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> What the hell is Fortnight?

NOT Fortnight, but Fortnite. The parent spelt it correctly.

It's the latest fad in gaming. I've discussed it before.

Are you new to /. because there have been a few stories about it?

* Fortnite Hits 8.3 Million (Or 0.1% of Human Population) Concurrent Players
* Fortnite Was 2018's Most Important Social Network

Just a note that you can get the modern version of Unreal direct from the Epic Game website free of charge too. After going back and trying to find Quake 3 games, looking at new versions of quake and not liking them, I found unreal is largely unchanged and free. I've been playing an hour or so a week for a while and digging it. Check it out!

Sure it's pre alpha but it's working just fine. https://www.epicgames.com/unre...

I'll be curious to see if it played on a $200 TV device. But at least there is a linux version

Here's a real world example of the performance loss from the patch:

https://www.epicgames.com/fort...

Looks like about 60% for that server workload. My guess is that Microsoft made it optional on server versions of Windows after seeing similar numbers.

Some people are seeing >50% performance loss. Take a look at this graph: https://www.epicgames.com/fort...

Clearly they are going to need to spend some serious cash on upgrading their servers. The thread is full of players who can't connect.

Interesting. I reckon they'd have a case against Intel

Datacenters which already patched are apparently getting a performance hit in the high two-digits. Epic, for example, has people complaining because users cannot connect to game servers after the patch doubled servers CPU load.

Some people are seeing >50% performance loss. Take a look at this graph: https://www.epicgames.com/fort...

Clearly they are going to need to spend some serious cash on upgrading their servers. The thread is full of players who can't connect.

Interestingly Intel's CPU data pages contain benchmarks. It will be interesting to see if they update them.

The really have to accept a loss of performance, no choice at all. The fix for the Intel only issue is really killing some server workloads:

https://www.epicgames.com/fort...

50% performance loss for a game server...

As of this moment, it's fully free-to-play. Whether they choose to monetize it at some point in the future (the game's FAQ seems to indicate that they do) is immaterial; if the video is still up (and the courts agree that it's infringing) when they decide to monetize, then it will become an issue.

I'm familiar with the game and, thus, have some insight that you appear to lack. That is why my comment was modded Insightful.

To add one more important detail to this rant, the PVE edition of the game in question - Fortnite - costs 150 Dollars to buy: https://www.epicgames.com/fort... So much for "free to play". No wonder young kids addicted to "achieving something" in these games are looking for ways to cheat.

I also played Quake quite a bit until I migrated to Unreal Tournament. As much as I hate the fact that UT is being redone with the same name as the original, it does seem to be recapturing a lot of the old feel with a modern game. It's still early alpha, but I've found it rather enjoyable so far. https://www.epicgames.com/unre...

There are literally 0 things that are deserving of the hyperbolic expression "epic" that are not Literary Masterworks, or perhaps the Himalayan mountains. Maybe the Atlantic Ocean...

You forgot the makers of the Unreal Engine.

Lots of modern video games, especially on consoles, use a relatively low frame rate (even around 20-30) and motion blur. It's a lot easier to add vector motion blur to a video game than it is to increase the frame rate. Done as a post process on the GPU, it's relatively computationally inexpensive. Even relatively old games (i'm talking 5+ years) use the feature. Example: UT3, the first Mass Effect and the first Crysis. Basically when the image is rendered, a motion vector pass is included and this is passed to a post process which blurs each pixel by a given amount in a given direction. It's very very cheap to do compared to deformation techniques or the brute force of rendering the image multiple times and averaging the result together.

Technology is moving fast. The next generation of games are going to be doing realtime global illumination (UT4, CryEngine 3) and hardware tessellation and displacement -- all on the GPU. 5 years ago that was unthinkable. At this rate, the following generation will probably be doing path tracing -- something that's already doable if you're willing to deal with a low amount of samples per pixel. We'll probably skip the simple raytracing step altogether.

unreal engine isn't so bad on tablets... http://epicgames.com/infinityblade/

Except that that isn't the "free for development" UTK x86 engine we were talking about here, but a much more costly license.

"Also, you may want to produce a game that can run on a tablet or normal notebook, in which case the Unreal engine requirements disqualifies it."

unreal engine isn't so bad on tablets... http://epicgames.com/infinityblade/

it's a fine engine. what you render with it is what makes all the difference if it runs well or not.

