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Mastering Unreal With Instruction Videos
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a HomeLan Fed interview with Jason Busby of 3D Buzz, talking about the Mastering Unreal project, an Epic-backed service which releases free, downloadable videos teaching users how to create levels, vehicles, AI, and whole mods for Unreal Tournament 2K3. According to Busby, "Currently, we have 64 videos available for download.. the videos themselves range anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, depending on what is being covered and the amount of information that we must get across to the student." This project is running in conjunction with the Make Something Unreal mod competition we covered a few days ago, and seems like a very positive step to help people get creative and make cool new game mods/assets.
He just recently put out a video series on modelling an entire low polygon character in Maya for use in UT2K3.
Good stuff.
The Unreal Wiki
The Editing Forums at Beyondunreal
Chimeric
Like I said, those are just a few of the places to go - you'll undoubtedly find more :)
It's interesting to see the changing styles of game companies as they begin to view their community as a resource for continuing the viability of their games. Can you imagine a company creating a computer language and then making themselves the only source of applications written in this language? Possible, but pretty foolish in this day and age.
Valve Software started it early on with Half-Life, creating and releasing editing tools, an SDK, and more importantly a real community for the development of mods and conversions to their game Half-Life. Valve's been by far the most successfull company at leveraging this to their advantage. I dare say they would not be the same company at all if it were not for the popularity of Half-Life mods such as Counter Strike, Team Fortress Classic and Day of Defeat.
It's great to see other companies getting on the ball to continue this trend.