“We are very excited to see the uptake of UDK cross over the 50,000 mark in only one week, and we’re looking forward to seeing amazing games and applications come out of it,” said Mark Rein, the vice president of Epic Games.

Rein added Epic was “thrilled” to offer the kit to schools and students and that Unreal Engine 3 would be part of their education and training in games development.

GamesIndustry.biz reported that the training firm 3D Buzz, which has already made more than 100 Unreal Technology video tutorials, will release a free tutorial series specific to the UDK.

50,000 Grab Free Unreal SDK In One Week [GamesIndustry.biz]

What does this mean? It means modders have access to some of gaming’s finest characters, and can alter their appearance and movements as they see fit. This will help out now only those looking to spice up the appearance of the game, but machinima enthusiasts as well, as it’ll allow them to “have more control over how characters animate in their movies”.

There’s no exact release date as of yet, but Valve say it’ll be out “in the next week or so”.

Developers ACE Team have released the tools – which will allow users to mess around with items, characters and environments within the game – along with some paperwork on how to get the most out of them, on their wiki page. If anyone feels like giving the guns a little more heft, I’d be grateful.

SDK files & documentation [ACE Team, via Shacknews]

Valve announced the long-awaited PC version update via the official Left 4 Dead blog last week, highlighting the changes that will enable support for add-on campaigns. In effect, it means more widespread access to fresh campaigns beyond the original four—No Mercy, Death Tool, Dead Air and Blood Harvest—thanks to the Left 4 Dead SDK.

Soon, we’ll all be playing Dead Before Dawn—set in the Crossroads Mall from George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead—and a thousand Resident Evil-inspired maps, with the obligatory nude Zoey mod. Hopefully a full recreation of 28 Days Later is currently brewing somewhere.

Left 4 Dead Update Released [Steam News - thanks, Justin!]
Get Your Campaign On [Left 4 Dead Blog]

Next week, Valve will be updating Left 4 Dead so that these custom missions – like the Resident Evil 3 mod we showed you earlier in the day – are both more prominent within the userbase and are easier to download and play.

Firstly, with this update map creators will be able to package their content into a single file (a .VPK). This will make displaying, downloading and installing the campaigns a cinch for other users. The game’s matchmaking system will also be updated to reflect this, with “extensive support for custom add-on campaigns”. Valve explains:

When creating or searching for a lobby, a new option named “Add-on campaign” will let you select from among the add-on campaigns that you have installed. You can then find games or lobbies as well as create a lobby for that campaign. You can invite your friends, too. If they do not have the campaign installed, they will automatically be offered and an option to download it.

Neato.

This is all going to be made possible via the release of the game’s SDK (authoring tools), which after a stint in beta are going to be officially rolled out to the userbase next week. This update will include the source files for all original campaign maps, making both the creation of new maps and the editing of existing ones a lot easier for the general population.

Of course, cynics may point to this as an attempt by Valve to silence the angry mob upset at the impending release of Left 4 Dead 2, and keep them happy with user-generated add-ons rather than official ones. Those cynics are welcome to their opinion; I’m of the belief that with these tools the mod community can come up with stuff just as good, if not better than anything Valve can come up with.

Rather than forcing you to build your own map from scratch, which can be tricky, this update now lets anyone with the time and patience to “alter or edit an existing map” instead. The map files included in the update are Lumberyard, Ravine, Badlands, Dustbowl, Granary, Gravelpit, 2Fort, Badwater, Goldrush, and Hydro.

The best part? This is just the beginning, Valve saying “Our plan is to get more of our TF content source out in the SDK, so look for more maps & model sources in the future”.

Get ‘em, boyos! [tf2]

Hell, you don’t even need an iPhone (though it’s recommended). All you need is an OSX based Mac and, you know, a bit of genius and a lot of work ethic. (Apparently you can actually develop right on the iPhone as well…but who knows how well that’ll work.)

So you’re thinking, “But I want to sell my product on their Apple Store. That’ll cost me a tonne and be impossible”. Nope, it won’t be either of those things.

$US 99 per year is all it costs for a developer to post an unlimited number of titles to iTunes on their own schedule. (Advanced business programming runs up to $US 299 per year). If developers feel like setting a price for their content, Apple takes 30% of the sales. (Boy, that number sounds vaguely reminiscent of Microsoft’s deal for XBLA developers before they were rumored to hike their cut).

While we’re talking money, Apple has a $US 100,000,000 iFund. Think of it as grants that will go to seed software development products. Surely, at least a small chunk of that will entice up and coming game designers.

As for Apple’s screening process, so far it only seems that extreme content (like porn) will be banned from the applications store. Obviously there are implications here—how violent/graphic can game developers make their content?

To that, we still have no answer.

But so far, we really like what we’re hearing. Because today, Apple has made ever developer into a publisher for the most buzzed about products in the consumer electronics industry.

iPhone SDK Available Today for Free, $US 99 to Publish Your Apps [Gizmodo AU]

This is not a cellphone game. This is a full console game. And we underestimated the power of the device. We had to fly in a developer to upscale the art for the iPhone.

Bonus shot after the jump.

Hot. Once again, no confirmation as to whether or not this game is actually going on sale.

UPDATE: It looks like this is planned for commercial distribution as well, given that Sega of America president Simon Jeffery explained, “The iPhone OS is a robust development platform that will allow Sega to deliver mobile gaming experiences that are truly compelling. Using the iPhone’s accelerometer to power a tilt control feature adds a whole new dimension to Super Monkey Ball, and we can’t wait for gamers to try it.”

Gizmodo Liveblog [Gizmodo]

Even if you aren’t the crazy, self-sacrificing DIY programmer type, any ETQW fan can appreciate that a full SDK means new, full maps and mods are on their way. Now if only those crazy, self-sacrificing DIY programmer types would get off their asses and do some coding…

Final ETQW Software Development Kit Released [etqw]

The SDK will allow users to modify most aspects of the game to create everything from tiny tweaks to weapons and units, to full-blown conversions that change the very foundations of the game.

The release of the SDK brings the free program count for World in Conflict up to four, when you include the map maker, movie maker and the broadcast tool. Can anyone think of anything else they’d like to see? Because I’m clean out of ideas.

The SDK even comes with its own wiki, to aid budding mod makers with the basics.

If you’re interested in downloading the SDK, you can grab it via Internode (and plenty of other mirrors, I’d imagine). Also, take note of the requirements:

The installation requires:
- World in Conflict version 1.0.0.3
- WicEd version 1.0.0.1 (WicEd + Hot fix)
- 5-6 GB of additional disk space per installation of the Mod Kit.
- Admin rights on the computer

Sounds reasonably manageable to me.

The Mod Kit is unleashed! [Massgate.net]