DOWNLOAD FUCKING EPIC FUCKING CITIDEL AND TRY IT.

I would, but I have no immediate plan to buy an iPhone or an iPad, and Epic's page mentions no Android version. Google epic citadel android gives news reports that mention an Android version inside Epic's offices, but I see no evidence that the Android version has been released to the public.

No, it's not, and what you're saying makes no more sense than asking, "Who needs <your OS of choice> when we all have a text editor?" You're comparing a simplistic product that runs on a platform to a platform, rather than comparing a platform to a platform. A more apt joke would have been, "Who needs game consoles now that Facebook has games?"

Really, all they're saying here is that the hardware platforms that iterate more frequently will eventually outpace the ones that hold still for the better part of a decade, which is no surprise, given advances in miniaturization and power efficiency. And that effect does matter, because contrary to your analogy, not all mobile games are simplistic and mindless click-fests. A small but increasing number of them are decent titles put out by capable teams who can produce games with solid gameplay that stand up well against their console counterparts.

Take Infinity Blade for example. It's a game with simple mechanics that doesn't succumb to being simplistic. It runs on the Unreal 3 engine, looks stunningly beautiful, and works perfectly well on both the current and last-gen iOS devices. If they're putting out stuff like that now, I can't even begin to imagine what sorts of games will be coming out in three years or five years. By then, we'll hopefully be on Generation 8 consoles, but I wouldn't bet against the mobile devices of that day being more powerful than the consoles we have now.

...if this thing has even halfway decent graphics it WILL pull the juice, so why in the name of all that is good would you want the ability to make a call tied to whether or not you had been gaming?

People are currently playing demanding games on their iPhones, and it's not the end of the world.

Interesting. I suppose you have not noticed that Steam uses OpenGL,

I'll let someone else defend that, since my experience with Steam (generally, that it's a steaming pile of crap) is not typical and isn't even representative of a sample of people that I know.

that Left For Dead 2 just launched on Steam

It's a game essentially written to run on the XBox 360. A game written to run on hardware over five years old is not a great argument for the state of the art. That's multiple generations ago in terms of computer hardware.

and that all of those iOS games on iPhones and iPads all use OpenGL ES?

Along the same lines, a phone and its stripped-down processing power (relative to a laptop, desktop, etc.) isn't a great argument for the state of the art.

It is useless to talk to you since you don't even seem to understand the difference between "DESKTOP" platforms and mobile platforms. A laptop is a mobile "DESKTOP" while a tablet running "ARM" processors is a mobile platform. Each platform type has different form factors and different performance scales. Per watt, the ARM based products like the iPhone and iPad offer more performance than your typical gaming rig which is why Epic games has been able to demo their Unreal Engine 3 at 1024X768 at fast frames per second on an iPad.

http://www.epicgames.com/technology/epic-citadel

Once you understand what you are talking about instead of spouting MSFT talking points then you can get back to us.

let alone get their port forwarding to work for Gears of War

Did the Gears of War developers at least bother to tell you what ports you needed, or did they leave that to be discovered in the forums by a bunch of people guessing random numbers until it kind-of works for some people?

I am a self-taught programmer and I have been programming for over 12 years. I started my interest in programming when I was 12, but wouldn't consider myself into programming until I was 14.

When I was 12, I got a C++ programming book and went through it fairly quickly. My interest was in developing video games like Doom, Quake, etc. At the time I was young and lacked the knowledge or dedication to look into this any further and became attached to HTML/JavaScript, PHP and AS2/3 as a web developer and 2d/3d animator/modeler/artist.

Slightly off-topic bg info: I actually went to school for Media Arts and Animation(Where I flunked out with 1 class to graduate due to financial issues and turned to programming permanently) and while I did take a couple minor programming courses based on AS2, I found that I already knew more than the teachers at my school on the subject from reading through the docs when I was 15-18 and ended up serving as a tutor in the classes(as I did in virtually all classes with nearly straight A's and still unable to graduate from final class, almost laughable if it hadn't cost so much) even though I would now consider my knowledge of AS2 at the time to be infantile. I should have expected as much since the school was dedicated to art students, many of whom could barely work a computer.

