Unreal engine on Iphone :

Just tried the demo Epic Citadel that is Unreal 3 engine adapted to Ihpone on my Itouch 4 (3GS) !
Just amazing the quality the engine can bring on last Iphones !
Ok it had no characters, but big and detailled level with rocks, trees, castel, water cascade, animated trees, ambiant sounds ...
all smooth, with precise lightmaps that have some simuled HDR effects on some bright parts exposed to sun !

















But i think the cost to use it must not be cheap !
Well let's wait for some games made with this engine , it would be next level if 3D artist bring such good models and precise textures !

There has been a thread about it before (not sure if it was in Morbius or here).

About the price, as far as i know, the engine is free, like UDK, unless you earn more than 20k or whatever the limit is.

Though if i remember correct, the demo isn't THAT impressive cause everything is baked, even the specular, at least thats what i've read from other people who examined the demo.

How do you "bake" specularity?
The point where you see it moves with the camera... doesn't it?

As I see it there just is no specularity. Instead they feature parallax and normalmapping. And all together I consider this demo quite cool.

Does anyone know how to set the output settings? The demos seem to be set always to the highest settings - what, if I want to publish a version for android?
(Maybe, my version of UDK is too old? --> 2009_11)
EDIT: The last beta doesn't work for me.
AND: Sorry, I should look myself: the Android 'export' isn't even implemented!
http://www.knowyourmobile.com/mobile-gam...oid_coming.html

Even baked, the lightmaps are great quality !
The engine allow vast and beautifull scenes.
Unreal engine allow to manage lot of polygons in the scene, just look at rocks, or rounded corners on the city !
And there is a room with reflections and special effects, but well let's wit for a talented team to make a game using Uneal 3 engine for iphone to see what it can really do !

I recognize some others engines have also lot of power on Iphone !
I played the last FPS from Gameloft on Iphone 4, just amazing the quality. i've remarked they have used good optimisations like the use of 3 LOD for characters for example, it allow sprecise characters for an Iphone when your are near, and to have 5,6 or more ennemies at same time at screen !
The animations of weapons, sounds, precise textures all for an Iphone is top quality, lot better than any FPS on PSP for example.
Even more i didn't find any time on 3DGS some FPS demo as good as that game on Iphone !!







The big advantage of Iphone or Android, is the price for such quality games. On PSP or NDS that's lot more !

In fact on the las picture showing Unreal 3 on Iphone posted above, we can see a good amount of polygons, only towers use a lot already.
When you see games on Iphone, there are less polygons use than that scene. I think it have big optimisations indeed, theyv'e done a great job for Iphone.

I don't know when will Unreal Kits for Iphone will be delivered
and what will be the price, i think it will be lot more than Unity.

Let's wait for dev kits and a game.

I suspect they use billboarding a lot. In the last picture the towers in the background and the church look like billboards.

I think that only the towers roofs are billboards. Everything else are just great texture, good lighting and models with few, well placed polygons.
I don´t think that they use any LOD, but instead they have choosen an environment which is perfect for some good occlusion culling. The view of the two last screenshots btw aren´t running completely fluent on my iPhone 3GS. There also aren´t that many different textures used, which is good to save draw calls. Well in the end they even seem to have enough speed left, which they seem to spend into antialiasing.

A video showing that demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy2hXtUN2t0&feature=related

Now a game using the engine is coming, some action RPG ;
and it looks fantastic for an iphone game

Infinity Blade





We can see that is lot of polygones, even on weapons !
Iphone games are becoming lot more beautifull than PC A8 games

I-Phone graphics > A8

Whazz up?

Those are some beautiful models!

Jibb

"I-Phone graphics > A8 "
Just laughting

But that's sure , there is no A8 game actually as good as that
Iphone game !
It's pure quality 3D art with a good shader (Iphone 4 have shaders !)
And the lightmapping on the level i great as the lightening on models : it's from Unreal engine.

Oh yes, now that the iPhone has a nice engine, every iOS developer will have the money to:
a) Buy the engine
b) Pay a very talented designer
c) Hire a marketing god.

