Overview of the UDK research and the final decision regarding the game's development kit
 

UDK (Unreal Development Kit):

            UDK is the ideal graphic engine for designing 3d games, using numerous features that make the engine more about designing the game and less about programming it (Unreal Kismet, Unreal Cascade and Unreal Matinee). Also add-ons like the Bink Video Codec, the SpeedTree Foliage Editor and the FaceFX Facial Animation make the engine more capable with less effort. Although these awesome features are truly brilliant there is one major draw-back... the learning curve. UDK is the best open source game engine today and arguably one of the best overall game engines, but it takes time to learn and understand how some major features work. It’s only when you get to know the engine that it becomes creative and unbeatable. Unfortunately considering our deadline that was given to us a month ago (Deadline: January 2013) we do not have the luxury to spent time on learning the UDK.

Below is a quick description of the features mentioned above:

Unreal Kismet: is a very flexible and powerful tool that allows to script complex gameplay flow and events in levels. Using a visual interface it allows you to connect simple functional Sequence Objects to form complex sequences.

Unreal Cascade: is a tool for creating particle-based effects using emitters (sub-objects that control what kind of particles to make, how many, how the particles will move and more).

Unreal Matinee: is a tool for keyframing the properties of Actors in your scene over time, including their position. Also used for placing every camera, object and explosion within the world and even play it back in real time or create cinematic sequences in your level.

Bink Video Codec: the widely used codec for effortlessly adding and configuring videos in the game.

SpeedTree Foliage: An award-winning solution for animating wind-blown trees, lush jungles, thick forests and more.

FaceFX Facial Animation: Cutting-edge solution that enables developers to create realistic facial animation. Gives you the ability to achieve face animation perfection using sound files and without ruining lip-synchronization.
 

Final decision:

During week 4 the whole group was throwing ideas and expressing their doubts regarding many open source game engines and editors like the iceCream tile editor for XNA, the tIDE tile editor also for XNA and of course the infamous UDK. Almost every game engine and editor passed through the team's microscope. After hours of researching and testing a final decision was made. That decision was to develop the game using the XNA for the game’s logic and for the game’s rules along with the tIDE tile editor for better and faster level design.

Now currently at week 5 the development has started and finally we can have a look at the editor’s capabilities. It’s not what we were hoping for but if we manage to solve some problems I think that at the end of the semester we are all in for a treat.