Back to the subject: I think the best way to get a new person into programming would be to teach them the fundamentals of object oriented programming first and make sure that it is taught around something they are interested in. For example, if the noobie is interested in games I would suggest teaching them to program in UnrealScript - Unreal Engine 3 - UDK or XNA Game Studio 3.1. If he is into 2d graphics and animation try AS3 or Silverlight(I do not really have experience with Silverlight past a few documentation glimpses and tutorials). If he just likes dealing with data try PHP/MySQL.

The important thing here is to make sure that he grasps the techniques needed to produce reliable, extend-able, clean and well documented object-oriented code. If he's really interested in programming he's probably already good with math and will pick up on the algebraic and geometrical side of things easily in school math classes and be able to relate them to the object-oriented ideas you have already instilled in him allowing him to be able to generate code producing quick visual results with any of the previously suggested packages. All of the languages I have suggested are extremely well documented.

I hope I have been helpful.

The author really should have done more research for this article. Epic games is, typically, not one of the overly protective companies desperately trying to nail down every fan with an idea in the name of Intellectual Property enforcement. The event cited (C&D over a gift doll) was actually done in error and was not sent by Epic themselves but rather their trigger-happy crack legal team. Mark Rein (PR dude) later explained the incident as an accident and publicly apologized for it.

Typically, Epic has been more in stride with Valve in that they actively encourage people to mess with their games in not-for profit ways. They have also released free SDK's and source code for their engines. They've held contests (with cash prizes, noless) in order to cultivate talent and often recruit employees from the community. They've even taken a mod to retail status (Tactical Ops) just like Valve did with Counter Strike. They've also helped to pioneer the feature of community made mods and maps being offered on consoles.

On the whole, Epic is one of the least "evil" gaming companies on the planet right now. And while they're not immune to making mistakes, I personally don't believe they deserve to be unfairly placed on the wrong side of this particular fence.

Here is a link to the official press release from the Epic site: Epic Games Announces the Unreal Development Kit, Powered by Unreal Engine 3.

Epic actually released ZZT as freeware some time back. Although I don't think they have it on their site anymore. Am I the only one really sad to go to epicgames.com and click Previous Releases only to find a list of Unreal games? I really wish the website could celebrate their rich history. It would be even more awesome if they provided the old shareware demos - or even made more of those games freeware since they aren't available anymore. Ah well. :-(

Unreal still came out first, had superior graphics, superior AI, superior sound capability, excellent networking (Dark Engine didn't even have networking), realtime level editor, went on to be used in numerous other games and spawned several successor engines.

It's funny, because even the Unreal sound system was far more advanced than Dark Engine (the sole thing that you're trying to sell). Let's take a look:

Supports 3D positioning via distance attenuation, stereo panning, doppler shifting.
Supports software Dolby Surround sound encoding for full 360-degree panning among the center, rear, left, and right channels (requires a Dolby decoder).
Supports rich, ambient environmental sounds which can be fully controlled from UnrealScript.
Advanced software mixer supports up to 64 stereo channels of music and sound, and mixes to a 32-bit buffer internally for maximum sound quality.
Supports 8- and 16-bit samples using any playback rate from 4 kHz to 44 kHz.
Dynamic sample interpolation enables high-quality pitch shifting without distortion.
Optimized to take advantage of Intel's MMX(TM) technology, with fallback to support regular Pentium® processors.
Supports DSP-style reverb and echo postprocessing on the sound effect stream.
Aural raytracing realistically simulates the echo and reverb characteristics of complex environments. When enabled, UnrealEd pre-computes a reverb kernel for each designer-specified zone in the level.
Supports Microsoft DirectSound and legacy WinMM sound output for backwards compatibility.
Plug-in interface makes it possible to integrate other sound systems into the Unreal technology.
Supports Aureal A3D 3D sound positioning, and the upcoming Creative Labs 3D sound cards.
Supports both CD audio and realtime digitally mixed music. Game designers can mix and match soundtracks in both formats to take maximum advantage of the speed and quality of CD music and the dynamic music and Internet portability of digitally mixed music.
Smooth and instantaneous dynamic music changes for fading between songs, fading between tracks within a song, fading to silence, and instantly switching songs.
Realtime mixing of musical instruments and sound effects.
Supports volume and panning envelopes for professional composing.
Supports up to eight octaves per sample.
Supports all widely used module file formats, including .mod, .s3m, .xm, and .it.

Want more info?

Remain in denial all you want but you're simply wrong. Unreal engine buried Dark Engine in every single way.

I'm in the same boat as you. I was absolutely pumped for the release and I bought the collector's edition because I really liked the fact that Epic would be bringing it to Linux. I even started work on a fun mutator while I waited for the port to come out. As time passed however, I grew more and more skeptic until I reached the point where I just don't care anymore.

Because of UT3 I'll never believe what a company like Epic promises again.

Followup 3:

It seems that xpaddr converts gamepad button presses to keystrokes, and autohotkey is used to send those keystrokes to the correct windows. These guys have gotten this much working. Yet although dual-mouse drivers exist, I have not found people who have gotten two mice working independently in different instances of the game. That said, if you're content with using a gamepad instead of a mouse, this seems to work.

It'd be nice if this mishmash of different software could be bundled together as a single "play games splitscreen" program -- which one could imagine also doing other things, like stripping game windows of borders and decorations, and aligning them all to precisely fill the screen automatically.

A completely different approach would be to use the split-screen desktop software that Microsoft should be releasing before too long, which should (hopefully) make this easy.

Finally, in all of this I haven't considered tricks with Wine and Linux; I assume that some things (like multiple mice) might be easier in such a framework. But I think that for games, a Windows-based approach is probably, if we're honest and not too ideological, much more practical.

You failed in knocking me down a couple of notches, I've learned to be steadfast in my beliefs as those who disagree with me are steadfast in theirs. If Epic didn't want a conspiracy theory they should have just been open in reasoning. Answer one post, and respond to all the new post with links to the one with the answer, case closed, no conspiracy. Deleting post and sweeping the issue under the rug after initially being such a vocal supporter of being cross platform didn't help their case. The Gears of War thing somewhat supported the "conspiracy theory".

Agreed the actual Unreal series has never been officially ported to Linux, though I know the original Unreal can be played with Unreal Tournaments engine, I've had it working multiple times with the hacked installer. Unreal II the Awakening however, I've never heard of working without WINE, I'm going to have to look into that, see if anything has changed.

So, no, not knocked down a notch, not ruling out the possibility of Microsoft having been indirectly a cause of delay, glad they're finally moving to do what they said they would do. I'm just glad that Epic is one of the few companies that usually does pay attention to multi-platform users. Another note, I've had every version of Quake installed and working on both Linux and OS X (not had much luck with the original UT on OS X, but I've got 2K4)

Try disconnecting and reconnecting to Live, and/or run the Live connectivity test and see how it does after that.

** Also, make sure you've got an "Open" NAT **

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=632949

(there's probably better threads, but this one came up first)

The minute they add mouse and keyboard support to 360 and PS3 games, PC gaming is stone dead.

Thats entirely a decision in the hands of developers.

The PS3 supports standard USB Mouse/Keyboard and Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 took advantage of this to support the controls also.

http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=574996

Unfortunately they are the only game developer to have bothered supporting the controller combination so far.

So in other words, the patch was an Epic Fail.

Game is from EA, not Epic.

The last EA game I bought was SimGolf. The final patch introduced new bugs. Still waiting for the fix.

The only fucking games on communist linsux are lamr puzzles and a yahtzee clone thatcan't fucking randomize properly.

Maybe you've heard of a little game studio called Id Software? Or Epic Games? I'm not even going to mention what works on Wine.

Whie we're at it, where are the professional 3D applications?

Oh, I don't know, Maya? That's off the top of my head -- I don't do 3D professionally.

But while we're at it, why did you bring up games in what is clearly an article about professional graphic design hardware? Or do you actually buy Quadro cards and wonder why your games run like shit?

I am not talkin about the gpl3 shit

Like what? Closest I can think of is blender, which is under the GPLv2. Is that what you're not talking about?

BTW, great initals, Richard stallman=RMS Titanic

Yeah, because that was totally unique to the Titanic. Except it wasn't -- it actually stands for "Royal Mail Ship".

Then you wonder why you can't get a fucking job

I'm doing nicely, thank you.

Never suspected it was the Windows fanbois living in their mother's basements all along, though. Thanks for that, you just made my day.

I urge you to download the UT3 demo and try it out for yourself before buying it.