Please, everyone, this is nonsense. Most of the iPhone stuff is indie stuff, just like the most stuff here. If you compare a normal iOS title with a normal A8 title, you will see that the game made with A8 has much better graphics.

Agreed. It's very cleverly done -- no realtime shadows, but the camera angle means you probably won't notice (who wants to look at the ground anyway!?). The shader wouldn't be amazing, but it's very artistically done -- a lot of games over-do specular effects, or they have awful looking highlights on the eyelids and stuff like that because all they did is bake normals and then apply a standard shader. Whatever they've done here, they did with a good eye and appropriate subtlety.

It's gorgeous. I'd like to see A8 games with this sort of visual quality -- I know realism isn't everyone's style, but A7/A8 games generally don't go for a realistic style at all! I'd go for it myself, but my lack of artistic skills and the style of my game mean I'm probably not going to depart from a cartoony style.

Jibb

Unreal Dev Kit is free for pc, if you think you can handle it alone as much as you handle the acknex engine, the door is that way -----> http://www.udk.com

If you compare a normal iOS title with a normal A8 title, you will see that the game made with A8 has much better graphics.

A8 because PC and Direct X have lot more advanced shader stuff
and can have more power(be carefull with shadows,resolution and number of polygons !!).

I agree today some bunch of AAA engines uses baked normal maps,
and you'll even not notice it , if you don't close and turn camera to see if position influence shadow like a real normal map
The last Medal of Honor , even Uncharted 2 on PS3 use baked
normal map on some floor/wall parts etc ...

I just said : I never seen as beautifull game as this 3D game
on iphone i didn't say A8 can't do it !
This Iphone game is made with talented 3D artists for level and characters , and it 's possible on Iphone such quality of lightmapping, nulber of polygins caus of Unreal Engine !
That's all, don't begin a flamewar !
Indeed if we put that talented people on A8 they do same great quality game and with better things,effects !
I just stated it's awesome what can be done on Iphone !


Sorry but Ihone have some solid games , not only casual !
For example Dungeon Hunter :
Very long , with lot of stuff, powers tree, lot of dungons
and 3 classes : the best action/rpg


Another very long RPG done by Square , very long , lot of dungeons/levels :


Sorry , but there are better games than A8 indeed, why ??
Simply because they are talented people or companies behind that are mainly 3D artists !

You clearly miss the point, those are all AAA titles!
I think your problem is, that when you see something nice you always think "A8, A8, A8, A8, A8" without thinking "woah, they spend a lot of time, a lot of money and had some well paid people working on this. This is not comparable with an indie title made by users from A8".
Why do you always think that nice and quality assets have something to do with the engine? Why do you think an engine has to deliver you the stuff? Because you paid 200€? Come on, thats just stupid.
You want an AAA title with A8? Go and pay for it instead of complaining that A8 doesn't ship with one built-in!

True true... the point is you are allowed to use the UDK, Unity 3D or even the CryEngine (if you are @ a university or whatever) but I do not think you will be able to deliver a game such as the three ones shown above.

Why do you always think that nice and quality assets have something to do with the engine?

I know that from ages !

Thats' what i said about uncoming iphone game using unreal engine , read another time my post above
i put it here so you can directly read it agin :

Indeed if we put that talented people on A8 they do same great quality game and with better things,effects !I just stated it's awesome what can be done on Iphone !


That's sure these great above iphone games using basic lightening could be made with A8, just bring on the skilled
people making them indeed !

Well i've got nothing against A8, i just bring critics , points of view !
And i have also nothing against you JustSeed !

Don't take things like that so personnal !
Take a break that's important !
Find a girl , bring her at home !
Have fun outside also !
Take beers at night with fun people !
After that i think you won't defend as hard against people ideas or critics !

Actually i must have some time to waste to write so much in A8 forums !
For my part i think i just need to find another cool girlfriend and go outside lot more instead of loosing myself in non productive topics where you even win nothing , even if you are right !

