IdTech 4 Dev Kit In The Works To Rival UDK, Unity

Community modders are hard at work to convert the idTech 4 source code into a workable SDK to enable entry-level developers to design games using id Software's idTech 4 Engine for indie projects.

The news comes courtesy of Planet Doom [via Blues], where it was revealed that D3 GPL tutorial creator and modder, jmarshall23, will be heading up the project to make the Tech 4 tools user-friendly enough to rival the free Unreal Development Kit by Epic Games or Unity Technologies indie-friendly Unity Engine.

Basically, those who use the Tech 4 dev kit would be able to make games using all the features and tools that allowed id Software to make Doom 3. Pretty snazzy eh?

This is definitely a good time to be an indie dev, especially with so many affordable means for creating high-quality games on a basement-living budget.

A few of the features of the Tech 4 SDK can be viewed below. For further information about the project feel free to visit the Official Planet Doom Website.

FEATURES:

Renderer:

GLSL Support(asm code removed). The Glsl interaction shader is a heavily modified version of raynorpat22 glsl shader. The GLSL handling class is mine.

Deferred Renderer(point lights only, no shadows yet).

Parralax Occulusion Bump Mapping

Post process/color temperature stuff(nasty needs to be looked at).

MD5StaticMesh format for static meshes(made from a fbx files from the editor). LWO/ASE/etc formats have been removed.

Support for high-res GUI's(1280x720).

Tools:

The ENTIRE tools codebase has been moved to a external DLL(to prepare for migration to .NET). The rest of the code no longer links/includes MFC. ModelStudio for importing FBX files and converting them to a MD5StaticMesh. You can preview your mesh, and later I will add support for skeletal meshes and completely deprecate MayaImport.

More streamlined usage of tools(can launch map from the editor, and can open all the editors from radiant)...still not artist friendly but its a step towards that.