As a huge fan of UT2k4, I was really looking forward to playing the demo for UT3... and I was extremely disappointed. For numerous reasons, I feel that Epic really slaughtered what was once a great game series. And I'm not alone; there are a ton of unhappy folk over at the UT3 Beta Feedback forum.

I've since played the COD4 demo and the Crysis demo. And Crysis will be getting my business. Its gameplay is awesome, the AI is great, and the graphics are stunning. (I really didn't enjoy FarCry very much, but Crysis has me hooked -- I've played through the demo several times already and am just amazed by how well-refined and fun-to-play it is.) Get a copy of the demo and check it out.

Umm... yeah, there's a few more then that announced on the unreal technology website.

Plus at least one US state is using it and 3 US school boards to make interactive 3d learning modules.

So there must be lots of problems with the engine. Either that or one company doesn't know how to read the UDN.

I found a thread with your problem on the Epic forums: http://gearsforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=578715 It's apparently only a problem with the demo and its large installer. The official response is to clear up around 850 megs on your C: drive and try again.

For Windows x64 you'll probably also need this workaround to even be able to install the game.

I did.

Not that you'd get that kind of support from other games companies. It's a beta demo, and they go out of their way to fix and work-around issues. It's beta, so you expect bugs. Just wow.

Yeap.. it's been out for several days now.. it's the hyper-paced action.. but it plays well on my lowly 6600GT..
If you run XP64 or Win2k3 64, there is a 64-bit patch you -might- need. You can find it on Epic's site at http://www.epicgames.com/download/UT3Demo-XP64-2K3.zip

That said..

Can I haz SDK now? kthx!

According to Mark Rein, posting at the Epic Forums, they still are aiming for a release date of the PS3 version sometime before the end of this year.

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=25003889#post25003889

Dang! I was going to post that (like I did in the comments of my own firehose submission. Well, here's the link anyways. Also, he said the PC version will have a demo come out before release.

You're right, they shouldn't license an engine that's still in development if you don't want to find any bugs. They new it was in development when they paid for the license. It would be like me complaining to Linus because I decided to use last nights snapshot of the kernel build and found bugs. It's not finished yet.

And considering the number of projects on this engine, to only have one complaint seems like SK is jumping the gun.

Agreed, with one thing to note. The game Pariah made by Digital Extremes flopped. I know it's not Epic, but it's Epics closest partner in developing the Unreal Tournament Series of games.

It might not be the engine, it might be the implementation. Besides, have you seen all the features the engine has? It's bound to have a few bugs in it. Windows, Linux, and OSX all do. And if there's so many problems, you'd think more of the companies that licensed it would complain. There's lots of companies using it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the video games version of a filler filled album. Whereby an established artist gives us an average/sub-par release due to complacency, degree of difficulty, cocaine addiction, whatever...

Ok guys, you're "not stupid", you know people want the feature, yet, you decide not to give it to us anyway. WTF are you guys, our first girlfriends?? The "if it's too difficult, we won't do it" response REEKS of complacency.

It would not be out of the realm of possibilty to say that the success of a subpar Halo 2 (i.e. no matter what we put out there, those f-ing meatheads will buy it) would fuel a supbar Halo 3. Hope you enjoyed your stay, Bungie

Why does Epic not have control over this even though we created this content on our own time and our own dime? Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn't our store. It's Microsoft's store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They've also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it's the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment.

This thread contains more insight into the situation from the Epic Games CEO:

Click here

Full text from his post below:

Folks,

I think you guys are blowing this up into something bigger than it is. Please listen to the entire podcast before jumping to conclusions.

What we have here is simply a difference of opinion on how to maximize the return on Gears of War - something both Epic and Microsoft want to do. While we create products like Gears because we love games, and we have a passion for making them, at the end of the day this is a business for both companies and how we earn our living.

Epic thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to give the maps away for free and Microsoft thinks the way to maximize the return on Gears of War is to sell the maps. So what we've agreed to do is to put these maps on sale at a reasonable price then make them free a few months later. They did this with the original Halo2 map pack and it was a huge success. Lots of people bought the maps and lots of people downloaded them when they became free. That's what is going to happen and it seems like a fair compromise for both companies and a win-win for Gears players.

