Starting with UDK and venturing in to Unreal Script.
After working in RPG Maker and getting a grasp on Valve’s Hammer Editor I decided I wanted to pursue a standalone 3D creation utility. Having watched many tutorials and created a basic map using the editor with Unreal Tournament 3, I decided to give the UDK a go. Many of the things I learned in the Unreal Tournament 3 editor carried over to UDK so straight away I was presented with a familiar interface. This was great for level creation however there was still so much more to UDK that I never had to learn with Unreal Tournament 3. Items such as importing resources, creating materials, and working with skeletal mesh physics and animations to name a few.
I would learn to address these over the coming weeks as I decided on the type of game I wanted to create. Given the abundance of first-person shooters churned out with UDK, I wanted to take a slightly different approach; the platformer (which there is also no shortage of using UDK). Given I am far too inexperienced to create a platformer akin to Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie, I decided to go with the sidescrolling platformer route – ala Contra. I eventually came across a blog on the Vectorform Labs website with some great starter code to create a sidescrolling shooter through UnrealScript. It was implementing this when the realization set in that I would need to gain at least a basic understanding of this programming language.