Between working on Pong and work, I've recently taken up working with the Unreal Development Kit (UDK).  Back before Unreal Tournament 3 came out I started toying with the Unreal Tournament 2004 editor and didn't get very far.  When Unreal Tournament 3 came out, I grabbed a copy simply to play on PS3 and wasn't too big of a fan of some of the gameplay choices Epic had made.  I returned the game and went on my way.

However as time passed I realized I really enjoyed the look and feel of the engine and decided ultimately to join a group that was creating a mod for Unreal Tournament 3.  I drove to my local Best Buy and picked up a copy of the standard Unreal Tournament 3 (now on I'm referring to it at UT3, too much typing!) for a low priced $20 (exceptionally good deal!).  UT3 came with a great editor that, even though I had scored some of the development videos produced for the limited edition, was much too difficult for me to grasp.  Unfortunately, I was too much of a noob to continue on the mod and dropped off the team.

But now, with UDK, UE3 (Unreal Engine 3) is more streamlined and easy to use than ever.  There are some great video resources available on the UDN (Unreal Developer Network) produced by some of the same 3DBuzz guys that created the limited edition videos.  It may have been that I just didn't understand the editor previously, but I find many more components of it simpler to use and the editor overall is much less buggy.

I find myself thinking of new concepts to place into levels and how I am going to approach them using Unreal Matinee (Unreal's built-in keyframe animator) and Kismet (Unreal's visual scripting language).  There are many other pieces of the editor I have yet to work with (including the particle animator and the actual scripting engine) though it's interesting to start thinking in a different mindset when using a toolset that is new to me.  I think with UE3 it's more of a leap than from programming language to language because here it isn't only syntax, it's more of a logic process.  While I find it exceptionally difficult to get things working in the engine when I don't have someone holding my hand, I feel a great sense of pride when I do figure something out.

And that brings me to today, here, babbling about UE3.  I would suggest anyone who wants to build levels to begin with UE3 as long as their computer can handle it (which shouldn't be too bad for any semi-serious developer).  I will update in the near future with links so you can start your journey into UE3, but until then, try googling 'UDK', 'Unreal Tournament 3', or 'UDN'.