Why does Epic not have control over this even though we created this content on our own time and our own dime? Quite frankly Xbox Live Marketplace isn't our store. It's Microsoft's store. Like any retailer they have the right to figure out what goes on the shelves of their store and what price they sell it at. They spend the money to operate the store and deliver the content. They've also spent billions of dollars to create and build Xbox and subsidize it's the price so you can afford it and we can make games for it. As our publisher, they also invested tens of millions of dollars marketing Gears of War, and have done an awesome job for us, so they have a right to a good return on that investment.

As Tim Sweeney and I said in the podcast, we want the download economy to work - it is something the industry needs, something we hope to use in the future, something that will help bring more variety to end-users and ultimately could help bring prices down for end-users. If we had to put this map pack on a disc and sell it in retail it would be more expensive to end-users and maybe we wouldn't have done it because of all the extra work and cost involved.

In the mean time we are planning to bring out an awesome new Gears of War multi-player gametype called Annex that works will all of the existing multi-player maps and the new pack we're talking about here. The 1UP guys who got to play it a few weeks ago left the office raving about how it could be our best Gears gametype yet and I think a lot of people will enjoy it. Best of all, it is totally FREE and will come in the new Gears update that we expect to see released this week.

Something else to consider is sure GoW only solid 2mil copies..
But the majority of that development time is actually split into 2 different titles (at least) and engine licensing.
1- Gears of War .. wee new IP..
2- UT2007 .. I'm wondering if it'll sell as well as GoW? we'll just have to wait and see.
3- UE3 Engine licensing..

Lets do some fuzzy math:
an UE2 Royality-Bearing license ran $350,000 + $50,000 per extra platform.
AFAIK, UE3 License terms haven't been published to the public yet..

According to the front page of http://www.epicgames.com/, there are 21 different annoucements for 'company x licenses UE3'. I figure there are at least few that are not annouced.. and some of those companies are big-boys that may have aquired multiple licenses and or multiple platform licensing.

Now here's the speculation part:
If the UE3 license runs the same as a UE2 license, and there are only 21 titles at base rates.. that's > 7mil just there.. exclusive of price adjustment (something tells me UE3 is more $$) and Royalites (if they use a royal based model still with UE3.. )

Epic in recent years as struck me more as an engine development company, not primarly a game maker.. (don't get me wrong.. i like the UT series ;]

Drop Team
X2:The Threat
Savage 2
Unreal Tournament 2007
Enemy Territory:Quake Wars

"seems obvious to me that they are selling an 'engine' now, with a game as an afterthought. Kind of like id."

Has a single developer actually licensed the Doom3 engine?

The Unreal Engine v3 has already been licensed by many, with no game to act as a tech demo.

http://www.epicgames.com/
Unreal Engine 3: Microsoft, Sony, Atari, Vivendi, Buena Vista, Namco, Bioware, Gearbox, America's Army, etc.

Doom3 Engine: ??

If id's goal was to make the engine as ubiquitous with fps as the Quake3 engine(over 100 games) was then they seem to have failed miserably.

If EULA's were written in plain english and kept short and to the point, without "Lawyer Speak", it could benefit both the company and the User.

At least someone seems to think that an EULA need not be arcane:

1. Thanks. Congratulations and thank you for licensing our software. We're sorry to cramp your style, but out lawyers tell us that if we want to keep control and ownership of the cool stuff we're developing, we have to make sure you understand and agree that you are just buying a right to use it and that that right is limited in certain ways. So what follows is what you need to know and agree to.

6. Termination. This license is effective until one of us terminate it. You may terminate this license at any time by destroying the Software and related documentation. In the unlikely event that you are naughty and fail to comply with any provision of this license, this license will terminate immediately without notice from us. Upon termination, you must destroy the Software and related documentation. Please don't wait for us to come after you; it would not be pleasant for either of us. If we do have to come after you, we're going to expect you to pay us for our troubles, including the cost of our lawyers.

It pretty much says what other EULAs say, but with a sense of humor and fairly straightforward language.

They make a big point in the article about hiring. Here's the link to their open positions:

http://www.epicgames.com/epic_jobs.html

Can't beat that for excitement, just make a bot competition out of it or something. You can even download the unreal engine 2 runtime for free from http://udn.epicgames.com/. UnrealScript will teach basic programming and OO design, and stuff like 'latent' functions make controller logic a lot simpler.

Also, you could easily integrate it with an art programme to teach that side of it.