That sounds about right. The key difference, I think, is that Unity, Unreal, Rage, etc are all graphics middleware, while Adobe wanted to use Flash as complete iPhone development environment.
Pretty crazy to see all that current gen consoles engine features cramped on the iDevices! I hope it will be a part of the UDK so i can get my hands on the tech!
Well...I do not have a problem with that 19.99$ thing....if I remember back the days on the good old PSX, there were many shitty games for about 50$, and they were actually terrible.... I always get angry when a game is on sale...for example a gameloft game. Zombie Infection 0.99$ Typical Review : Far too short.I did it on one evening...The controls are ok but the sound is also bad . I don't like the Graphics. I wouldn't have paid more than 0.99$ 2 Stars LOLLL-too short 5hours!?? for 0.99$---bad graphics-must be joke And there are tons of these comments....What do you want for 0.99 Cent ??? LOOOl I can only repeat it... So yeah...I am ready to pay good money for a good game !
In order for the iPhone to a viable device for premium games ($20 and above, though that would be considered cheap in the PSP/DS world) it needs to build an audience that is willing to pay for premium games. It's a bit of a catch-22: you need "hardcore" gamers to justify the investment, but you don't get "hardcore" gamers till a device has the games they're interested in. That's why the launch of the 3DS at E3 was so brilliant -- not only did Nintendo reveal a pretty astonishing device, they also showcased a roster of games (MGS, RE, Kid Icarus) that was bound to get gamers excited. Making the Unreal engine available on iOS is a big step forward, but I don't think it solves the central dilemma. Which is why I don't expect to see a lot of premium original games on the platform for a while (beyond a few released by Epic, Id, and perhaps EA, SE, and Activision). What I do expect to see, however, are more ports at the $10-$12 range -- basically any IP based on Unreal is now fair game. You can port a game within the same middleware environment for a fraction of the cost of developing an original game, and as SF4, CoD: Zombies, and GTA:CW, it can be immensely profitable even at what would be considered in the console world as bargain prices. A few key ports may make it easier for "hardcore" gamers to opt for an iPod Touch or iPhone as a secondary gaming device, which might in turn create the audience for original premium games. Guess we'll see.
Shame it won't play on older devices I won't be able to play it is there no way to get it to play on an older device, like with lower resolution graphics or something. I don't use my iphone enough at the moment for an upgrade from my 3g to be worth it, considering the iphone 4 on PAYG would cost me more than my original ps3 cost when it first came out. This seems stupid as the only reason I'd be upgrading would be to play better games on it Games like rage are said to be able to run from the original ios devices onwards, why does it need OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics capability insted of OpenGL ES 1.1?
because it needs OpenGL ES 2.0 for the effects, shaddows etc. The unreal 3 engine will never run on older devices (epic games said so) so don't expect any games using the unreal 3 engine to ever run on your current iPhone. I know it sucks, but on the other hand people with new iPods and iPhone want to finally see something that actually uses the new stuff the hardware of their device can do.
In Epic Citadel my battery wen't down from 97% to 91% after walking arround for 7 minutes. The battery percentage thing isn't verry accurate though.
Wait, if anyone can download UDK for free, does that mean we could see a lot of games using this engine? Also, my device got really hot when running the demo.
My iPod is ~6 months old so the battery isn't exactly at it's healthyest point (not bad yet though). I hope the battery in the iPod Touch 4 is bigger (I think it is from what apple says on their website!)
It is a great app despite not having any proper gameplay. It's amazing to see the graphics and FPS that this game can pull off with Unreal Engine! Love every bit of it and hope they can make an actual rpg out of it!
unreal engine 3 for iPad=AMAZING!! So I don't know if anyone has said anything about Epic Citadel on Teheran iPad, but let me just tell you. IT's REALLY NICE. I downloaded Epic citadel onto my iPad when it was released and oh boy does it run so smoothly. I wish more people would make their games either universal (preferred) or make more HD games. Ahem.... joshCM, please make Ravensword 2 and your other games either universal or for the iPad because your games are my favorite, hands down! If anything, just make sure Ravensword 2 is for the iPad. Btw have you left any update on the forums about it?
Interview FAIL Don't know about the rest of you but I find that piece from the interview hilarious. And yeah, I tried it on my iPhone 3Gs and it runs smoothly! It stutters only when the camera fades to a different location, even when it happens, the stutter lasts for only about 2sec. Impressive tech demo, but I know for certain that, at least in Epic Citadel, there is no global illumination and dynamic shadow, everything was baked into texture. But the textures in this game are ridiculously high res! I didn't know that the iPhone hardware is capable of streaming textures at so high a res! Absolutely brilliant! My only suggestion is that they need to put fps counter just to further show the graphic capabilities of 3rd gen iPhone and to benchmark it against iPhone 4.
This game looks amazing, but have a question. This is definitely a AAA title for the igaming device. What do you guys think the price will be for such a game? I honestly don't know what to think. $9.99 would seem reasonable however square enix has released some pricey games. Granted I know a lot depends upon the depth/scope of the final game. Thoughts ?
Actually, the shadows are baked, but the illumination is at least partially dynamic. There are a couple of spots where you can get "in and out" of the sun and see how it actually lightens up the walls -- pretty darn cool. The baked shadows become obvious, though, when you watch the standards flapping in the wind; their shadows remain still on the wall. Keep in mind that you can find baked shadows even in games like Half-Life 2 -- if the lighting angle is not changing in a particular spot, why use valuable resources to calculate a fixed shadow? Baked shadows can be used with dynamic illumination to create effects that feel realistic to the player. From this demo, it seems the mobile version of Unreal is capable of such effects.
The lens flare effect is the one responsible for the in and out of sun feel in outdoors which can easily be linked to a 'trigger' (in this case the camera). In unreal engine, you can also do this using the HDRI approach which means that when you step into a tool shed, the display will adjust just like the way our eyes adjust to different lighting condition, so when you step back outside, you'll be engulfed in this beautiful over-exposed glow that would also comes with lens flare with much lesser intensity. Since in Citadel, you can't see effects like glowing edges along the rooftops near the sun further shows that it doesn't have dynamic lighting. Half-life 2 uses old techniques a lot. You need to compare Citadel with current-gen Unreal engine where shadows are no longer baked in light of (pun intended) dynamic lighting.
It's not apparently obvious that shadows are already rendered. Considering how I've played games where disabling shadows can double or triple your framerate, baked shadows are a superior choice that has a more noticeable (good) performance impact than quality degration.
