How versatile is UT2k4 for modding?

[wayskobfssae]

I'm currently trying to get all the info I can, and weighing the pros and cons of the 3 major FPS engines, Quake, UT, and Doom3.

Based on popularity and performance alone, I'm tending towards UT right now, but knowing the UT games are designed with a very limited singleplayer experience, I don't know if it can do any of the fancy tricks I need it to. Does UT support triggered events? By this I mean quakes, explosions, keypads, keys for doors, cinematic cutscenes, non-agressive characters, etc. My mod will have a story and world as rich and interactive as Prey, and I want to know fore sure that UT is capable of this. Unless they just decided to include these features for the modders, I couldn't see them being in a game that is meant to be 99% online deathmatch play.

[Parkar]

Yes, it is very much capable of doing that.

Triggered events is easy to set up and in many cases you don't need to do any scripting at all.

Keep in mind that since not a whole lot of stuff used in single player is there you may have to write more code your self compared to doom3. There is already ai about as capable as the ai in doom3 so that should not be a problem. Expect to write a lot of code but in the end that's true no matter which one you chose.

Also you can save progress in UT even though it's not used by the game. It was added in a patch for single player mods IIRC.

If I were in your position I would pick UT as but thats mostly because I have most experience using that engine and I would probably be aming at ue3(ut2007) or DNF and just use UT2004 for prototyping.

[Dae_Man]

Source (HL2) would be a great one for singleplayer play.

The entity I/O system is fantastic, and not too hard to get into.

It uses an editor based on one of the old Quake editors, so it's damn easy to use.

I'm currently trying my hand at Prey mapping, and I tell you, the Doom3 map editor is a pain in the ass compared to HL2's Hammer editor.