At least you have make me realise, that i spend too much time in A8 forums instead of beeing productive

words of brilliance

It's also my crazy personnal method for not getting too serious
or too much attached to not very important things !
And to feel happy also , something very important !
Life is too short to keep sad or mind closed !!!!!

Again just my personnal point of view !

Watching that video on youtube was hard because of the control. Perhaps the rumored Sony playstation phone will fix with with some dedicated buttons. I hate touch control in most 3d games. But other than that, it's pretty cool. Phones are definetely the new platform for mobile games(goodbye Gameboy/DS/PSP in 5 years).

Infinity Blade is in the new iPhone Commercial. Looked really great ...

Well, the new update from Epic UDK is out and it comes with iOS support.

Build levels, visually script gameplay events and add visual effects for mobile applications using the Unreal Editor and its major tools, including Unreal Kismet, Unreal Cascade and Unreal Matinee.
Superior rendering features for mobile development, including Unreal Lightmass global illumination accelerated by Unreal Swarm distributed computing.
The full source and content for the “Epic Citadel” App, plus an additional castle demo map.

http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=754549

Damn... That video is so awesome... There is no project made in 3DGS that can compete with this (iphone) project!

iPhone as deployment target but no Mac OS X toolchain?! They gotta be kidding me.

I can not share the enthusiam of the artists oriented members for this kind of stuff
What's the point of having all these advanced graphics features on a some inches iphone screen ?
I suppose that a game for iphone or other portable device fitted with a relatively small screen, should have an essential graphics

But a fact is: Epic released this fantasy fighting game on iPhone and made 1.5 Mio just in the first week (on a phone!!). These graphical features are attractive to customers.

Another fact is: This works only that good because Unreal actually is a pimped up old-school engine. Shadows are baked maps. Lights (no matter how much you use) will be baked into lightmaps with some additional directional information for normal mapping and specularity effects. This way it is not that demanding. The most important feature is a good culling system to render as few as possible even with big worlds like this.

So from my point of view there are no advanced graphic features at all. There are some advanced scene management features. This should actually be more compelling to programmers than to artists
Anyway, they did a good job and we all have access to it. This is not a bad thing at all.



My latest smart phone (HTC Desire HD) has a big display (800x480) and can easily display hd videos (720) and high resolution games. Graphics are getting more and more important even on phones. I know a couple of big engines that will support phones in the upcoming months. In the end these phones will be a big market and will see game productions similar or better like seen on mobile game consoles.

I just had a look into the citadel demo from within the editor - didn't test any feature of the editor jet, but it feels so amazing to be able to build a level from a windows pc(!) - and to imagine that it will run on an iPhone! (I guess, Android will follow soon...)

On the other hands, it is great to see this fantastic piece of level and investigates the details. So lowpoly, and so compelling organic.

Thanks for the link !
I played it on my itouch 4G, well it runs smooth and graphics
looks like Next Gen !
Their game is full combat system, with heavy level up system,
Once you figth the last boss, if you dy you replay as the child
with all power up you gained.

The presentation of items and interface in this game are top notch.


I seen on the link some cool tools for Ios :

# Unreal Matinee cinematics tools

# Unreal Cascade particle designer

# Mesh painting tools

# Full support for Autodesk FBX file format

# Unreal animation system (AnimTrees, additive animations, blending, etc.)

# Play In Editor, one-click game preview

# BSP level construction system

# Level-Of-Detail systems, including Massive LOD

Etc : great tools to build games indeed !

And i'm sure with next Iphones like 5G ,6G etc ... power will
be growing on !
The only problem is that iphone battery is too short, even more short if you play a 3D game.
And Nintendo DS even with 3D game , i can play when travelling 5 hours or 8 wihtout problem.

Well this was my minute talking about Iphone

ok but it is still a 3.5" screen
Should you add also a GUI , what does it remain left for the graphics ?
Watching a movie on a small screen may be more or less acceptable but playing a complex game it is ridicolus
In my opinion it is just a marketing issue

Great way of comparing things, really. You know that you phone has to always power its radio transmitters, talk with the GSM network, initiate base station switches etc?
On my iPad with a much larger screen than your phone/gameboy, I can play around 8-9 hours too.

