Unreal: can you make your mods standalone?

[gaussianum]

  Is it possible to make a bunch of levels for unreal 1, and then repackage them, into something that can be run as a standalone? Or is it always necessary to have Unreal? It's such an amazing engine, it would be really cool to distribute your mods as full-fleged stand-alone games, it really would. Just thought someone here would know, before registering into an unreal forum. Thanks.  

[elite marksman]

Yes, it is possible. Just be prepared to have the Feds show up and start asking questions relating to copyright infringments and such. So its possible, but highly illadvised.

[gaussianum]

  I don't know anyone who is more against piracy than I am. I was pondering the possibility that the publisher could have released the source code for Unreal 1, or made it possible to repackage levels and artwork with some kind of  runtime file, not the entire engine and associated files. But thanks for clearing that up.

[elite marksman]

The entire engine would be needed properly run any files associated with it, and the the makers of the engine would never release it publicly because then any developer would be free to use the engine without paying royalties to whoever made it.

[gaussianum]

  Right you are. But it's becoming obsolete; I remember having great difficulty running it with hardware acceleration with a card  as "recent" as the GeForce FX5200. Plus I've seen  newer products' source code being released, like Mig Alley, and Battle of Britain, but that's perhaps because the company went bankrupt, so it has no bearing on this case.

[kipman725]

well quake 3 is open source and thats a much nicer more modern engine.  If you want a starting point for your own game you should use that  ;D