The Make Something Unreal is created for you to have fun working with the engine while making something Unreal to share with the community! It is broken into four different phases each are not dependant upon each other. The idea behind having four phases is to encourage people to enter early and often, and to keep improving their mods over time. You can enter the same mod in all four phases of the contest but, in order to be judged, there must be noticeable improvements to the mod upon the second or third submission. We're anxious to tell the world about your mod, but we'll want your help to do so. If you have an official web site for your mod, then we'll happily post your URL, along with the download URL you provide for the mod itself, on our contest web site once it is fully operational. One thing we're anxious to do with this mod contest is to help mod makers get professional status. Nearly half of the people who work on Epic Games' development team were former mod makers! We want to help you can make it to the big-time too.

You can enter any phase you wish, and do not need to be a winner of previous phases. If you win any phase you are free to enter the next phase once it opens (Except for Grand Finals which required you to be a finalist of Phase 4).

Phase 1 which is already closed and judged focuses on early development mods for UT2003. Phase 2 which is already closed and judged is also for UT2003 and gives users a bit more time to work their mod. Phase 3 is currently already closed and judged requires your mod works on UT2004 and we suggest it installs using Umod. Phase 4 must be entered by already closed and judged and work on UT2004. If you are working on Unreal as part of a school project we invite you to enter Educational Awards by already closed.

All phase prizes and details can be found on our Categories page. We invite you to download the already judged entries which you can find by using the navigation above.

Never learned how to make something UnrealŪ, but want to get in on more than $1,000,000 in cash and prizes available in this contest? Want to be a big-time professional game developer? Never fear. There are over 120 hours of FREE downloadable Video Training Modules at www.masteringunreal.com. Check them out and feel free to let us know what else you'd like to see there.

The real-time non-interactive movie (also know as Machinima - for more information see www.machinima.org ) category is for aspiring Hollywood types that want to make an amazing cinematic experience. You can use any subject as long as it is tasteful. You might also want to enter your creation in the Machinima Film Festival!

Please read the End-User License Agreement that comes with either UT2003 or UT2004. It says exactly what you can and can't do with your mod. To be eligible for this contest, your mod must be in compliance. Particularly, you can't enter mods (or create mods for that matter) that are used to promote a product or service in any way.

Teams that create mods should choose one person to represent the mod and file the entry for the contest. Cash and hardware prizes will be awarded to that person and it is his or her responsibility to distribute winnings to the remaining team members - so choose someone you trust!

What does winning an Unreal Engine mean? It means that you have some pretty amazing options. With an engine license under your belt you could create a commercial version of your mod and then sell it yourself or find a publisher to do that for you. You could create a whole new game using the Unreal Engine development skills honed while creating your contest entry. When you talk to publishers, you can have the confidence of having a pre-paid Unreal Engine license worth $350,000! But the best news is that this Unreal Engine license applies to both the current generation of the technology and the next, third generation of Unreal Engine technology, so you'll be set for the future. Note: the engine license is for the Microsoft Windows PC platform only.

The educational category is open to any student or faculty member of any accredited school. This can be a high school, university, community college, etc. You don't have to build the mod on behalf of any official school project or function. You simply have to be an enrolled student or faculty member and submit a mod for the contest and the name of your institution. In order to be eligible in each category, the school will be required to verify your status and indicate that they would accept the systems, use them for educational (not administrative) purposes, and allow us to use their name publicly when listing contest winners. We know there are LOTS of schools out there that could use high-end computers like these, so we want to make sure they're going to good use.

In addition to the 50 computers being given away to educational institutions, we're also giving away 50 computers to contest winners! For some prizes, specifically those where we suspect it will take a team of people to win, we're giving away multiple computer systems. For example, if you win first or second place in the best FPS mod category in Phase 2, you would get two computers along with your cash prize! We expect the best mod teams in the contest to walk away with several computers by winning computer prizes within multiple categories in multiple phases. It will be up to the team leader (the person elected by the team to submit the mod entry) to let us know to whom each computer should be awarded. Sorry, but we can't settle disputes over prize distribution, so please choose someone you trust as team leader.