No it is not. Even on my older N97 it was fun to play some games like Zuma Revenge. Yes, you are right, these games work best with small or zero GUI while playing. But this is possible especially with a touch screen.

I personally dont like the idea to have action games on a phone with touch screen controls. But I like to play puzzle games where you simply start an action with a touch of your finger. Another interesting idea would be to play adventure games where you move your character with a single touch, where you start conversions or investigations with a single touch of your finger. There is no messy HUD/GUI needed. And an adventure like this could have really nice graphics and could be 3d or 2.5d also.

Here is an example of an Android game (Angry Birds) where you try to destroy buildings (some kind of physics game play):



As you see there is only one single button to pause the game in the corner. A menu with more options will appear when you touch it. All the other game controls are just the screen and your finger. You scroll with your finger, you zoom with your fingers, you start the action with your finger and it really works.

And to be honest, these kind of controls are so intuitive and native that even my 3-years old daughter can control my phone. We installed some very simple painting programs on our phones just for my daughter. This shows easily that touching a screen is way easier to understand than using sticks, buttons or mouse.

Frank
It is a quite simple game , the one of your example,with essential graphics and , I suppose a basic game play,too
That's makes sense
I am aware of course that game development for the iPhone / iPad / android etc is becoming a more and more important business
I was just wondering whether it makes also that sense to port on a 3.5" screen advanced graphics stuff
The snap shots posted by Ratchet reminded me Assasin's Creed 2 which I am going to purchase for the XBox version( not even for PC, my 19" screen is too small ;))
Do you really think that you can spot your target in a crowd of a middle age city on a iPhone screen ?

I agree with you. When I want to enjoy very high resolution games then a big monitor is first choice of course. But mobile phones will display some more realistic graphics also. I am working on a scenery like this for one of our customers. I cant tell you much right now because of a NDA, but it will show interesting detailed graphics, although there are still constraints compared to a PC.

Regarding gameplay I already wrote you that I can imagine some nice gameplay (adventure games as an example) where you still have a big character on screen and some detailed scenery around. Something like this would work fine on a phone. But you will see RPGs, shooters and even RTS on phones also, maybe a bit more stylized to recognize units better on that small screen, but it will be there in the near future.

how is it with udk. can one create things for the iphone on a windows computer? or does it require a mac?

generally, what do you all think about android? developement would be much simpler, right?

actually using windows is only way to deliver games for iphone with udk, udk doesnot work on mac(for now, i think editors will still be pc only but front-end may get to mac.). Did not read much in to it but i guess you still need licenses from apple etc. Documentation pretty much says that you only need MAC when you are submitting your app to the appstore, no word of MAC on development/deployment stage, only distribution.

For android, from udk point of view i am guessing it will be pretty much same as iphone - that is of course when udk gets android support.

Being develeoped 2D app for both iphone and android(same app on both devices), i would say develeopment complexity was pretty much the same, sometimes both platforms needed some small workarounds where other one did not, in different areas. But that was all 2d and was not a game.(Can't be more clear, still under the effects of NDA)

Documentation pretty much says that you only need MAC when you are submitting your app to the appstore, no word of MAC on development/deployment stage, only distribution.

I already asked to Unity and Shva 3D forums :
And yes tools to make the game can run on Windows , but
for makeing the final build and distributting it to store
you need a MAC for that last phase !

For Android , i don't know ifd a Mac is really necessary ?

thanks.. ye, i am still unsure if i should get an iphone4 or the samsung galaxy s i9000, which seems to be as good as an iphone but with android.

android looks much more developer friendly to me from the point of getting the app to the mobile

Android have an open system.
Where Iphone is lot more closed system indeed.

For Android Unity and Shiva 3D already handle that plaforms.
Just ask to their forums if you need some information.

The Galaxy S is actually faster/more powerful than the current iPhone 4G.

And yes it's more developer friendly. For example you don't need any stupid developer license to work for it (i really don't like that about apple).