Mastering Unreal Technology: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3

by Jason Busby, Zak Parrish, Jeff Wilson

Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3 is your start-to-finish guide to modding and level design with the world’s hottest new gaming Unreal Engine 3. Here’s everything you need to know to jumpstart your skills and create stunning new content and games for consoles and PCs alike! Your authors aren’t just the world’s #1 Unreal game development They’ve even built the training modules that shipped with Unreal Tournament 3: Limited Collector’s Edition. Now, working with the full cooperation of Unreal Engine 3’s creators, Epic Games, they introduce every facet of game development—from simple level creation to materials, lighting, and terrain...even advanced level optimization and streaming! Packed with tips, hands-on tutorials, and expert techniques, Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I is all you need to create levels that look spectacular and work brilliantly...levels that gamers just can’t stop playing! You’ll find expert tips on Winner of the Front Line Award for best game development book of 2009!

889 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2008

Reviews

[Cynbel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though there are a few things in this book that are either updated or out of date in UDK, unless using UT3 along with the book instead of UDK, it is still a very useful and helpful book for starting off with UDK. It covers a little bit of everything need to design levels in UDK and the knowledge gained can be used to start trying your own ideas out, you can't expect one book to tell you how to do everything and you shouldn't.

Not counting anything outdated, there are quite a few errors in the book, which is to be expected in any large technical manual. A few spelling errors, even some offset figs. Nothing that could really mess things up if you are paying attention and learning the material.

If you are using UDK and not UT3, note that some maps won't load in UDK, only in UT3 also always make sure you Fully Load the packages for each chapter (I copied the files from the disk to the UDK content folder). Also when working on Chapter 12, I'd suggest opening each map then saving them in your own folder, else they fail to import for sequencing, probably because they are in .ut3 format.