setting up AI pathing, its as simple as placing a Path_Node on the map... Done! and weapon pickups are just as easy, Set the pickupfactory on the floor in your world. Go to the properties and pick what it spawns. Done!

The Bots are already predefined, so you don't need to do any AI scrpting. All you need to do is set up a bot spawner (with Kismet) and make a pathing system using PathNodes.

Aslo a good note for importing your own meshes into UDK with Softimage, is importing them as a .fbx file. UDK is most compatible with that.

when using Maya you MUST do this before important ANY meshes:
1)Freeze transformations
2)Delete history
3)Export as .fbx file
4)Import into UDK

Then its all good to go!

(lol I surpassed the 1000 character limit)

Also, UDK effectivly is Unreal. Some things are a little limited on what the have premade for you, but UDK is supposed to be edited in any form or fashion from you. By default, they have 3 weapons, 3-4 armor pick ups 3 health pickups as you would see from the original game. Anything else you would haft to script and create yourself.

Believe it or not but if you are skilled enough, or have an effective team, you can make an entirely new game with UDK that dose not represent anything from Unreal at all. An example would be Borderlands by Gearbox. They used UDK to make Borderlands, and the game dose not reflect Unreal in any way.

I am one of the level designers and main kismet scripter. Yes we haev a website where the team connects and talk when we don't meet. However I am unable to let you view the site, no matter how much I like you. We do not have footage, but I DO have an .exe of a previous project we did last semiseter. (this is a school project.)

Kismet is effectively like programing, however it is much simpler. You still use the same type of logic, but you don't necessarily "Type" the code. Google Unreal Kismet, and you'll understand what I am talking about :P

Yes, to every other question you asked. and here's a nice explanation:

After downloading UDK, you are given a good sum of UDK assets made by Epic. The UDK assets are made for a few demo maps that hey have created to give you a more or less an idea of thins you can do with UDK.

I have used Unreal 3 vaguely, don't ask me to use it again because I've forgotten mkost of its useage.

I do however use UDK (Unreal Development Kit) extensively. Currently I am in a project dev team that is working on making a CTF map using most of unreal's defaults.

I geuss to answer a later question you might have. Or for just sheer information, My strong skill with UDK is Kismet. Love that thing to death!

Edit: Sorry for the delayed reply, I was a noobish idiot and totally replyed in the wrong way XD!

i had to sleep...for 16 hours

yea... once i have something worth showing, my models are still pretty weak. i can show u some short clips that i've animated with the rig that they have us using in class if you'd like to see that.

modeling can be very annoying until you figure out your own workflow. theres a ton of different ways to do things, not all of them being efficient. my whole first class of maya was mostly spent in frustration trying to figure out what i did wrong or where i went wrong, and having to start over completely like 6 times. if you make a small mistake while modeling and dont realize it, it can replicate itself exponentially without you knowing and ruin your entire model. =(

it definitely has a steep learning curve. i struggled with it the first class i took, but im starting to get along with it during the second class, which i am in right now. it is such a vastly complex interface and program that it really takes some practice before you get the hang of things.

are you more interested in animation, or modelling?
i myself prefer the animating. modelling is a huge *****.

uhh v has artic M, Plan B, Chase n status, Pendulum, TTempah manics and kasier chiefs to name a thew. Theres some bad, oh so very bad acts there but looks like a laugh. Reading hasn't been announced yet buuuut should be good, as always haha. Foo fighters, kasabian and red hot chillis are rumored to headline tho.

yeah yeah yeah, just computer problems made me resort to to my old computer in which skype works..but not all the time :p haha have you seen the v fest lineup?! oi better be going reading fest this year x

playing games, visiting the same unis. waiting for results. hows weeds? i mean leeds?

its saturn's moon, so its even further away. so its even more wtf.

the problem i have with DS2 is the solar array because the sun is at such a distance methane acts as water on Titan so you'd get ass amounts of power so it doesnt make sense.

yes
no but want to
and yes.

all pretty ****ing cool.

well the environment changed so there was less opportunity for tension. if they made the levels similar then people would complain. although that said, the ishimura bit where its dark is pretty scary.

like every scary thing, its scariest on first contact. its expected. was a better game though.