Introduction

The release of the Unreal Development Kit is really the first time a powerful 3D commercial game engine has been available to the masses of ordinary people for free. The underlying technology has been used for numerous high-quality commercial triple-A games that you see in the retail stores in the United States and around the world. The UDK contains the Unreal Engine 3 3D graphics engine and related tools that would normally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only limitation is that the C/C++ source code used to create the UDK is only available to those who pay the full license fee. Thus, you can not modify the UDK engine itself.

This book provides an introduction to using this technology, including the UnrealScript language, for creating 3D iOS games. I have used the technology extensively and used it to create a full commercial physics puzzle type game for iOS similar to the iOS game Angry Birds. It is a powerful tool that is excellent for iOS development. My intention here is to give others a quickstart guide for creating their own iOS games and share game frameworks I've developed that readers can use as the basis for their own work.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for people that want to use the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) to create 3D games for Apple's iOS platform. This includes devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. This book also is useful for people that want to develop games on the PC platform with the UDK since much of what is covered in this book would apply to creating a game for the PC as well.

This book assumes the reader has some experience with an object-oriented programming language like C++ or at least some programming experience in general. However, several basic game frameworks are presented in this book as a means to help those who are not professional programmers build their own game using the frameworks as a starting point.

It is also assumed that the reader has some basic knowledge of how to use an iOS device since the final game created using the UDK will be played on the actual iOS device.

General Layout of the Book

Before we cover the general layout of this book there are some key points that the reader should note. First, this book is not designed to cover every feature of the UDK since that would realistically involve a set of books, not just one. This book concentrates on the programming side of game development using the default set of assets that come with the UDK. Also, in terms of programming, this book is not meant to provide a full reference to the UnrealScript programming language. This book also isn't intended as a general introduction to iOS development. We have mentioned links to web sites that provide additional useful information throughout this book. Some of the more important ones are listed in the “Other Resources” section at the end of this introduction.

The general format of this book is to discuss UDK topics and then demonstrate these topics in the form of a “Hands-On Example” in which we show you how to develop an UnrealScript program along with the creation of any levels that are needed. We take you, step by step, through these examples along with showing you how to set up any configuration files that are required.

We start with overviews of the UDK and UnrealScript, including a practical coding example. Then we work through key topics with hands on examples and culminating with a complete sample game. Some of these topics rely on 3D math concepts that are reviewed and demonstrated in a separate chapter. Then, in the latter part of the book we present game frameworks which are actually small working games that you can modify and use to build your own custom games. Game frameworks include a physics game, a first-person shooter game, a third-person shooter/adventure game, and a top-down shooter/role playing game.

Other Resources

Epic Games provides a wealth of resources you can use to supplement what you learn in this book:

..................Content has been hidden....................

You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.
Reset
3.147.53.168