Working with unrealED

Since I started studying at Futuregames I've been playing around with the unrealED to get my bearings with the engine. My first creation turned out to perhaps become something interesting so I decided to continue working on it.

As a Hammer user since about 7 years back i thought i would find it difficult to get used to working with a new editor, but to my suprice, that wasn't at all the case. UnrealEDs basics proved to be very similar to Hammer, and since it offers tons of more tools and import/export capabilities I now feel like I'm really at home.

UnrealED is extremely easy to get around with and the way it handles packages and content and custom materials is very very impressive. Not to mention you can preview lighting within the editor! Such crazyness has never been Hammers strongest side. Another important note is that along with the game when you buy Unreal comes a DVD with 20+ hours of video tutorials that shows your way around the editor. Thats just awesome. The quality of the tutorials are much, much higher than Noesis tutorial DVD's for Hammer (which in my humble opinion shouldnt be allowed to be sold at all considering the low quality and very high cost).

However one thing that speaks in favor for the Source engine is the fact that Unreal is extremely focused on mesh based geometry, while source uses BSP for the most part. This makes it much more difficult to come up with original designs only using the editor when working with unreal. I believe that the pros easily outweights the cons, especially now when the Unreal Development Kit has arrived which enables anyone to make their own games with epics technology at no charge if you don't make more than 5000$ out of the product.

Anyways, heres some pics of what ive been doing the past 3 weeks: