Epic to release Unreal Development Kit for Apple's iOS
Epic Games has announced that the software development kit for its Unreal 3 engine will soon add iOS support.
Following the announcement at the Korea Games Conference, Epic vice president Mark Rein released a press release with the news, according to a report by the gaming blog Joystiq. The Unreal Development Kit, which has over 350,000 installations to date, "will be able to generate iOS applications," the press release said.
Momentum for Epic on iOS has been strong. After some highly-coveted keynote stage time at Apple's Sept 1 media event, Epic released the "Epic Citadel" tech demo on the App Store. In just over a week, iOS users downloaded the app over one million times. The demo showcases Epic's work on its first game for iOS: an Unreal 3 implementation codenamed Project Sword.
After seeing the demo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called it "remarkable," noting that the fully interactive 3D demo took place "on a phone."
On his Twitter account, Rein confirmed that "iOS is the priority for now," although the UDK may "eventually" come to the Android platform.
In December, Rein demoed a proof-of-concept of Unreal running on iOS.
Epic's new support for iOS apps generated through its UDK comes on the heels of recent changes to Apple's iOS SDK. Last week, Apple relaxed its controversial restrictions of intermediary third-party development tools. The ban had crippled Adobe's Flash Professional Packager for iPhone tool, which ports apps from Flash to iOS.
Following the announcement at the Korea Games Conference, Epic vice president Mark Rein released a press release with the news, according to a report by the gaming blog Joystiq. The Unreal Development Kit, which has over 350,000 installations to date, "will be able to generate iOS applications," the press release said.
Momentum for Epic on iOS has been strong. After some highly-coveted keynote stage time at Apple's Sept 1 media event, Epic released the "Epic Citadel" tech demo on the App Store. In just over a week, iOS users downloaded the app over one million times. The demo showcases Epic's work on its first game for iOS: an Unreal 3 implementation codenamed Project Sword.
After seeing the demo, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called it "remarkable," noting that the fully interactive 3D demo took place "on a phone."
On his Twitter account, Rein confirmed that "iOS is the priority for now," although the UDK may "eventually" come to the Android platform.
In December, Rein demoed a proof-of-concept of Unreal running on iOS.
Epic's new support for iOS apps generated through its UDK comes on the heels of recent changes to Apple's iOS SDK. Last week, Apple relaxed its controversial restrictions of intermediary third-party development tools. The ban had crippled Adobe's Flash Professional Packager for iPhone tool, which ports apps from Flash to iOS.
Comments
Another reason to pick iOS devices instead of a PSP or DS
I?m happy with the Unity engine myself (starting at zero dollars and no revenue-sharing) but UE looks awesome as well!
- Jasen.
There will be a huge amount of games with that engine on iOS!
Another reason to pick iOS devices instead of a PSP or DS
Many iOS gamers are also DS gamers. Most gamers don't pick just one platform. However Sony has really dropped the ball when it comes to handheld gaming.
This probably explains why Apple let up on the restrictions too. I'm sure Apple wants developers to have access to the Unreal 3 engine as it has a hefty reputation. Big name software houses already using the UDK are probably going to jump on this big time!
Too bad Flash port crap apps have to come with it.
if I had this kind of thing when I was a kid in school I probably wouldn't be able to even write this sentence. I would have been so distracted the entire time lol
doesn't bioshock use Unreal?
Yup... To me me UE3 is one of the most aesthetically pleasing game engines out there. Mass Effect 2 was naiice. Dirt2 engine is great too, as well as, IMO, Source (even though Source has less "features". Ah... but my gaming days are behind me now though.
I don't get it, the Unreal Engine is written in C++ right? Why would that have been restricted by Apple? It's expressly allowed.
The Unreal Engine uses Unreal Script for some parts, which is not a standard API:
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:UnrealScript
It could well be that this was the reason for changing the rules.
Yup... To me me UE3 is one of the most aesthetically pleasing game engines out there. Mass Effect 2 was naiice.
I agree entirely. ME2 looks great and if they can get Bioshock or proper ME (not the top-down rubbish they have now) onto the iPhone, those would be killer games for this platform. Being able to switch all the Bioshock plasmids and upgrades by touching a set of buttons would work better than on the PC or console.
It's very early days though, by the time we see anything substantial, there'll probably be a dual-core iPhone with a GPU twice as fast with widi output or ATV streaming support so you just sit in front of your TV, pull out your phone or ipod and start gaming on it and when you have to pop out, you've got the game with you just as you left it. You don't really need buttons either (no matter what Sony says http://www.yaybuttons.com/ ). As long as you map the left side to the directions and break the right side into 4 distinct blocks, you can hit them without looking at the device. Then you cover the rest with gestures so a flick up jumps and movement rotates the view etc.
The XBox controller has 2 sticks, a d-pad and 10 buttons for control as well as 2 menu buttons. The above setup covers 2 sticks, at least 6 buttons and for menus, you can invoke it with a gesture like two-finger scroll down. So imagine you are playing Bioshock on the sofa on your iPod, you just two-finger swipe down and up pops the plasmid menu and you scroll your finger along the top of the screen and it maps this to the TV screen selecting the right item. Mini-games can jump to the iPod screen.
With a 64GB+ iPod, you can hold all your games on the device at 2-5GB in size. The desktop version of ME2 is 12GB and most games are this size or less.
I think a big reason mobile games are being played more is that the market is more active - the mobile SDKs are actually much more accessible than for big consoles. The big console releases are years apart, the next Bioshock won't be until 2012. So while it may still take a long time to get releases together for the iOS using the same Unreal Engine, I think the turnaround times from development to digital distribution will be way lower and the update process is easier too.
I have to say that even after the iPhone came out I never thought I'd see the day a game studio would make an Apple platform an exclusive.