greg I have a question about game creators!

[armbuck]

hello greg, i have a question about game creators say for the game engine "Unreal Engine 3" http://www.unrealtechnology.com/features.php?ref=technology-overview would they have 3D molding software in there? and also for making a game company what other software would i need for my artist and game designers and programmers? do i just need a game engine for them and it all comes in one kind of thing or do i need to buy separate things like a 3D molding tool, game engine, ect. And is there any other tools that designers need to use please tell me if there not in this list
.Photoshop
.3D Studio Max (*if you could explain what this means)
.development system (*if you could explain what this means)
i am getting my source from http://greggman.com/pages/making2.htm in the category "Time and Money". could you please tell me what my original question is above about the software and what 3D Studio Max is and what is a development system is. Thank you
Steven

[greggman]

The unreal engine does not come with modeling tools so you will need modeling software like 3dsmax or Maya. You will probably also need zBrush because making the detailed parts of characters for an engine like Unreal is too hard in 3dsmax.

Your artists will need stuff like photoshop to make textures and interface elements.

Your musicians will need various kinds of music software although it is common to outsource music (meaning to hire a separate company to make the music and sounds for you)

Programmers will also generally need a programming tools like Microsoft Visual Studio and possibly a text editor or similar tools

The team will also need asset management tools like Perforce to help manage everything that is being created. If the game is small you can do that with something like Subversion but if you are making a typical 360, PS3, Wii size game then Subversion will not handle the amount of data those games typically generate during development.

A development system generally means A powerful PC with large monitors because the software like Unreal, 3dsmax and Maya have so many controls that unless you have a large monitors you can not work effectively. They also need to be fast and have lots of memory and large hard drives because those programs need that.

Development system also means that if you are making a console game (PS3, 360, DS, PSP, Wii, etc...) there is special hardware you have to by from Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo usually called a "Development Kit" that is a special version of the particular system with a way to connect it to a PC so you can create the game. They come with programming libraries and compilers as well for those specific systems.

Now a days there are often 2 ways to do development. The professional way where you buy the official dev kit and the indie way where you buy some more limited dev kit. For example for the 360 the indie way is called the XNA Game Studio. It's cheap, $100, but it requires you to use XNA to make your game. A professional team would generally buy the offical dev kit which is much more expensive and then they could use an engine like Source, or Unreal to make their game.